Of navels and urinating horses

I very much enjoyed CMAJ's 2002 Holiday Review. In particular, Carolyn Brown's reporting of the IgNobel prizes caught my attention, especially the item about navel-gazing.1

This little report immediately took me back some 56 or 57 years, to my second year of premed studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Our biochemistry lab professor, whose office was just off the lab, had told us to disturb him whenever we had problems or questions. At that particular time, we were studying the hormones found in urine and, among other things, were told about hormone replacement therapy, including the fact that the brand name Premarin (conjugated estrogen) was a short version of “pregnant mare's urine.”

I had a question about my lab work and proceeded to the professor's office. He was very busy writing longhand on sheets of foolscap and did not look up for a minute or two. I asked him if he was writing up some research, and he said “Yes, indeed I am” and showed me the title on page 1. It read “On Fuzz-Gathering about the Umbilicus.” I don't know if he ever completed this aspect of his “research,” but I wish now that I had taken more interest!

As I was about to leave his office after he responded to my query, he asked me to wait a moment and hurriedly penned a couple of lines on a sheet of paper, which he asked me to pass around the lab. If my memory serves me correctly, and I'm sure it does, the lines were as follows:

A permanently pregnant mare pid- dling perpetually produces more pee than an infinite series of mares peeing into pots periodically.

How I wish we had had more professors with his student rapport and sense of humour.

Joe Golumbia Family Physician Sidney, BC