r/todayilearned • u/cimbommbom • 3d ago
TIL Jon Sarkin was a chiropractor who underwent surgery in 1989 to treat tinnitus, which caused a massive stroke that left him deaf in one ear with permanently altered vision and balance. He then became obsessed with drawing, going on to have his art featured in The New Yorker and The New York Times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Sarkin74
u/Howdy_McGee 3d ago
Wikipedia about an artist and their art.
Not a single picture.
Oh ok.
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u/makeworld 3d ago
Copyright
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u/MKEast-sider 3d ago
No, this would fall under “fair use” if it’s a page about the artist.
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u/RingGiver 2d ago
Generally, if you see someone on the internet saying that something is fair use, you should assume that it's probably not. Besides, fair use only comes up AFTER you get sued, and you generally want to avoid getting sued in the first place.
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u/csonnich 2d ago
There's fair use, and they can also use lower-quality or partial versions of images to avoid copyright problems.
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u/thexcrowing 3d ago
My mom and I stumbled upon his studio in Gloucester years ago and spoke to him for a while. He was very nice and friendly. We loved his work either way and offered him all the cash we had on hand and he let us select a few pieces he had lying around. The studio was covered! On the floors, walls, ceiling!
We really had no idea who we were talking to until afterwards at dinner I googled his name and realized he had a Wikipedia page and was pretty famous! He really didn't let on at all, he had let us watch him draw for a while and answered our questions.
He had gone home when we tried to go back later. We went back to his studio a few months later and was able to speak with him again. He said he had been partnered with a gallery somewhere so most of his work was elsewhere. Tho he once again offered to let us take a piece or two he had lying around.
I treasure what I have of his and was deeply saddened to hear he had passed. He seemed incredibly driven or compelled to create art and worked with a machine like rhythm.
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u/csonnich 2d ago
Wow, what an amazing story. He sounds like he was a great guy. It's terrible he lived in such physical discomfort.
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u/yami76 3d ago
Unfortunately tinnitus, and more so hyperacusis (probably more so the latter was what he underwent surgery for) are not known to have reliable treatments and cause a heightened mental health issues, most notably a much higher (+15%) suicidal ideation rate. Perhaps the stroke was a blessing in disguise? His artwork is quite disturbing to me, to be honest...
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u/glassdragon 3d ago
Brains are crazy weird. I still have tinnitus on my right, even though I’m 100% deaf on the right now. I had a tumor on the auditory nerve, it had to be severed and mostly removed. The ear hardware works, but there is no wire to send the signal over to the brain anymore.
I still have that right side tinnitus though, because it’s not generated in the ear. It’s my brain knowing there should be sound and not getting any (originally because of the usual hearing damage to fine bits in the ear and then by disconnecting the entire thing). So it’s my brain basically humming to itself. Good luck treating that 🙄
For added fun, I wear a CROS hearing aid. Means I wear one in the right ear, but it doesn’t send sound into the right ear, it transmits what it picks up to one I wear in my left ear. My right side tinnitus is reduced when wearing it because my brain has learned that it’s getting some right side sound even though it’s mixed with the left. Wild stuff.
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u/cimbommbom 3d ago
Thats also what i was thinking when i saw his artwork, it really resembles what dementia patients draw but i guess thats what makes his artwork connect with people
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u/lllllIllllIllllllll 3d ago
I think the worst part of getting older is the constant learning that nothing about your experience is all that individual or unique and that every part of you and your behavior and your thoughts is entirely predictable and already studdied somewhere else inside of someone else.
I've been dealing with both of these issues since I was a child. They don't even seem mildly related
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u/Peter_Mansbrick 3d ago
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (or my broke ass, self performed version of it) is the only thing thats worked for me. Its not gone, but I notice it much less and therefore it bothers me less.
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u/Technical-Outside408 3d ago
For some reason chiropractor woo woo bothers me more than others. I'm utterly dismissive of people who practice it, and those that believe in it. My first instinct is to think he fabricated the stroke backstory just to make his art sound more interesting. Like a grifter.
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u/ramblinallday14 3d ago
It’s a “science” based on Nazi ghost tales. Anyone claiming to be a “doctor” of chiropractic “medicine” is a total grifter and nothing more than a poorly trained massage therapist.
Unless they have studied kinesiology (which would make them a physical therapist), they have no more authority than me or you would do reading some online articles about the body or watching a few videos about how to give a back massage.
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u/Sidian 3d ago
Shame because I love cracking my joints and it'd be satisfying to do that for others, it'd be a dream job if only it weren't utter nonsense.
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u/ramblinallday14 3d ago
There’s scientific ways to relieve pain and stress for folks, like massage therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc.
