Doomed to Repeat it

I was feeling okay today (5.75). Among other errands, I picked up another book about Lyme (Weintraub’s Cure Unknown)—this is book three in… two weeks?

This one had a huge amount of front matter, so after reading a chapter’s worth of material, I’m just beginning chapter one. There is this great quote from what I’ve simply designated a “bad guy” in the Lyme debate.
In response to a comment about a girl with muscle pain and weakness and other symptoms, who had already been treated for Lyme, Ehrlich says on page 12, “What is described may be many things, but it’s not Lyme disease.”

He continues,
“We would all be better off without the patient advocacy agencies that have sprung up for chronic Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and other fictitious illnesses… As Leonard Sigal, a real Lyme disease expert, states, ‘The romanticism of practice by anecdote, speculation, and “my experience” is not a viable alternative to the rational practice of evidence-based medicine.’”

Ooooh!!! Doesn’t that just frost your hiney?


It immediately reminded me of a pompous quote I’d read five or six years ago in Ruth J. Abram’s book Send Us a Lady Physician. This quote dates back about a century and a half.

“Higher education for women produces monstrous brains and puny bodies, abnormally active cerebration and abnormally weak digestion, flowing thought and constipated bowels.”
—Dr. E. H. Clarke

Hopefully some day soon, Ehrlich’s comment will be considered just as ridiculous as Clarke’s.