WILTIMS #18: It's arteriOsum!

Trachea of a cat and ear of a deadman...
      Histology slides or potion ingredients?

Ligamentum arteriosum!...
      Vestigial fetal arterial shunt or obscure wizard hex?

Perhaps it's just that I've recently been rereading the Harry Potter series, but med school seems a lot like Hogwarts. We receive letters from the school inviting us into a world few get to see. We are given a list of expensive supplies that we need to buy before classes start ($600 for an oto/ophthalmoscope?!). We even have to procure a wand - or at least a tool derived from a wand of sorts. Most people don't realize that the stethoscope, when it was invented in 1816, started as a long wooden tube that was pressed between the patient's body and the doctors ear (for the Ollivander fans out there: pine, no core, 11½ inches).

Laënnec and the Stethoscope. Painting by Robert A. Thom (1915–1979), c. 1960.

And as with Harry Potter, if you know a bit of Latin you can get a hint as to where things are headed. What is Prof. Lupin? A werewolf (lupus* = wolf). What's stored in the fetal cloaca? Excrement (cloaca = sewer). In either case, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

TIL: Omphalocele is when the intestine of a baby is found in the umbilical cord. This is actually normal up to a certain point in development, and can be surgically repaired if present at birth.

Also, in some babies, the umbilical cord is still connected to the small intestine as a vitelline fistula and feces will come out of the baby's belly button. Again, this is easily surgically repaired.

Finally, situs inversus is when all of a person's internal organs are reversed. The heart and stomach are on the right, the liver and appendix are on the left, etc. This arrangement, though very rare, is totally compatible with a healthy life.

*The disease lupus also has a murky connection to wolves or french hats named after wolves. One of those... so says the interwebs...