Hickam's dictum is a counterargument to the use of
Occam's razor
Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, or Ocham's razor ( la, novacula Occami), also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony ( la, lex parsimoniae), is the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied beyond neces ...
in the medical profession. While Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is the most likely, implying in medicine that diagnosticians should assume a single cause for multiple symptoms, one form of Hickam's dictum states: "A man can have as many diseases as he damn well pleases."
[Wallace T. Miller]
"Letter From the Editor: Occam Versus Hickam"
''Seminars in Roentenology'', vol. 33 (3), 1998-07, page 213, attributed to "an apocryphal physician named Hickam" The principle is attributed to an apocryphal physician named Hickam,
possibly John Barber Hickam, MD. When he began saying this is uncertain. In 1946 he was a housestaff member in medicine at
Grady Memorial Hospital
Grady Memorial Hospital, frequently referred to as Grady Hospital or simply Grady, is the public hospital for the city of Atlanta. It is the tenth-largest public hospital in the United States, and one of the busiest Level I trauma centers in th ...
in Atlanta. Hickam was a faculty member at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jame ...
in the 1950s, and was later chairman of medicine at
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universit ...
from 1958 to 1970.
[Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology: September 2002 - Volume 22 - Issue 3 - pp 240-246]
)
See also
*
Zebra (medicine)
Zebra is the American medical slang for arriving at a surprising, often exotic, medical diagnosis when a more commonplace explanation is more likely. It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Theodore Woodward, professor at t ...
References
External links
{{Spoken Wikipedia, Hickam's_dictum.ogg, date=2020-9-8
Medical terminology
Philosophy of medicine