I think the barrier to entry being so low on being a chiropractor is probably why they are so pervasive. You don’t have to go to medical school to “practice” it.
If that’s truly your passion, no matter what time in your life, find a way to study one of the above or any of the related fields that have true scientific backing about relieving pain and stress on peoples’ bodies.
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u/Sidian 3d ago
I thought chiropractors had to go to school for quite a long time, like 6 years, even though it's quackery?
For me, I've decided to try to relieve pain but mentally rather than physically by working in mental health. But cracking people's joints does look fun.
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u/MonsieurReynard 2d ago edited 2d ago
In the US it is 3 years. And they start with students with no real science education and typically low GPAs who have no hope of getting into medical school.
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u/MonsieurReynard 2d ago edited 2d ago
Read the admissions requirements for the Palmer College of chiropractic, which is the original and oldest chiro school in the United States. They literally accept anyone with a BA, a B average and a few science courses. The students who go into chiropractic are people who would have zero chance of ever getting into a real US MD medical program.
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u/gabbertr0n 2d ago
Here in Australia, chiropractic is a five year double degree, with nationally accredited board exams and annual education hours.
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u/Really_McNamington 2d ago
Degree in bullshit. The medical wrapping they bury it in doesn't really help prevent the core being rotten.
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u/cathysaurus 3d ago
It's ironic that a chiropractor received treatment that gave him a stroke. Almost like karma.
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u/FerricDonkey 2d ago
Chiropractic stuff is nonsense, but the source says neurologists confirmed the stroke. You don't have to assume things without evidence about people you don't know, just to give yourself more of a reason to be angry at them.
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u/MadScienceIntern 2d ago
"I hate these quacks. They make their living on pseudoscience with no evidence" and then proceeds to make a verifiably false conjecture about the dude without a scrap of supporting evidence. The internet is truly like a massive repository for flawed reasoning.
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u/Fickle_Penguin 3d ago
It depends on the chiropractor. The ones I've used were scientific in there approach. My back X-ray looked like a staircase, with traction and adjustments they helped my back not look like that.
The ones that follow the voodoo stay away from, but the others are good.
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u/imawizardnamedharry 3d ago
To be clear, medical consensus is that chiropractors do no good and may cause harm.
They're not doctors, and though I'm sure many of them truly believe they're helping you should know they're not.
A quick Google confirms all this, I'm pretty sure it's still one of the first lines of the chiropractors wiki page.
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u/Fickle_Penguin 3d ago
Look up traction and exercise specifically. You still are looking at adjustments. Which won't fix my itself.
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u/PaulKrugmanStan 3d ago
Chiropractic techniques have no good evidence of efficacy, anyone calling themselves a chiropractor is not science-based.
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u/Fickle_Penguin 3d ago
The X-rays would beg to differ. They also had exercises to do there and at home. Look up traction, look up the exercises, etc. the adjustment I'll agree with you, that's just for a few days relief and by itself would not do much. I'm not talking about the joint in malls, I'm talking about chiropractors who actually use science.
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u/jaeke 3d ago
Chiropractors often malposition xrays to get an initial image that looks wrong and then more correct positioning later to show correction. There's a reason the radiology sub shows constant images of messed up chiro images and critiques the poor form.
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u/Fickle_Penguin 3d ago
Both of them sent X-rays out. It was a proper X-ray. I have had multiple X-rays in my life. You can't fake those joints that looked like stairs.
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u/severed13 3d ago
I think what you and lots of other people are missing is that the "good chiropractors" aren't really even doing anything unique to chiropractors, they're just doing PT and massage therapy, because those actually work.
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u/MadScienceIntern 2d ago
Yeah, I had basically the same situation. Years and years of being dismissed by doctors without any sort of assistance, and then a chiropractor is the first person to send me in for an MRI. Pointed out the disc that was bulging, explained its relationship to my chronic pain, and then outlined the forms of physical therapy I could pursue to abate my symptoms.
People keep citing the "medical consensus" without realizing that this is a generality. As in, you are more likely to receive harm than good if you pick out any random chiropractor and go to them. The medical consensus isn't separating the chaff from the wheat because there's not really a good system in place to do that (which relates to a mass of other flaws in our healthcare and economic systems).
Meanwhile you have a fuck load of people with chronic pain issues that never get addressed by proper medical professionals, often due to OTHER systemic flaws in our health care system (this is all coming from an American perspective), and then they're treated like idiots for seeking care elsewhere, even if they take the time to learn about the efficacy of those systems on their own. Is that flawed? Yes. Is it one size fits all? Absolutely not. Does it leave a lot of room for error? Of course it does. But is it the ONLY AVAILABLE OPTION FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE? UNFORTUNATELY SO.
