On Fri, 11 Mar 2005, Charles Matthews wrote:
J.F. de Wolff wrote
I would like to seek consensus on what kind of
morbidity is worthy of
inclusion in articles. I would say: only if someone's morbidity has
*significantly* altered public perception of a disorder is this person
worth mentioning (e.g. [[Lou Gehrig]] and his eponymous disease; [[Stephen
Hawking]] would qualify for this as well). Otherwise, only the article *on
that person* should mention morbidity and mortality.
Reasonable. In a sense it is not so important, either way, in most cases.
Tuberculosis: there's a case where in a sense a historical list would be of
considerable general interest. The problem with historical listings is of
course that the factuality of the diagnosis can be problematic.
Drifting a little OT (one might think), I remember reading about an annual
exercise where the autopsy of a historical individual is reiewed -- but
with said person's identity removed. The participants are given a description
of the symptoms that lead to the death, & some amount of environmental
information. Sometimes the modern review leads to a clearly different
diagnosis than the contemporary doctors made.
The case that I best remember was that of Edgar Allan Poe, whose death
at the time was attributed to alcohol poisoning. A re-examination of the
facts in his death led to a surprisingly different diagnosis -- which
was defended by the fact the original coroner merely assumed because Poe
had a history of alcohol abuse, & showed symptoms of delirium in his last
hours that he drank himself to death.
I wish I could remember more about this official medical exercise, but it's
one of those things that I've seen written up in the local paper maybe
twice in the last 15 years, & never think to save the article. If
Wikipedia doesn't have an article about it, then someone should write
one; if Wikipedia already has one, then we should try to develop it into
a Featured Article.
Geoff