The Test for Leprosy

I had to reach into the deepest recesses of my hippocampus to come up with today's title, the 1st song off the 1st album by Christian metal group Tourniquet. I seem to remember reading that one of the band member's father was a physician, which explains some of their bizarre, medically-related song titles such as:

• Somnambulism
• Impending Embolism
• Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance
• Ruminating Virulence
• Spectrophobic Dementia
• Gelatinous Tubercules of Purulent Ossification
• Vitals Fading
• Phantom Limb
• Broken Chromosomes
• Stereotaxic Atrocities

How can you not love a band with song titles like that? At any rate, the title is indeed appropriate as tomorrow morning brings another Microbiology exam, and Mycobacterium Leprae is one of the flavors in the smorgasbord of diseases covered in our latest section.

We also had a huge section on TB, and other diseases spread by respiratory droplets. I was hoping to find a clip of the classic scene from Michael Crichton-penned flick Oubreak where a movie theater patron sneezes and you are treated to a slow-mo clip of the sputum disseminating throughout the room, landing in the popcorn buckets and gaping mouths of unsuspecting patrons. Alas, I could not find that particular scene, so instead, here are some stop-motion photos of actual sneezes, which should make you flee in abject horror the next time someone engages in an involuntary personal expulsion of nasopharyngeal mucosa in your immediate vacinity.















I also found this pretty fascinating & scary -- a diagram showing how the 2003 SARS outbreak supposedly spread so rapidly:




(if this is too small to read the print, click on it to enlarge)

This post was conceived as a result of having all sorts of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and other sorts of nasty germs on my mind as a result of studying for Microbiology. I'll try to make the next post less ... unsettling. Until then, I'll be locked up in my apartment, munching on some popcorn and awaiting the next great pandemic, which as one of my professors reminded us, we are sorely overdue for. In the words of a fellow Arizonan:

Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this