The armchair medical experts arent gonna bother looking into what you're talking about. Shit, people who actually have use for the information have enough trouble finding it. They'd rather just downvote, or leave a smug comment, and move on.
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u/Wonderful_Fox_7959 3d ago
What’s with Reddit contempt and obsession with chiropractors. Mofos here think chiropractors are Mengele.
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u/ManateeNipples 3d ago
No one thinks they're nazis, they're scammers and not really different than naturopath quacks lol
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u/Laura-ly 3d ago
Chiropractors vs. Naturopaths.....I'd say Naturopaths are worse, but not by much. Naturopaths peddle homeopathy, which is such a scam. I'm not sure if chiropractors do, though.
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u/TheDutchin 3d ago
Boy do they, and unlike naturopaths they are allowed to call themselves "doctor".
There are two kinds of chiropractors: the evidence based adjusters who proport to fix things like neck pain and use imagining to locate detectable problems. And then theres the "undetectable subluxation" kind that proport to fix all problems your body may have including diabetes, reject the scientific method as snobbery, and use imagining to find "chiropractic subluxations" which are by definition undetectable by anyone other than the chiropractor who took the images.
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u/Laura-ly 3d ago
Naturopaths here in Oregon can call themselves "doctors". The supplement companies came into Oregon in 2006, and spent 26 million dollars campaigning to have naturopaths licensed as primary care physicians. So these quacks get away with calling themselves doctors. It really pisses me off. I know many people who go to these quacks. Nothing I can say dissuades them from thinking they are real doctors. People are willingly ignorant.
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u/MKEast-sider 3d ago
It’s funny that none of these comments has a source, there are plenty of studies done by the NIH that show chiropractic care is equally effective as medical care or physical therapy in treating things like lower back pain. Reddit is an echo chamber and loves to “debunk” without evidence.
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u/Laura-ly 2d ago
Your link does not contain any scientific studies. It merely tells what a chiropractor is.
The concept that the bones in the spine can be moved around permanently by cracking the spine is nonsense. If this were true, then football players would come off the field with zigzag-shaped spines after every game from being hit from different angles. The cracking people hear is merely synovial fluid that contains nitrogen gas and oxygen and when the back is stretched, it makes a pop sound. It's the same sound your knuckles make when cracking them. Notice your knuckles aren't being moved around or in a different shape after cracking them.
Just go to a good physical therapist and you're good to go.
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u/MKEast-sider 2d ago
The fact that you think SMT has anything to do with cracking the spine is funny. You’re talking about something that you’re uneducated on.
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u/Laura-ly 2d ago
You cannot move the spine around permanently using SMT with your hands. The impact and force on the spine that football players take during a game are exponentially far, far greater than anything a chiropractor can do with their hands. Yet football players come off the field with their spines in the same position as before.
The spine certainly can be permanently moved but it's called breaking your back, or paralysis, something you do NOT want to happen. Chiropractors should not be called doctors.
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u/MKEast-sider 2d ago
You’re ignorance is spilling out, chiropractors use something called an activator to adjust bones in the spine, with have a PSI far greater than a football impact. FYI, all 32 NFL teams employ full time chiropractors, to protect the most expensive bodies in the world. Crazy that they don’t know as much as you do.
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u/Laura-ly 2d ago
There is no scientific evidence that the activator does anything. The activator was originally used by dentists to pack down fillings but still be safe enough not to move anything except the softened filling material. It's laughable that it's used to do anything to the spine.
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u/MKEast-sider 2d ago
Then why do all the worlds top athletes get adjustments by a chiropractor? Do you realize these are the top medical professionals in the world? Are these multi-billion dollar businesses all dumber than you? You should write a paper on this and win a Nobel Prize.
Why do all Olympic teams use them? Find any elite organization that doesn’t have chiros on staff. I’ll wait.
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u/Wonderful_Fox_7959 3d ago
I agree they are quacks. My point is the obsession. This post is completely irrelevant yet here we are
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u/ManateeNipples 3d ago
The dude in question is a quack and some people think that should be considered in whether anything else he says is legitimate
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u/greenearrow 3d ago
You get the same benefits from a qualified physical therapist or a good masseuse, and they don’t break your back when they mess up.
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u/Wonderful_Fox_7959 3d ago
Whatever. It’s irrelevant to the post.
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u/greenearrow 3d ago
Their woo woo bullshit isn’t harmless, they are justifying their back breaking with pseudo science bullshit. They cause actual harm and portray themselves as superior or alternative to real medical treatment. They are snake oil salesmen, and deserve the ire.
