So far, our beloved clinical etymologist, Dr. Kim, has explored the roots of medical language through history, etymology, and clinical reasoning.

But today is different.

Instead of tracing the origin of a word, he turns to the origin of something far more profound—the human moments that shape medicine itself.

This special episode steps away from terminology and textbooks, and lingers instead on the quiet space between a mother and daughter, a physician and his patient, and the Act of Letting Go, Gently.

Today, we venture beyond the usual clinical vignettes and into the art of examination itself. In honor of Dr. Heinrich Quincke—who, in August 1891, performed the world’s first lumbar puncture in Kiel, Germany— we celebrate the neurological exam by revisiting a phrase uttered all too casually:

“Cranial nerves were all normal.”

But what do we really mean when we say that?

To help us find out, I’m joined by my Padawan Donald—tall, confident, and emphatically surgical— whose certainty about cranial nerves rivals his enthusiasm for making things “great again.”

Together, we’ll dissect the subtle clues, clinical pearls, and centuries-old history that make the cranial nerve exam so much more than a throwaway line on morning rounds.

In this episode of The Clinical Etymologist, the saga of the adrenal glands continues.
Join Dr. Kim and his Padawan William as they navigate Cold War cortisol curves, Addison’s mysteries, and the art of stress-dose steroids.

This is The Cortisol Strikes Back — where endocrinology meets storytelling, and medicine meets the Force.