Straight Dope has a detailed discussion of how yellow became associated with cowardice. It is speculated that the source was the medieval medicine theory that the four body fluids were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Yellow bile was said to make you peevish, choleric, or irascible. The color yellow was subsequently used to mark the doors of the homes of French traitors. Victims of the Spanish inquisition had to wear yellow, and Nazis used a yellow star to designate that a person or business was Jewish. A yellow flag was used to quarantine victims of yellow fever. “Yellow journalism” dates from about 1895 and was and is used to describe news using sensational headlines and articles to inspire fear.
Author Archives: RF_Alum
Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer
Reviewed by Kathy London
This book by Sharon Brownee documents a frightening and infuriating American health care system. “Politicians are constantly telling us we have the best health care in the world, but that’s simply not the case. By every conceivable measure, the health of Americans lags … other developed countries.” Using both individual stories and formal studies, Brownlee shows that a third of what we spend on health care is not only wasted, it is making us sicker. Money is certainly an issue, but the suffering of patients is more striking to me.
Our current, technology-based system is a modern invention, arising after World War II. Hospitals became “factories whose products were miracles.” I include this quote because most of the book makes me want to hide from hospitals. Unneeded diagnostics and treatments expose patients to all the risks of medical care (Brownlee presents many) without the benefits. Brownlee details the “desperate need in medicine for clearer standards and better evidence of what works” and the need to end a warped financial system that “propels clinical decisions.”
Brownlee presents many stories of injured patients and of doctors who are “absolutely gob-smacked” when presented with proof of overtreatment. For example, two cardiologists brought sophisticated heart procedures to a rural hospital in California. Some local doctors felt they performed excessive procedures. Healthy patients with minor complaints were coming out disabled or dead. Brownlee follows one doctor through his decade-long effort to get someone to act: Medicare, the State, anyone. Finally the FBI investigated and their outside experts estimated half the procedures were “inappropriate”. The hospital paid a large Medicare fraud settlement, and the doctors lost their licenses. What was striking to me was the sincere shock of the errant doctors. One doctor “appeared genuinely devastated by the charges…. He wept…” Continue reading
Square Meal
A grandson asked where this expression came from. The Phrase Finder writes that a popular but incorrect origin is that the Royal Navy served meals on square wooden plates. The expression is of U.S. origin and is based on the use of the word “square” to mean proper and honest. The earliest written reference was in a November 1856 advertisement in the newspaper The Mountain Democrat for the Hope and Neptune restaurant. The ad promised a “square meal” of “oyster, chicken, and game prepared at short notice.”
Devil at My Heels
This book is the autobiography of Louis Zamperini written with David Rensin. “Lucky Louie” escaped from a juvenile delinquent life to become an Olympic runner and later a U.S. Army bombardier in the Pacific during World War II. He was on a plane that crashed on a search mission and Louis and two others survived to begin a long drift in two rafts. One man died, but Louis and the pilot survived to be captured by the Japanese and imprisoned. They were treated inhumanely and lived in squalid and deprived conditions. Louis was treated as a war hero after being freed and was freed again from an alcoholic life by the efforts of his wife to get him to attend Billy Graham speaking events. The life story is fascinating and the book tells it exceptionally well.
A more complete description of what is in the book is given in my review of “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand. That book was selected by the Northern Colorado Common Read (NCCR) as the book of the year for 2012. I do not understand why they didn’t select “Devil at My Heels” instead. The autobiography is a better and more believable book. The first person writing is easier to read and there are additional interesting details. Continue reading
Nickname
Nickname is a corruption of what was originally called an “eke name.” “Eke” meant “also” or “extra,” so naturally “nickname” means to have an extra name.
The Big Scrum – How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football
Reviewed by Kathy London
Football always involves controversy. Sports news today is filled with debate about football and concussions. I just read a proposal to eliminate the kick-off to make the game more exciting. Debates stretch back over 100 years. This book by John J. Miller says the game of football originated shortly after the Civil War, when the game looked like rugby. The book explores the evolution of the game through the early 1900s.
The audience for Miller’s book seems limited. Readers interested in Roosevelt may find his biographical treatment too limited (though Miller promises this is a neglected episode in standard Roosevelt biographies). Fans involved in football controversies today may find 100-year old arguments irrelevant. I don’t know who will be interested in the personal lives of otherwise-obscure people who influenced the evolution of football.
The West was still wild when the game was first played. In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won one of the most contentious and hotly disputed elections in our history. (He lost the popular vote but won the presidency. Such outcomes are not recent developments!) Organized sports were almost unknown in America. Football was played at elite ivy-league universities, and some people objected to the use of referees on the grounds that “gentlemen” shouldn’t need oversight. Continue reading