The Bad Medicine Diaries: Entry 1

Dr Da Vinci has decided to start sharing her diary of examples mostly gleaned from friends and family where Bad Medicine is being practiced.

I hope it helps patients to make informed decisions about thier health care.The moral of all of these stories is......if in doubt, see a doctor!


I was watching a dvd with my friend tech guy, you may remember him from my post 'The Wonderful....well' when I spotted a rather foul looking mole on his shoulder. The following conversation went something like this:

Dr Da Vinci 'I should take that off for you with my handy scalpel before it grows wings'

Tech Guy (Beaming) 'You doctors are so brash, there is a practitioner down the street who can just melt it off. My friend the German got his taken off there and is very please with the results'

Dr Da Vinci 'Is the practitioner a doctor?'

Tech Guy 'No, but she knows a lot about whipping off moles'

Dr Da Vinci 'But the problem is she doesn't know any medicine, if she did she would have heard if the ABC Score moles like yours should always be CUT out by an experienced physician and sent for pathology! Not burnt off!!!'


Malignant melanoma is a rare, but yet killer disease. This is why we send every suspicious looking lesion for pathology. If melanoma is diagnosed in its early stages, there are greater chances of effective treatment because the tumor has not yet dug deep into the skin tissue. One must remember that when melanoma is not extracted in its early stages of growth, it will be harder for the person to control spread in nearby tissues and parts of the body.

So Tech Guy, the reason why I choose the scalpel over the acid/liquid nitrogen for all my patients is not because the all-natural, buck-wheat ingesting, amino acid injecting practioner down the street is cooler than me, but rather it is because I refuse to practice Bad Medicine.

This is Bad Medicine entry number one, stay tuned, Warm Regards, Dr Da Vinci