Bodily Mechanics and Medicine

Brown, Lloyd T.

doi:10.1056/nejm192006241822602

Cited by 5 publications

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“…This tends to show that the personality of a given group of house officers on whose questions the data are based cuts no considerable figure in the results" (159). Another researcher wrote that the grading of body mechanics by "several physicians was remarkably uniform and while there was undoubtedly individual variation, the factor of personal equation seems to have been very slight" ("Use in Foods" 1909, 321; see also Berkeley 1925;Brown 1920;Halliday 1935). 13 Such use of seemingly independent observers could likewise be performed prospectively, as when instead of having observers reach a consensus, authors would rotate observers so that their individual personal equations would be counterbalanced.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Rise and Fall of the “Personal Equation” in American and British Medicine, 1855–1952

Brinkmann¹,

Turner²,

Podolsky³

2019

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

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Originating within astronomy as a technical term in the first half of the 18th century, the term "personal equation" spread into a litany of other fields including medicine, where it was used widely and variously from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. We explore the personal equation in the medical literatures of the United States and Britain through a systematic analysis of over 700 articles in four prominent medical journals in conjunction with additional relevant source materials. After tracing the term's dispersion from astronomy into medically allied fields, we examine its striking polysemy while using its rich usage as a lens to examine prevailing tensions within contemporary American and British medicine. Stretching from patient and clinician variability to observer variability and error, the personal equation's various meanings reflect debates about the art and science of medical care that persist into the present day. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine M edicine today, as both art and science, embodies a split personality. The ensuing tension-between individualized consideration, experience, and judgment on the one hand, and standardization, objective evidence, and guidelines on the other-plays out in the simultaneous aspirations of the medical humanities and evidence-based medicine, and in a host of other telling terms and movements. This is not a new tension, however. We turn in this paper to the critical but complex history of the term "personal equation" as both reflective and generative of this tension on both sides of the Atlantic during a formative period in medicine from the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries. The term was featured in almost every realm of medical practice, entering prominent medical dictionaries, books, journal articles, orations, and conference proceedings. 1 In clinical, laboratory, and research settings, medical authors at various times considered the personal equation to be worthy of consideration, study, admiration, dread, cultivation, and control. The tension it reflected and engendered remains long after the term has been discarded. As we consider the language we mobilize and are influenced by today (including terms like "personalized medicine"), it is instructive to dig down into the complex manner by which terms can be introduced, invoked, and even discarded by an evolving and ever-complex profession. Historians of medicine have largely ignored the "personal equation," while historians of science have principally associated it with the disciplines of astronomy and psychology, leading one observer to claim that the personal equation was rarely used outside of these disciplines (Olesko 2003). In recent years, Jimena Canales (2009) has revised the standard account of the personal equation in the history of science by showing the wide disciplinary breadth of usage of the term (in fields ranging from anthropology to physics and mathematics), opening up the history of the personal equation in a way that has yet to be built upon in the history of ...

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confidence: 99%

The Rise and Fall of the “Personal Equation” in American and British Medicine, 1855–1952

Brinkmann¹,

Turner²,

Podolsky³

2019

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

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show abstract

“…. was remarkably uniform and, while there was undoubtedly individual variation, the factor of personal equation seems to have been very slight' (Brown,8 p. 653). Such an approach could extend to a hope that individual variation would be diluted by still more observers.…”

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confidence: 99%

The ‘personal equation’ as observer bias, and proposed methods to contain it in Anglo-American medicine

Brinkmann

Podolsky

2021

J R Soc Med

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Importance of Considering the Body Mechanics of Children

Sutton¹

1925

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med

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In examining a child the physician investigates carefully the throat, the heart, the lungs and the abdominal organs. Too frequently he completely ignores the skeletal system unless there is a marked lordosis, an obviously protruberant abdomen or flat feet, When the attention has once been drawn to the question of body mechanics, it becomes evident that few children hold themselves in good position. It is my object in this paper to call attention to the necessity of considering the posture of every child, and to present reasons for this necessity.Good body mechanics means 1 that the body is maintained in such a position that there is no undue strain on any set of muscles or organs. The head is held erect with chin in : the chest is up with costal angle wide : the abdomen is held in instead of sagging down. The weight of the body is forward on the balls of the feet, not on the heels. In this position the individual is able to breath deeply, the intestines have needed support, the shoulders are not pushed forward and the curves of the back are not exaggerated. In considering posture the anatomic type of the individual must be taken into account. Three types are easily recognizable: (1) the broad or "herbiverous," (2) the congenital visceroptotic, or "carniverous" and (3) the normal. The first type shows less exaggerated bad posture but is most difficult to correct. The second type may exhibit extremely bad body mechanics, but because of the greater flexibility of the body this is more easily improved. Goldth-wait2 has clearly described these variations.During the war the number of men regarded as physically unfit was appalling. It is well known that many of those classed as fit went to pieces under the stress of war exertions.3 It is less well known that many of these men who were sent back were given instruction and Received for publication, Sept. 18, 1925. From

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Bodily Mechanics and Medicine

Cited by 5 publications

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The Rise and Fall of the “Personal Equation” in American and British Medicine, 1855–1952

The Rise and Fall of the “Personal Equation” in American and British Medicine, 1855–1952

The ‘personal equation’ as observer bias, and proposed methods to contain it in Anglo-American medicine

Importance of Considering the Body Mechanics of Children

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