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Introduction: bacterial meningitis is a real concern for physicians and general health systems of any country as well as the international bodies., Objective: to estimate burdens of disease from morbidity and mortality caused by bacterial meningitis in Cuba during 2006., Methods: the mortality and the incidence data of the epidemiological survey from the National Surveillance of Bacterial Meningitis of "Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine were used. The estimation methods were based on the WHO recommendations by using the DISMOD and the required Excel spreadsheets., Results: the global burden of bacterial meningitis was estimated at a total of 3527.26 Disability Adjusted Lost Years (DALYs), which accounted for 31.3 years lost per 100 000 inhabitants. Morbidity and mortality burden of bacterial meningitis without sequel weighing was 2056.25 disability adjusted lost years, being the 55.9 % caused by unidentified agent, followed by S. pneumoniae (30.9 %), N. meningitidis (9.5 %) and H influenza type b (3.6 %). The mortality burden was 2 039 years of life lost from premature death, that is, 57.8 % of the global burden. Children under five years of age contributed the biggest global burden of disability adjusted lost years, and S. penumoniae generated the biggest burden., Conclusion: the burden of bacterial meningitis was high. Burden of disease is an important measure to assess health problems.

Background: Humans use many ways to communicate with fellow humans. Symbols have been one of these ways. Shamans probably used these in the beginning and adopted other distinctive symbols as they were introduced., Discussion: The origin, the reason and use of three symbols in medicine and surgery are discussed. Some symbols currently remain the same and others have been modified or have disappeared. The oldest of these three symbols is the staff of Aesculapius, related to the Greek god of medicine and health. Since the 19th century, in some countries the symbol of the medical profession has become the caduceus, but the staff is the natural symbol. The second symbol is the barber pole that was created at the beginning of the Middle Ages. This was the means to locate the office and shop of a barber/surgeon in towns, cities and battlefields. On the other hand, the surgeon made use of the emblem of the union, trade or fraternity to which he belonged, accompanied by the bowl for bloodletting. The third symbol is the wearing of long and short robes that distinguished graduate surgeons from a medical school and the so-called barber/surgeons., Conclusions: Symbols facilitate the manner in which to identify the origin or trade of many working people. Some symbols currently remain and others have either been modified or are obsolete, losing their relationship with surgery and medicine.

Objective: To relate the outstanding events in the surgical teaching in Mexico since 1325 to 2000., Design: Historic review., Setting: Third level health care hospital., Results: The teaching of surgical procedures has been pretty much alike in many cultures around the world, even though this did not happened at the same time in all places; a very good example of this are surgical teachings in ancient Egypt, Greece and Mexico separated by 4,300 and 1,900 years respectively whose surgical methods and its teaching are quite similar. Afterwards the influence of Spanish, French, German and American medical cultures developed faster and efficient changes with the main objective of obtain every time better surgeons.