The Case ∣ Full moon and new moon

The Moon Is Full

Full Moon and Gastrointestinal Bleeding

Findings:Román, Soriano, Fuentes, Gálvez, and Fernández (2004) suggested that the number of hospital admissions related to gastrointestinal bleeding was somehow influenced by the phases of the Earth’s moon. Specifically, the authors claimed that the rate of hospital admissions to their bleeding unit is higher during the full moon than at other times. Their report contains a number of methodolog...

The full moon and admission to emergency rooms.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to investigate an ancient hypothesis; the moon effect might increase incidence of injuries and hence admission of patients with trauma to Emergency Rooms (ERs) on full moon days. METHODS During thirteen months, 58000 trauma patients admitted in three hospitals that had the highest load of trauma patients in Tehran were studied. Due to lack of complete d...

A New Explanation for the Moon Illusion

The mystery of the Moon illusion is still unsolved, even though various explanations have been offered over thousands of years. Here it is proposed that the illusion may be ascribed to an unusual optical atmospheric effect. The considerably thick spherical atmosphere may form a natural convex lens to converge light rays, which leads to the situation that the light rays from the Moon are greatly...

Howling for the moon.

Rennard and Vestbo have sounded a ringing call to arms. Instead of trying to make minor improvements in the rate of decline of spirometry in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), they call for an all out effort to find a cure. Their arguments have attractions, but we believe that the evidence shows it would be easier to hatch out chickens from a plate of scrambled eggs tha...