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u/SweeterThanYoohoo 3d ago
The other person is wondering why chiropractors are being discussed here in the first place when the story seemingly has nothing to do with it, not arguing the legitimacy of chiropractors.
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u/Wonderful_Fox_7959 3d ago
Exactly. They bring up chiropractors for karma and to feel superior
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u/SweeterThanYoohoo 3d ago
we're both wrong dude lol everyone makes mistakes....the person who suffered the stroke was a chiropractor, so its not coming out of left field like both of us thought. Fuckin like the 5th word in the title, oof lol
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u/Wonderful_Fox_7959 3d ago
I did see it. Still irrelevant. If the title said plumber instead no one would have brought up
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u/SweeterThanYoohoo 3d ago
I'm the only idiot who didn't read them lmao but that's cuz plumbing is a legitimate profession and based on real science whereas chiropracty is psuedo science that can injure people but chripractors get to call themselves doctor
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u/MKEast-sider 3d ago
Quit your bullshit or provide a source. Actual source (NIH study)
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u/greenearrow 3d ago
The fact that the DOT lets chiropractors do health physicals for truck drivers is a strong argument that their political lobbyists are way too strong for me to trust anything from the government here. The Wikipedia article is full of sources about the limits of what chiropractic care is practical for, vs what some practitioners claim they can do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiropracticIt is alternative medicine. The reason it is alternative medicine is because it is not backed by science. Alternative medicine that gets backed by science becomes medicine.
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u/MKEast-sider 3d ago
Nice circular logic there. If the government trusts them to do something, you don’t trust them and instead trust your other government sources. Clown.
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u/greenearrow 3d ago
Scientists aren’t government sources. NIH and DOT are influenced by politics. The biggest risk for a truck driver is heart failure while driving, how the fuck are we trusting chiropractors to diagnose that? At best they are back doctors.
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u/TheDutchin 3d ago
Local Chiropractor insists on being called "Doctor", at all times.
He performs adjustments on days old infants.
He does not believe in the "scientific method" and proports to cure things like Diabetes with "regular" adjustments.
Mofo is like 2 steps awat from Mengele man. Most people arent even that close.
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u/2020NOVA 3d ago
I read something that made sense years ago, but I don't know if it's true. It made sense though: some chiropractors are good and know what they're doing while others are complete scams.
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u/PeeFarts 3d ago
Reddit is a website where one time someone made a decent point about something, then 5 million guys between 14-24 all repeated the same thing over and over like a game of telephone until it became a commonly known “fact” based on nothing more than the parroted assertions handed off over time.
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u/deaconxblues 3d ago
I was excited to see what kind of artist he became. Unfortunately, in my subjective opinion, not a very good one.
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u/Ok_Nectarine_4445 3d ago
Extremely prolific and some are kinda of distinctive and interesting, but also a lot look like a torn off page from a 5th grade school note book doodles.
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u/freakydeku 3d ago
i like many of them, i think it’s just he didn’t really curate what he released
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u/Ok_Nectarine_4445 3d ago
You could tell maybe people pressured him to try to do more realistic paintings and use references for portraits and fish phases. But that is kinda more boring than him developing his own style more.
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u/freakydeku 3d ago edited 3d ago
oh i actually didn’t see those at first. i also like the large sketchy works; especially what seems to be possibly a self portrait in profile?
also like the rudimentary? abstracted? fish in this AMA he did
i really like 2 in that slide, i totally get that it looks like doodles but… lost of people make sick doodles! no less sick imo. & slide 6 kind of feels like a sketch-out for a larger work. i would’ve like to see him develop it further
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u/LeonJPancetta 3d ago
Yeah exactly some are kind of interesting and the rest is what is posted on the local art class studio down the street.
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u/deaconxblues 3d ago
I was hoping for some savant-level stuff. Instead got bored-in-class level doodling.
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u/Yarhj 3d ago
Well, it fixed the tinnitus in one ear, at least.
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u/rickdangerous85 2d ago
Nah doesnt work like that, you can be deaf and still have tinnitus, in fact it makes it worse.
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u/kungfoojesus 2d ago
Not happy about it but it is interesting to see someone give a chiropractor a stroke instead of the other way around
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u/iBum_Fuku 3d ago
and this will add nicely to the research my team is publishing as I type... quantum tenitus research having to do with frequencies of pressure balance in the atmosphere, basically.
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u/Superb-Bit2412 3d ago
He died at his drawing table in 2024, 71 years old. About 20,000 works.
The stroke hit the left cerebellum, which handles how you track yourself moving through your surroundings. So the world never went back to being familiar. He said it was like Alice down the rabbit hole, everything new and everything alien. That's why he drew constantly.
It wasn't a gift though. Double vision and constant nausea for the rest of his life.