archive:fun:medicine
Chapter 9
MEDICINE AND THE HUMAN MACHINE
A Medical History
In ancient Japan, teeth were extracted by dentists who used
only their fingers.
Hundreds of years ago, Chinese doctors were not paid by their
sick patients, but only by those who they kept healthy.
In the times of Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, people
thought that the liver, not the heart, was the center of emotion.
Now we know that it is not the heart, either.
Before giving up on a patient they couldn't cure, doctors in
the Middle East used to display that patient in the center of
town, in case a passerby might speak up with a cure.
After reading the books that interested him, Hippocrates (for
whom the Hippocratic oath of medicine is named) supposedly burned
down a library, so that his competitors would not have access to
the same information.
The barber's pole dates from the time when barbers were also
surgeons. It represents a bandage wrapped around an injured arm.
The Rx sign that pharmacists use was originally the
astrological sign for Jupiter.
While Europeans were dying by the thousands, the Chinese were
using a vaccination against smallpox. They would inhale the
powdered material from the sores of a smallpox victim.
One of the remedies recommended for the Black Plague was to
put the intestines of young pigeons or puppies on the forehead.
A medical curiosity was David Kennison, who was born in 1736
and participated in the Boston Tea Party. At the age of
seventy-six, serving in the War of 1812, he lost a hand to a
gunshot wound. Later, a tree fell on him, and fractured his
skull. Some years later, while training soldiers in the use of a
cannon, something went wrong and an explosion shattered his legs.
He recovered. Yet later, a horse damaged his face. He died
peacefully in 1851 at the age of 115.
Cataract surgery (removal of lens from eye) was first done in
1748. But the first anesthesia wasn't until 1842!
In 1809, a woman had a twenty-two pound ovarian tumor removed
without anesthesia.
Here is some advice from a book 132 years old: (this is no longer
corsidered correct)
"DROWNING. - Attend to the following essential rules:
- 1. Lose no time. 2. Handle the body gently. 3. Carry
the body with the head gently raised, and never hold it
up by the feet. 4. Send for medical assistance
immediately, and in the meantime act as follows: 1.
Strip the body, rub it dry: then rub it in hot blankets,
and place it in a warm bed in a warm room. 2. Cleanse
away the froth and mucus from the nose and mouth. 3.
Apply warm bricks, bottles, bags of sand, &c. to the
arm-pits, between the thighs and soles of the feet. 4.
Rub the surface of the body with the hands enclosed in
warm dry worsted socks. 5. If possible, put the body
into a warm bath. 6. To restore breathing, put the pipe
of a common bellows into one nostril, carefully closing
the other and the mouth; at the same time drawing
downwards, and pushing gently backwards the upper part
of the windpipe, to allow a more free admission of air;
blow the bellows gently, in order to inflate the lungs,
till the breast be raised a little; then set the mouth
and nostrils free, and press gently on the chest; repeat
this until signs of life appear. When the patient
revives apply smelling-salts to the nose, give warm
wine or brandy and water. Cautions. 1. Never rub the
body with salt or spirits. 2. Never roll the body on
casks. 3. Continue the remedies for twelve hours without
ceasing."
And from that same old book:
"LEECHES AND THEIR APPLICATION. - The leech used for
medical purposes is called the hirudo Medicinatis, to
distinguish it from other varieties, such as the
horse-leech and the Lisbon leech. It varies from two to
four inches in length, and is of a blackish brown
colour, marked on the back with six yellow spots, and
edged with a fellow line on each side. Formerly leeches
were supplied by Sweden but latterly most of the leeches
are procured from France, where they are now becoming
scarce.
When leeches are applied to a part, it should be
thoroughly freed from down or hair by shaving, and all
liniments, &c., carefully and effectually cleaned away
by washing. If the leech is hungry it will soon bite,
but sometimes great difficulty is experienced in getting
them to fasten on. When this is the case, roll the leech
into a little porter, or moisten the surface with a
little blood, or milk, or sugar and water, Leeches may
be applied by holding them over the port with a piece of
linen cloth or by means of an inverted glass, under
which they must be placed.
