Monday, 18 October 2021

THE CUNNING MAN (ROBERTSON DAVIES) AND THE TWELVE CRANEAL NERVES

 I tried to pass the time by recalling mnemonics which had helped to get me through my medical examinations, but for so many the "clean" form gave way to the form preferred by young men in excellent health whose instruction in science and medicine had done nothing to quench their natural lusts -- did, indeed, encourage them.

Consider, for instance, the Twelve Cranial Nerves of the brainstem:

I Olfactory On Oh!

II Optic Old Oh!

III Oculomotor Olympus' Oh!

IV Trochlear Towering To

V Trigeminal Tops Touch

VI Abducens A And

VII Facial Finn Feel

VIII Acoustic And A

IX Glossopharyngeal German Girl's

X Vagus Viewed Vagina

XI Accessory Some And

XII Hypoglossal Hops Hymen!



Science students have always had the ability of taking unbelievable detours to study. I have seen for myself how some people used to do strange things to study the periodic table.Mnemonic techniques  tend to be naughty because then you reach a win-win situation, I mean, on the one hand you end up learning the twelve Cranial Nerves of the brainstem but on the other hand, you make laugh your mates. And although many of these rules have a collective authorship, there is usually someone talented for these jokes.As Gerardo Diego said about his future and hypothetical students on toasting for his position of a teacher,

And another , surely the most clever one,

will give me a definitive alias

The naughty mnemonic techniques and the definitive alias of a teacher are stuff not well appreciated in your official CV but they give you a lot of prestige with your mates. However, students of tough sciences as Physics or Chemistry are not very keen of this method, even they disregard it, as we can see in what The physic Enrico Fermi said when the subatomic particles began to increase: ´if I could remember the name of all of these particles, I´d have been a botanic´


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