*not a case* — course module description

Description of a guest lecture series Tom hosts. The garlic-breath / diagnosis-by-smell example is the only technical detail given.

There's also Neil Jenkins, who was one of my students who went off after his PhD and got an MD. One time when I was on sabbatical, he did a dozen lectures on how a medical doctor examines you when you walk in. He uses all five senses. He smells, and if you've got garlic breath that may be a certain type of disease. He goes through everything they touch and feel. If you're interested in medicine, it's sort of a material scientist's view of the medical profession and how general practitioners examine.

Description of the IP/law guest module.

And then Steve Lyons is a graduate of Sloan, a practicing attorney with his own law firm in Boston. I've known him for about seven or eight years and he's argued in front of the Supreme Court four or five times. He's a patent attorney. He thinks that students should learn intellectual property, so every spring — MIT will not support him, but he comes over on his own. He also has bagels on Fridays at his own expense. He just enjoys interacting with the students, and the students have loved his modules on law and technology, which is basically intellectual property. If you want to start a business or if you think you're going to invent something, it's a worthwhile module. It's a double module — twelve lectures.