When applied to the gums, care should be taken to
us a a leech glass, as they are apt to creep down the
patient's throat; a large swan's quill will answer the
purpose of a leech glass. When leeches are gorged they
will drop off themselves; never tear them off from a
person., but just dip the point of a moistened finger
into some salt and touch them with it.
Leeches are supposed to abstract about two drachms
of blood, or six leeches draw about an ounce; but this
is independent of the bleeding after they have come off,
and more blood generally flows then than during the time
they are sucking."
One hundred years ago (1890), in Connecticut, Idaho, North
Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, it was legal
to practice medicine with no training whatsoever. Texas, however,
required a high school diploma.
Surgeons used to have to operate quickly, before the patients
died of extreme pain or blood loss. Robert Liston worked so fast
that one day he accidentally cut off his nurse's fingers. It is
not known whether the rest of the operation was a success.
As late as 34 years after the public introduction of
anesthesia, some doctors refused to use it. Some said that the
shock of pain is a necessary ingredient to recovery. Others were
afraid, because some preachers said that anesthesia was the work
of the devil.
Most people don't realize that Charles Lindbergh was a
pioneer in medical technology. He worked on an early heart-lung
machine.
The flu mutated into a killer in 1918 and killed 20 million
people. Over half a million Americans died.
In 1976, doctors in Los Angeles went on strike because of the
rising cost of malpractice insurance. All elective and
non-emergency surgery and medical attention were canceled. During
that time, eighteen percent less people died than usual.
From all our exposure to unnecessary penicillin through
medication as well as through treatment of cattle and pork,
life-threatening bacteria have grown resistant to our number-one
line of defense. In 1960, 13% of staphylococci infections were
resistant to penicillin. Now, 91% are resistant to penicillin.
There were 1,647 heart transplants in 1988. There were 1,700
liver transplants in 1988.
In the future people will be able to regrow missing arms or
legs like a salamander can grow a new tail. Research has shown
promising results in getting bone to grow with the application of
electricity. Children under age five who lose the tip of a finger
up to half-way to the outermost joint, if left untreated, the
finger will completely regrow. If medical attention is applied,
stitches for example, the child's finger will not regrow.
In Tibet, monks occasionally performed brain surgery
successfully. They would bore a hole through a person's forehead
and insert a tube into their pineal gland, at the bottom of their
brain. This was to induce a "mystical state of consciousness."
Medical Miscellaneous
Dr. James Muatt lived to the age of 120 and spent 95 years in
the practice of medicine.
Two of every five Americans have never been to a dentist.
Modern Medicine
One out of every eight Americans will spend some time as a
patient in a hospital this year.
There is a phenomenon called noscomial disease. It means
coming to a hospital for some reason, and catching another disease
while in the hospital. Hospitals are not healthy places. One out
of every 21 Americans admitted will catch something else merely
from being in the hospital. Every year, 15,000 Americans die of
something other than what they were admitted for.
Of all the people who work in hospitals, only 1.78% are
doctors. 17.27% are clerical workers. So there are nine times more
people involved with the paperwork, than those involved in the
actual work!
An average person in America who is over 65 years old takes
between ten and twenty prescription pills every day.
A woman started showing a bunch of general symptoms that
doctors could not diagnose. She went from one doctor to another.
One recommended that she have her uterus removed. Finally, her
problem was relieved by a dentist. He discovered she was
suffering mercury poisoning from her fillings. He removed the
fillings and substituted another material.
EEG and EKG machines are not perfect. In one study EKG
machines indicated a heart problem in healthy people 20% of the
time. Sometimes in a room with more than one EKG, one machine
will read the electrical leaks of another. In another study a
researcher hooked up an EEG to a mannequin whose head was filled
with lime jello and the EEG found signs of life.
The average doctor goes to medical school for four years, yet
gets only two and a half hours of education on nutrition as it
applies to preventive medicine or curative medicine.
