Word: gerisch
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Dates: during 1963-1963
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...does a doctor examine a patient who is too ticklish to be touched? Usually he doesn't; he asks such patients to press hard on vital points of their own anatomy and report whether it hurts - an admittedly unsatisfactory substitute. But Detroit's Dr. Robert A. Gerisch had an idea. He had grown up with the problem, because his own fa ther had been so ticklish that he would jump if anybody pointed a finger...
What struck Dr. Gerisch was that his father could jab a finger between his own ribs without flinching. From this the doctor evolved a theory that he put to the test when a young woman, accompanied by her mother, appeared in his office with symptoms suggestive of infectious mononucleosis...
...raised my hand to examine her abdomen," Dr. Gerisch reports in the Harper Hospital Bulletin, "she drew up her legs and started to laugh, even before I touched her. Her mother said their pediatrician had never been able to examine her abdomen. I said, 'Put your right hand there' (right upper quadrant). 'Does that tickle?' She said no. I said, 'Put your hand down there' (right lower quadrant). 'Does that tickle?' She said no. Then I placed my hand on top of her hand, and asked whether it tickled, and she said...
...patient obeyed, and Dr. Gerisch was able to examine McBurney's point (a spot on the abdomen, which becomes supersensitive in appendicitis), and the rest of the young woman's usually fluttery abdomen. She made no complaint about being tickled...
...memory of his ticklish father, the Detroit doctor has named his method "the Otto Gerisch maneuver...
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