Speaking of, and with, a hot potato
Dr Mahmood Bhutta’s greatest achievement – measuring the sound produced by a person with a hot potato in his mouth – has been overlooked in the flurry of attention given to his new study on whether sexual thoughts can trigger sneezing fits.
Bhutta practises surgery at Wexham Park hospital, Slough. The new paper, Sneezing Induced by Sexual Ideation or Orgasm: An Under-Reported Phenomenon, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, has brought acclaim to Bhutta and his co-author Dr Harold Maxwell, a retired honorary senior lecturer and consultant psychiatrist.
Back in 2006, Bhutta worked at the Royal Sussex county hospital in Brighton. He and colleagues George Worley and Meredydd Harries examined the phenomenon known as “hot potato voice”.
The study, Hot Potato Voice in Peritonsillitis: A Misnomer, appeared in the Journal of Voice….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.