Mnemonics, Rhetoric, and Poetics for Medics

"This book is written for all those who, in the daily practice of medicine are faced with the limitations of their memory and the finiteness of their minds." So the authors begin the preface to this entertaining book which offers hope to all of us who can never remember the major causes of hematuria. All we need do is bring to mind the authors' vivid mnemonic, "H-E'S G-O-T S-I-C-K P-L-U-M-B-I-N-G," and we would immediately recall hemophilia, exercise, Shonlein-Henoch purpura, Goodpasture's, Osler-Weber-Rendu, trauma, sickle cell, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, calculi, vitamin K deficiency, polyarteritis, lupus, urinary tract infection, medications, blood pressure elevation, infarction, neoplasms, and glomerulonephritis. The authors have compiled here a comprehensive, mostly original selection of mnemonics, covering a number of areas of medicine which go far beyond the mnemonic we all used to learn the cranial nerves. They introduce their book with a discussion of the different types of mnemonics. The acrostic, or acronym, is made up of the initial letters of a group of words which themselves form a word or phrase. They introduce the concept of constructing a word-picture with such acronyms and thus give us "B-I-T-E-M" for the muscles of mastication. The use of onomatopoeia is not unheard of in such devices, as in the use of "C-R-A-S-H P-L-A-N" for the evaluation of trauma. The epi-acronym is a group of words whose initial letters are the initial letters of the objects to be remembered. Alliteration can also be used as in "The A's of Addison's Disease" or "The I's of Vitamin B12 Deficiency." Finally, the authors utilize the ancient device of the abecedarius, in which the successive letters of the alphabet are the initial letters of the words to be recalled. Interspersed with this collection of mnemonics are delightful quotations on memory, medicine, and life by such great men as Osler, Latham and an unknown (but wise) Hindu physician. Also included are discussions of the concept of memory and how we assimilate and recall the facts to which we are exposed. This book makes enjoyable reading and actually includes a significant amount of medical information presented in a novel way. Unfortunately, the learning of all the mnemonics is almost as formidable as the learning of the basic information. These devices do, however, represent a means of acquiring "knowledge worth spewing not requiring emetics."