Rational enthusiasm

Enthusiasm: it's catching.

Breaking the Wave of Enthusiasm?

The natural history of all substantial innovative medical procedures generally follows the same archetype. A new, potentially revolutionary treatment approach for a certain disease is introduced and initial first-in-men, feasibility, and safety studies are conducted by expert operators in highly specialized centers and selected patients. Given promising initial results, this triggers a wave of ...

Tempered enthusiasm for fecal transplantation?

TO THE EDITOR—We read the case report by Solari et al [1] with great interest because the authors presented a fatal case of relapsing Clostridium difficile infection treated with fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) using a gastrojejunostomy tube. This tube was placed through an already existing gastric feeding tube, and the patient died 4 days later due to septic shock; Pseudomonas aeruginos...

Alexander Grothendieck: Enthusiasm and Creativity

Alexander Grothendieck was born in Berlin on 28 March 1928. His father, Sascha Shapiro, an anarchist originally from Russia, took an active part in the revolutionary movements first in Russia, and then in Germany, during the 1920s, where he met Hanka Grothendieck, Alexander’s mother. After the Nazis came to power in Germany it was too dangerous for a Jewish revolutionary to stay there, and the ...

Measuring patients' views: between enthusiasm and reality.

In 1947, the World Health Organization broadened the definition of health as 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity' [1]. This new paradigm, representing the ideals of modern medicine, measuring patients' views on their psychological fulfilment, satisfaction and well-being, became an important outcome both in clinical asse...