16 out of every 100 doctors will be sued this year.
A sociologist did a study that turned up some mortifying
results. It seems that the people who work in hospital emergency
rooms are more likely to administer resuscitation attempts on
patients who are brought in dead on arrival who are good looking,
than on those patients who are uglier.
Anyone who thinks Western medicine is a joke should realize
that in Guinea, where modern medicine is not practiced, over 75%
of the people die before the age of 50.
Surgery
Theoretically, a human can survive without the stomach, most
of the intestines, one kidney, 3/4 of the liver, and one lung.
Furthermore, the legs and arms and sex organs can be removed
successfully. Don't try this at home.
A Case of Do-it-Yourself Surgery
In the 1600's a locksmith was suffering from bladder stones.
Being a locksmith, he was used to logical repairs to problems. He
took matters into his own hands, and removed his own bladder stone
with a kitchen knife.
In Kenya, African fire ants are what doctors use to close
surgical wounds in place of sutures. The ant is induced to bite
the two sides of the wound with its mandibles, and hang on.
The longest operation on record took 96 hours. During
February 4 - 8, 1951, surgeons in Michigan removed an ovarian cyst
from a woman. When they were done, she weighed 308 lbs less.
Joseph Ascough who was born in 1935 holds the record for the
most major operations. He has had 327 surgeries for warts in his
windpipe.
Sometimes doctors make mistakes that are like simple
bookkeeping errors. Surgeons once removed a kidney from a man who
had a kidney tumor. The problem was that they removed the good
kidney. And they have been known to saw the wrong leg off an
amputee.
Sometimes surgeons take an organ totally out of a person,
overhaul it on a workbench, like a car mechanic working on a power
steering unit, then re-install it. This is done most often with
kidneys to remove difficult tumors.
Want to improve your vision without using glasses or contact
lenses. Here's what you do: 1. Get a donated cornea. 2. Cool it
to -70 degrees. 3. Fasten it on a lathe and trim it to the proper
shape to refocus light. 4. Stitch it on over your present cornea.
- Or have an eye surgeon do it for you. This new technique is now
in frequent use.
One out of every 243 Americans will have plastic surgery this
year.
There is a new twist in plastic surgery. Surgeons can take a
bone from your body, smash it into paste, then mold it like clay
into a new shape and replace it. This has been done with one
seven-year-old boy whose skull was misshapen. They removed the
whole top of his head, pulverized it, then re-formed it and put it
back on. The headache the boy suffered was less than the ones he
was otherwise doomed to due to the previous shape of his head.
Perhaps surgeons of the future should be encouraged to play with
Play-Doh when they are growing up.
Birth
Scientists are working on the possibility of removing a dying
woman's ovaries and save the eggs so that the woman can still have
children, even after she is dead.
If you split a human embryo when it is less than a week old,
identical twins will develop. This is already done with cattle.
Fetuses have gills.
One out of every 88 births is twins.
One out of every 512,000 births is quadruplets.
One out of every 16 children are born with defects. Most of
these are minor, such as the babies born with tails. When a baby
is born with a tail, the doctors cut it off right away. Most
people do not know if they had a tail.
"Ten years ago 80% of underweight, premature babies died,
while today 80% survive." - Allan Maurer
"If you're pregnant, you go to the doctor and he treats you
as if you're sick. Childbirth is a nine-month disease which must
be treated, so you're sold on intravenous fluid bags, fetal
monitors, a host of drugs, the totally unnecessary episiotomy, and
- the top of the line product - the Caesarean delivery!" - Dr.
Robert S. Mendelsohn, from his book, Confessions of a Medical
Heretic
The infant mortality rate in Canada is 25 percent lower than
in America.
In 1793, in France a true cyclops was born. She was a girl
who lived to fifteen years old. She had a single eye in the middle
of her face.
In Finland babies were born in saunas until the 1920's. The
babies probably were more comfortable arriving in a dark, warm
room than in a bright, cold hospital room.
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