The blog is about health and gives useful information on health and disease.

Recently, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported an experiment where a panel of three iridologists and three eye doctors were shown a series of colored photographs of the irises of healthy people and those suffering from kidney disease.

When the results were analysed, JAMA reported “. . .no value in iridology as a screening technique for detecting or diagnosing kidney disease.”

Orthodox, that is scientific medicine, will need to look closely to discover the reasons why many people have abandoned or distrust medicine and its practitioners.

We live in a scientific world and more people are trained in science, at least to the secondary school level.

The scientific method means that no proposition can be accepted unless it is capable of proof.

Those who practise and advocate what used to be called “fringe” medicine and now, more properly, is termed alternative medicine, rely on anecdotal evidence and personal recommendation to justify their claims.

Yet we are aware of the “placebo” effect, where any treatment can achieve an improvement in symptoms in a significant number of cases.

Medicine remains an art as well as a science and its best practitioners are expert in both.

At the moment, alternative medicine is all art with little science. But if it works for you and does no harm, then who can complain?

We who practise orthodox medicine are just as willing to accept the benefits of the “placebo” effect of our treatment.

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Where there is some doubt, the surgeon may make an incision in the mid line so that if another condition is found it can be easily dealt with through such an opening.

If the appendix is acutely inflamed, the surgeon will remove it and disturb the rest of the abdomen as little as possible.

In this way, he is least likely to spread infection or cause adhesions. If the appendix does not appear inflamed, he will still remove it, to save a further operation should it later become inflamed, and then will inspect the rest of the abdominal organs to find the cause of the patient’s symptoms.

Few parents still believe that a dose of castor oil will fix most childhood illnesses, so it is not so necessary to advise them that laxatives should never be given in cases of undiagnosed abdominal pain.

If the condition is acute appendicitis, the laxative may stimulate strong contractions of the bowel and lead to early perforation of the appendix.

This common condition of an acutely inflamed appendix may be the easiest or the hardest diagnosis to make and appendicectomy may be the easiest or the hardest of operations to perform.

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