Weird Ailments - Magazine Series?

May 3, 2009 12:26 PM

There was a series of articles by doctors (or possibly, a doctor) in a mainstream US magazine, each about a patient who had a weird ailment, usually incorrectly diagnosed at first. What was it?
posted by musofire to Health & Fitness (11 answers total)

Best answer: The New York Times Magazine "Diagnosis" column?
posted by decathecting at 12:30 PM on May 3, 2009

You probably mean the series of Lisa Sanders M.D. in The New York Times Magazine:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/magazine/24wwln-diagnosis-t.html
posted by dov at 12:31 PM on May 3, 2009

I think Reader's Digest has regular stories of this kind. I'm not sure if it's a recurring feature or just something they like to print a lot of.
posted by electric_counterpoint at 12:37 PM on May 3, 2009

Discover Magazine used to / may still have a feature called "Vital Signs."
posted by Optimus Chyme at 12:37 PM on May 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

The "Annals of Medicine" stories by Berton Roueché in the New Yorker?
posted by Lexica at 1:00 PM on May 3, 2009

Something by Oliver Sacks?
posted by hattifattener at 1:08 PM on May 3, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks! These are all enormously useful answers.
posted by musofire at 1:14 PM on May 3, 2009

Diagnosis still runs in the NYTM-- so there are more columns to come. The Science Times has "Cases" which is sometimes similar, sometimes not.
posted by Maias at 3:41 PM on May 3, 2009

Man, "Vital Signs" was awesome.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 3:44 PM on May 3, 2009

Vital Signs is still running.
posted by Ery at 5:30 PM on May 3, 2009

If you are interested a lot of medical journals aimed at general practitioners have similar columns but at a slightly more advanced level. They are usually found under the heading "case studies".
posted by ilike at 4:46 AM on May 4, 2009