“When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras.” – Attributed to Dr. Theodore Woodward
A doctor gave this bit of homespun advice to a a group of medical students as a way of telling them to focus on the most obvious causes for an illness when a patient came in search of help, rather than using all their newfound medical knowledge to hunt for rare diseases they’d just learned about in a textbook. That is wise advice, unless you happen to be a patient who is, in fact, a zebra. [Read more]