Around the world

And now, robotic surgeons

Recently a senior manager of an Indian company was told that his knee surgery was going to be performed by robot doctors. Quite naturally he feared to put his trust in robot doctors. This well developed medical science in the West has now come to India where advanced Indian technology also manufactures robot doctors.

The manager being persuaded by its safety went through the experience. And this is what he said. “It is just one of those things. It is reassuring of course to know that a human being is cutting you open. And in India, the techniques are not very well developed I thought. But it went successfully and I was discharged three days after the surgery. I could return to my routine life a week after, it was so precise.”

There is a human doctor, however, behind a robotic surgery. He may not be in the operating theatre and can be found peering into a computer in an adjoining room.

It is from there that directions are sent to the robot to perform the operation. Doctors find the robots useful particularly in operations which are lengthy and tiring to the surgeons.

The tendency to make a mistake is far less in these conditions. Soon even complicated operations like angioplasty can be performed using robots, remarked an Indian doctor working in the Hiranandani Hospital.

Love letters of great men

A film is now showing in London called Sex and the City. One scene shows a man and a woman in bed reading a book called Love Letters of Great Men. This book has created a lot of interest among audiences, women in particular, and they have been storming book shops looking for a copy of the book.

The quotations made from the book are real but in fact, however, there is no such book. Macmillans, the well known publishers, are said to be now moving in to fill the gap and put out a book with the name in the film.

The quotations are from such great men as Napoleon, Henry VIII, Pliny, Mozart, Prince Rainier III and Oscar Wilde and many other well known men. Among them is the poet John Keats, a romantic poet who died young, and who seems to have been unable to get on with women.

He is quoted as having said, “When I am among women I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen ~ I cannot speak or be silent; I am full of suspicions and therefore listen to nothing; I am in a hurry to be gone.” Many years after Keats died The Times obituary columns carried the obituary of a woman called Mrs Fanny Linden.

The obituary would have been more interesting reading had the writer known who Mrs Linden was. But she had kept her love relationship with Keats a total secret, even from her husband. She was the Fanny Brawne who befriended Keats when he was a penniless poet.

She had also put away the love letters Keats had written and kept them for her children to read some day. Another English poet who became well known, not so much for his poetry as his gallivanting with women, was Lord Byron.

He had a fling once with a married woman, Lady Caroline Lamb, who pronounced him to be “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”, a warning ignored, it is reported, by Teresa, Countess Guiccioli.

Nelson Mandela at 90

The anti-apartheid hero of South Africa and former guerrilla who gave up violence and decided to negotiate with the government celebrated his 90th birthday on July 19. His admirers way back home want to honour his courage and perseverance with a title similar to the honoured title Mahatma which was given to Gandhi.

The chairperson of the Gandhi Development Trust in South Africa who happens to be Ela, a grand daughter of Mahatma Gandhi, has said, that because Gandhi and Mandela shared the same qualities like, “...humility, respect for all cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious groups and personal sacrifice, these are all saintly qualities and I believe that Mandela deserves a special title.” Mandela has acknowledged his debt to Gandhi as being a major source of inspiration in his life, especially with his philosophy of non-violence.

Mandela’s fame has spread throughout the world and he has received over one hundred awards over four decades. Among these is the one Canada decided to crown him with - the first living person to be made an honorary citizen on his tour of 2001.

He is also one of the few to receive Canada’s highest honour - the Honorary Companion of the Order of Canada. Mandela was also awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. He served one term as President of South Africa.

- Roving Eye