My Life = Academics

When I started this blog, I had in mind posting the little everyday things so you guys back home could get a look at what my life is like.  In truth, looking back over the posts, the only things that I've posted are the exciting happenings and few and far between excursions that I go on.  I don't think my posting style will change as what I post are the interesting bits of my life (who wants to hear about class, studying and yet more studying!), but for this post at least I wanted to share some of the more interesting bits from my classes.

My class schedule this semester is a bit more interesting than it has been in the past because we are moving in the curriculum from the realm of normal to abnormal!  We are finally studying disease and medicine versus anatomy and physiology :-).  My classes are Pathology I, Bacteriology, Virology, and Pharmacology.

I think just about everyone recognizes the symbol to the left as the pharmacological symbol that appears on all medications you have ever received for yourself and any other creature whether they be child or beast.  In fact, the symbol legally has to appear on all scripts tendered.  Despite the widespread usage of this symbol, I'll willing to bet most don't know what it stands for.  The "R" stands for the latin word Recipe meaning "to take."  The x does not stand for any word but instead is an ancient symbol and represents a prayer to the Gods that the medication will find the ill and destroy it.  I wonder how many people would pitch a fit and fall in it to know that the trusted symbol that is synonymous with pharmacies worldwide has such pagan backgrounds.  I personally reveal in it and the fact that the profession of medicine has so many funny little hidden traditions and quirks.

The next time your toddler/husband :-) pitches a fit about going to see the Doctor, think about this factoid:  There are more fatalities worldwide each year from prescription error than there are fatalities from vehicle accidents.  In other words, you are safer in an airplane than a car, and safer in a car than a doctor's office!

Most people know of Alexander Fleming and the fact that he accidentally discovered Penicillin from molds (1945), but most don't know that Fleming's Penicillin wasn't the first antibiotic to be discovered and used.  Gerhard Domagk of Germany was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1939 for proposing the first commercially available antibiotic "prontosil" (a sulfa drug).  His impetuous was treating his own daughter who had an infection in her arm that, without the antibiotic, would have been amputated.  It is amazing what can be accomplished with a strong enough motivation.

Did you know that viruses are technically not living?  They cannot replicate on their own and therefore by definition are not alive.  This fact is also the reason why virus infections are so hard to treat.  A virus is simply a coil of DNA or RNA that is surrounded by a capsid (shell).  Once a virus invades the body, it uses the host cell's structures and resources to replicate.  Therefore, drug processes that work for bacteria would never work for viruses because the drugs would be targeting and killing host cells (bad idea!).

There will be a quiz tomorrow worth 80% of your final grade (another vet school tradition, it seems :-), have a great day!