The APGAR Score

Well, the origin of "Apgar" in Apgar Score had been bugging me for quite some time now.
The ENT book mentions its origin from the name of the doctor who devised it, Dr.Virginia Apgar. While, I somehow had the idea of it being a mnemonic to remember the five components...
So finally I decided to check the net today to find the correct origin... & here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

"The Apgar score was devised in 1952 by Dr. Virginia Apgar as a simple and repeatable method to quickly and summarily assess the health of newborn children immediately after childbirth.Virginia Apgar was a pediatrician and anesthesiologist who developed the score to ascertain the effects of anaesthetic agents on neonates.
The Apgar score is determined by evaluating the newborn baby on five simple criteria on a scale from zero to two and summing up the five values thus obtained. The resulting Apgar score ranges from zero to 10. The five criteria were used as a mnemonic learning aid."

The Acronym:
Some ten years after the initial publication, the acronym APGAR was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: Appearance (skin color), Pulse (heart rate), Grimace (reflex irritability), Activity (muscle tone), and Respiration. The mnemonic was introduced in 1963 by the pediatrician Dr. Joseph Butterfield.
Another such backformation attempting to make Apgar an acronym is American Pediatric Gross Assessment Record.

The test, however, is named for Dr. Apgar, making Apgar an eponymous backronym. End of discussion!!


Cheers!

Books That 'M Enjoying..

I wanted to list some Medical Texts that I've consulted recently & found pretty interesting... Not for the "immense knowledge" that they endow.. but for the totally random (& at most times useless!) facts that they contain.... They do make pretty interesting reading..(the facts I mean..):

*Actually these two are the ONLY books that I've liked in all my years in College!

Book 1: Clinical Medical Examination By Talley/O 'Connor
This one makes good reading. Has the bare minimum of clinical aspects required but is filled with random facts about diseases & scientists...
-Did u know that Gullian-Barre disease was also supposed to have another name in the entymology: Strol. Initially it was Gullian-Barre-Strohl disease, but the last name was dropped due to the anti-German feelings during the WW-II . Poor Strohl was sent into anonymity coz of being German!
See... that's the kind of stuff u'll learn from the book!! :)

One quote from the book that I really love:
"To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea.
But to study book without patients, is not to go to the sea at all!"

Book 2: Oxford Handbook Of Clinical Medicine.
This one is a small pocket book which actually has the PRACTICAL aspects needed!
Just started this one but am thoroughly enjoying it. This one too has some random stuff, though most of it is in the form of lines from literature. Has some really good mnemonics.
I prefer this one for a bedtime read these days.
Worth a try.