Doctors compare medical conditions to food, Report

PATIENTS would probably be unhappy to hear their often serious illnesses being compared to foodstuffs by doctors and now a researcher has discovered where the curious practice originated.

Medical staff are known to name conditions after meals or drinks as a shorthand way of identifying them easily during discussions about their needs.

Gastrointestinal tumours resembling “mushrooms” or “cauliflower florets” and a skin infection looking like “spaghetti and meatball” are among the least stomach-churning comparisons.

Dr Lakhtakia, from Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman, wrote in the journal Medical Humanities: “A host of references to the aromas, shape, colour and texture of food have reinformed and stimulated generations of physicians to identify and understand disease.

“They have piqued interest in foods from lands afar and introduced an unsought dimension and enrichment to the medical lexicon.”

Dairy products were said to feature prominently. Necrotic tissue exuded “creamy” pus, “milk patch” described the appearance of healed inflamed membranes surrounding the heart, while “cafe au lait” was a term applied to the tell-tale skin colouring associated with the genetic disorder Von Recklinghausen’s disease.

One possible reason for the food preoccupation might be doctors’ (strong) stomachs, Dr Lakhtakia suggests.

She adds: “A part of this curious tradition may owe its origins to practising physicians and researchers catching up on their meals in clinical side rooms or operating theatre offices, or with an inevitably cold platter eaten with eyes glued to a microscope.

“It is a wonder that, in the midst of the smells and sights of human affliction, a physician has the stomach to think of food at all.

“Whatever the genesis, these time-honoured allusions have been, and will continue to be, a lively learning inducement for generations of budding physicians.”

Agencies/Canadajournal