No Man's Land Prior to 1965 surgical approach to the cavernous sinus was akin to traversing WWI combat zones. Dwight Parkinson, Manitoba's first neurosurgeon, found the lateral approach to cavernous ICA lesions via Parkinson's Triangle straddled by trochlear n and V1.

Sylvan reconnaissance in Princeton "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree"-Joyce Kilmer (b. New Brunswick NJ) Einstein walking up the IAS allee-to-be in 1953 (credit Esther Bubley) Looking down the same allee w/ Fuld Hall obscured in 2011

Max Brodel & Brainstem- Anatomy & Approach In 1914 Brodel drew "piled" wax plates of lower brainstem sections to show gray matter nuclei in unparalleled detail As Cushing left Hopkins Brodel etched his approach to pit./brainstem & showed what the surgeon's speculum couldn't see!

MAGA NIH or How to Spot a Quack: Isolated Paranoid Self-declared geniuses Attack scientific icons Rely on technobabble Label critics "stupid" Claim "airtight" unfalsifiable arguments (adapted from M Gardner 1952) Where are Lysenko, Reich, Velikovsky when you need them?

1/"Mark but this flea" Donne B. OTD 1635 Robert Hooke whose Micrographia displayed an iconographic flea in 1665-the year of the Great Plague of London. Did Hooke contract Bubonic Plague from the pulex irritans he drew? Hooke's "missing" portrait was purloined by Newton but ..

2/ Flea ... Hooke himself survived until 1703. The likeliest vector for the Great Plague was xenopsylla cheopis (oriental rat flea). The responsible gram-negative bacterium, Yersinia pestis, was not identified until 1894 during an outbreak in Hong Kong.

"We're not in {neuropathology} Kansas anymore" If you're a classicist, inflammation= dolor,rubor,tumor,calor,&functio laesa(Celsus).And infections=inflammation Except in brain sometimes. Prion brain infections eg CJD= neuron loss,vacuoles,no swelling or CSF inflammatory cells

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" Wittgenstein I'm unaware of effects of allopregnanolone (GABA agonist, thanks Dr. Wikipedia!) on the dismal outcome of prion diseases (shown: prion [PrP] disruption of cell membrane by cryo EM)

Dinosaur eyes Saw Jurassic World Rebirth last week. If birds, esp Cassowaries, are descendants of dinos (Bakker), did dinos look out at the world with bird retinas -lots of cones for diurnal color vision and a pecten (function unknown)? Do paleontologists (or Spielberg) know?

NYC & Neuropathology CTE + AK- 47= a bad combination As he requested, we need a post-mortem on Shane Tamura

Neuropathology & NYC (cont'd) Never underestimate an intrepid forensic neuropathologist armed with a microscope. Even the merest scrap of cortex may contain a neurofibrillary tangle w/hyperphosporylated tau (p-tau) - a hallmark of CTE Dead men incl. serial killers can tell tales!

Agreed ... or a lot of us are in trouble. Nevertheless it would be informative to obtain brain histopathology on the current overabundance of serial killers. Where is Cesare Lombroso when we need him?

Walking against traffic He passed an amazed road crew on Olden Lane w/its vanishing point stretching behind. Esther Bubley's (w/Rolleiflex) editors complained that Einstein was walking into traffic. She replied "Who was I to tell Einstein where to walk!" LIFE published her photo

No shot?Live Dangerously Before COVID 19 vaccine I gowned/goggled/masked on rounds to avoid occupying an overflow bed 4/18/20 It spread. ~1/3 of our University Hospital room doors were closed to slow contagion 1/23/21 Vaccination #1 1/4/21. I was never infected Does RFK see pts?

First they took the Humanities away, next they came for the Sciences, and then they got rid of the Universities.. Take "The Two Cultures" and call me in the morning ... but we've got bigger problems -"long-form literacy may soon become the domain of elite subcultures" NYT 8/3/25

A modest proposal ... just maybe the corporate ethos (it's not us ... blame those darned stockholders) and the Care of the Sick are incompatible.

Fiat Currency Aldrich et al didn't admit they met until the !930s. However as soon as 1914 you could make purchases with currency NOT backed by silver or gold in the US Treasury. The Federal Reserve Room can still be found in the Jekyll Island Club

Where I work Moved by my corporatized medical school (Is that an oxymoron?) into a new eye exam room. No questions asked. What I got (Left) What I need (Right) Neuro-ophthalmologists, like vampires, work best in the dark (or at least mesopic/twilight lighting)