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Biomedical subjects

E M McGirr

Publications and source records attributed to E M McGirr.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1994

Reflections on the principle of life, medical theory and ethics, and the limitations of science.

The knowledge of modern science is based on and limited to data from the material world. It does not cover all levels of reality. Its achievements have been striking. It continues to amass at an ever increasing pace information about the physical basis of "life" in respect of its essential structures and their functions. Nonetheless there are questions which it cannot answer. The idea of the "vital spirit", according to Greek and Medieval philosophers and theologians the principle that imbues mortal flesh with life, transcends the limits of its empirical thinking, as do questions about traditional values and ethical issues, like the topical problems in medicine brought to the fore by recent and ongoing developments in molecular genetics. Their resolution will require vision wider than the empiric and knowledge broader than the exclusively scientific.

Biological Science Disciplines↗
PubMed1991

Reflections on funding the National Health Service: from illusion to reality?

Opinions differ about how best we organise our services to promote and preserve it, meet their costs and apportion them between the individual and the state. The well-being of the NHS is imperilled and its development is impeded by underfunding, a state of affairs likely to persist as long as it depends exclusively on Exchequer monies. To break the impasse the public should reconsider its attitude to the imposition of health charges, the marketing of health services, and coll raboration between the NHS, public bodies and private groups. The able-bodied might well, within their means, bear some of the costs of the services they use. The NHS would profit from a rapprochement with private medicine. A more prompt and positive response by the NHS to clinical and social challenges might be facilitated if its ties to government were loosened and it was overseen by an independent agency. Free health is a Utopian ideal. In the real world the best we are likely to achieve is an up-to-date health service which gives a fair deal to patients, who are its raison d'etre, and to those who provide the money to pay for it; it should syncretise the art and science of medicine.

Fees, Medical↗
PubMed1991

Politics, society and medicine in the 18th century.

Medical theory and practice in the 18th century reflected the thought and culture that the Renaissance had fashioned. This article draws attention to the political and social changes of the period and notes their inter-relationship with the changes that occurred in medicine.

History, 17th Century↗
PubMed1971

Doctors as decision-makers: a computer-assisted study of diagnosis as a cognitive skill.

When viewed as a sequence of decisions clinical diagnosis becomes amenable to detailed investigation in terms of standard statistical concepts. A study of six clinicians diagnosing identical sets of cases of non-toxic goitre is used to illustrate an objective technique for studying the diagnostic process with the aid of a digital computer. Considerable variation in clinicians' routes to correct diagnosis is shown when these routes are compared in detail by five statistical measures related to the effective use of the information available to the clinicians. For rapid analysis of diagnostic skill two visual methods are presented. These can be developed for teaching undergraduates the interpretative skills involved in diagnosis and for studying such skills in experienced clinicians.

Computers↗