Tears are made of this

I found out one interesting fact about our tears this week. 

There was one patient awaiting consultation in the ophthalmology department and whilst he was doing so, he also had to undergo a quantitative assessment of tear production. In other words, testing to see if his lacrimal glands produced enough lacrimal fluid. The action was taken because he was complaining of dryness in his eyes. The Schirmer method was used and the scores that result from taking the test actually represent the length of a paper strip that was crossed by the lacrimal fluid. Turns out, that was the reason his eyes felt dry- his tear production accounted for a low score.

Yet, that was not exactly the most interesting thing that came out of that consultation (and why I won't insist on that matter for now).                                                                                                  

I learnt that while you can assess the quantity of tears secreted, you can also assess the lacrimal fluid in terms of

About vaccines

We live in a world that is changing as we speak. Apart from the technological breakthroughs that this era is associated with, we must be aware of the other factors in our lives that are also changing. Social life is changing, the way we see things is probably changing as well. In short, everything changes at a given rate. Everything includes medicine and health care- we have seen incredible advances that have saved lives or at least were a sign that we are going to get to that point. Getting people to act and benefit from such things seems, in theory, easy and even unnecessary-who wouldn’t want to benefit? In real life, that question does have long answers that can be viewed from different points –some people don’t want to and others would want but cannot (again, due to a variety of reasons).

When talking about advances in medicine and healthcare of the past century we have to consider vaccines. Whatever views you may have you can’t say that the science and the work behind developing a vaccine are not important. Yet, no medical procedure is in theory unable to lead to