The epitome of crappy design
Here at MDedge News, we approve of all scatologically related humor, and the Guangxi International Zhuangyi Hospital in Nanning, China, certainly fits the bill. In an ode to the digestive system, the Chinese have built a hospital that bears an undeniable resemblance to a toilet.
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The building is huge, spread out over 42 acres. The patients are contained in the multistory tank, while the medical departments line the outside of the massive bowl.
According to a local citizen, the hospital was designed this way so patients could go from the main section to the departments without carrying an umbrella. We hope it’s because they have an excellent gastroenterology department they want to show off.
Leaking the news: Hall of Fame edition
Can you name the ultimate prize for a life-saving achievement in medicine? You’re right, it is induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame!
National Inventors Hall of Fame
From top left: John Baer, Karl Beyer, Frederick Novello, and James Sprague.
And that’s just what’s about to happen to the inventors of thiazide diuretics. The NIHF just announced its class of 2019, and it includes pharmacologists John Baer and Karl H. Beyer Jr. and organic chemists Frederick Novello and James Sprague, who developed Diuril (chlorothiazide) while at Merck Sharp & Dohme in the 1950s. (Is it just us, or do you get the feeling that Don Draper and the rest of the Sterling Cooper crew must have handled the Diuril account?)
The honor is, unfortunately, posthumous for all four men, but they were around for the Lasker Foundation Special Public Health Award they received in 1975.
We here at LOTME can’t top either of these commendations, but there’s at least one hypertensive on the staff who will be thinking of these men and their achievement when he experiences his next forced diuresis.
