Medical Notes ⁽¹¹⁾

On August 19, 2026, after weeding in my vegetable plot, I cycled home. On the way I happened to see a woman chasing and beating a teenage girl. The child ran forward crying; the woman chased her, slapping her face, pulling her hair, and kicking…

Yesterday, while working through exercises for my major course, I came across the following multiple-choice question: The treatment of cervical carcinoma does NOT include: A. surgical treatment, B. radiotherapy, C. chemotherapy, D. immunotherapy, E. traditional Chinese medicine treatment. One could guess the correct answer even…

Recently, in the course of my studies, I have become deeply fascinated by Group A beta-hemolytic Streptococcus and the series of diseases it induces. The reason is that this streptococcal infection is related to at least two of my relatives: one is my son, and…

Last year, after a cold, my mother-in-law suddenly developed deafness. Because I was at school, and the elderly woman did not want to disturb my studies, she did not tell me; she went on her own to our local People’s Hospital and was treated for…

Bloomberg reported on Wednesday (April 15) that researchers from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom evaluated five leading artificial-intelligence (AI) platforms—ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok, and DeepSeek; each had to answer 10 questions across five health-care categories. The researchers reported this week in…

Recently, two relatives of mine who had been hepatitis-B virus carriers have both developed health problems. One was diagnosed with liver cancer; the other was found to have an elevated HBV viral load and to be showing clinical symptoms of hepatitis. Can HBV carriers develop…

Treatment of the vast majority of diseases requires drugs to enter cells to exert their effect. So how do drugs get into cells? This requires understanding the several common ways substances enter cells. Through observation and experiment, biologists have found that substances enter cells mainly…

In the depth of winter, the gardenia at my home seems about to bloom again. Over the past week or two, many buds have appeared one after another. A month ago, this pot of gardenia was nearly frozen to death outdoors in Beijing. Over the…

The rivalry between Chinese and Western medicine has always existed, and it runs fierce—so fierce that on many online platforms the two sides are irreconcilable. For years I have deliberately stayed out of any such fray, because my experience tells me that joining either side…

Papers reporting uterine fibroids in men, ovarian cancer in men, and postpartum hemorrhage in male mothers have actually appeared in legitimate medical journals; unqualified, incompetent individuals have found their way into top medical institutions through all sorts of channels. Lately, jaw-dropping medical scandals have appeared…