Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Exhausted and unwell.  

To drip with liquid secreted from the mucous membrane in the nasal passage.  

Borborygmus, noise in the abdomen, caused by gas in the intestine.  

To state that someone does not have a specific disease. A term used in medicine to confirm or exclude a diagnosis. For example, “rule out myocardial infarction” means to diagnose whether the person under examination suffered a heart attack or not. In medicine, to eliminate one diagnostic possibility from the list of causes of a…

Branching nerve endings in the skin, which are thought to be sensitive to heat.  

Redness of the skin or tissue. Redness which is often associated with infection or inflammation. One of the classical signs of inflammation in a tissue, the other three being calor (heat), dolor (pain) and tumor (swelling). The redness of inflamed tissue is due to the increase in size of the small blood vessels in the…

A waterproof sheet put on hospital beds or on the bed of a child who is prone to bedwetting, to protect the mattress.  

A material which can be stretched and compressed, made from the thick white liquid called latex, from a tropical tree. A condom (informal).  

A lotion used to rub on the skin. Friction of one surface moving over another. In auscultation, a roughened surface moving over another causes a characteristic sound.  

A model for nursing developed in the US in the 1970s. It describes a person’s health as being a state of successful positive adaptation to all those stimuli from the environment which could interfere with their basic need satisfaction. Illness results from an inability to adapt to such stimuli, so nurses should help patients to…