The CMAJ way
Forget making New Year's resolutions to exercise more, imbibe less, eat better food and give up smoking. If you really want health, happiness and prosperity, we offer the following recommendations:
1. Make sure your children are born at the right time of year. Rebecca Pollex and colleagues report that people born under Gemini are most likely to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology (page 1584).
2. Swallow your chewing gum. Jeffrey Eisen and collaborators for the PATÉ trial (prevention of appendicitis using Trident éxclusively) report on a randomized controlled trial that bursts the bubble of the popular myth that it is unhealthy to swallow your gum (page 1587).
3. Bathe regularly. But use cool water, advises Ralph Douglas Wilkinson as he “scratches” the surface of asteatotic dermatitis (page 1627). Kevin Pottie adds that we should definitely be wary of egg-noodle conditioners (page 1603).
4. If you make your bed, don't lie in it. Although Pierre Trudeau may have questioned the place of the state in the bedrooms of the nation, Robert Patterson and Christopher Stewart-Patterson take you to the bedside and reveal a previously unrecognized public health risk (page 1591).
5. Do not swim within an hour after eating, or ride a tractor. Robert Patterson and Wayne Stewart report an interesting case of abdominal pain resulting from an interaction between an evening beverage and a John Deere (page 1590).
6. Sit next to a neurologist on your next long flight. Vladimir Hachinski describes the challenges of drinking a glass of red wine and attending to patients at 35 000 feet (page 1621).
7. Read, read, read! But remember to pay for the books. In a special section of The Left Atrium, contributors offer titles of the books they love and the ones they yearn to read (page 1641). On a related topic, E.C. Abbott discusses the causes and unfortunate consequences of bibliokleptomaniasis (page 1646).
These “sacred 7” recommendations, hereafter known as the “CMAJ way,” promise health, happiness and prosperity. Together with a hearty serving of home remedies for everything from mouth ulcers to plantar warts (page 1614), our 2001 Holiday Review is replete with healthy living tips that are sure to be “good for what ails you.”
Dispatches
Twenty years have passed since the first AIDS cases were reported. Ellen Einterz in Cameroon discusses the myths, mysteries and societal taboos that perpetuate this disease's silent rampage, and the seemingly impossible dilemmas facing families and individuals (page 1604).
The events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent world-wide instabilities, remind us of the interrelatedness of societies and cultures. Caralee Caplan, an internal medicine resident in New York City, writes of her experiences working on that infamous day (page 1618). William Eaton describes his experience in St. John's, Nfld., triaging the needs of thousands of stranded international travellers who arrived on flights redirected from their American destinations on Sept. 11 (page 1619).
CMAJ turns 90
How far have we come? To mark CMAJ's 90th anniversary we have chosen some interesting excerpts from our first volume (page 1631). We have also reprinted sections of the 1910 Medical Council of Canada licensing exam, for modern-day physicians to test whether they measure up to our predecessors' standards (page 1637).