Healthcare news, some of it not so new.

A gruesome little article lets us know that Medical Students have always had the same sense of humor. It's a series of photos of human dissections, some which were issued as postcards.

It's from Discover's The Creepy World of Human Dissection.




I liked this one from their photoset - they're all dressed up for a garden party, with their friend being dissected al fresco. (I always wondered about ol' Al.)

Discover's caption says the guy sitting on a bucket is "the janitor". In a sense yes, but I suspect he was a member of that awesome tribe, The Dieners, which is much cooler. This word is from the German, meaning servant, and is the shorted form of Leichendiener, which means Corpse Servant. I know a lot of pathologists and they all have tales about their hospital's Diener. One imagines that they are all clones of the same person, like Igors are in Terry Pratchett novels.

While we are on healthcare, here's another horror story about Socialized Medicine and its awful cost-cutting Nazi ways. Le Treatment from the NY Times. It appears an American got sick in France. After a few hours and a battery of tests he was released with antibiotics, a diagnosis of pneumonia and a bill for $220 (because he is not a citizen). These dreadful tales are mounting up. Found from More Words Deeper Hole (again) and the comments there have several more examples of this unAmerican way of doing things.