A salve made from turpentine? The same stuff you clean your paint brushes with? A wonder drug! And apparently, it cured colds, burns, and so much more!
You say you wish you could get your hands on some of this miraculous stuff? The Russians still make it! Follow the Amazon links below.
In a recent article in the journal Ecology of Food and Nutrition, Mark Kristal argues that placentophagia (that is, the eating of afterbirth or placenta) could offer significant benefits for humans — especially considering that all other mammals (including non-human primates) do it. (link: ScienceDaily.com). These benefits might include increasing mother-infant interaction, increasing the effects of pregnancy-mediated analgesia in the delivering mother, and potentiating opioid circuits in the maternal brain that facilitate the onset of caretaking behavior. He acknowledges that these possible benefits don't warrant "the wholesale ingestion of afterbirth," but he does think the issue deserves further study.
The strange thing is that although all other mammals practice placentophagy, no human cultures do (according to Dr. Kristal) — except for Hollywood celebrities.
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The medical rule I've heard is that you're not supposed to pick at zits or skin growths, because you'll only make them worse — or cause an infection. But apparently this rule doesn't apply to seborrheic keratoses. According to Dr. George Lundberg, Editor in Chief of MedGenMed, go ahead and pick 'em. Or rather, use "fingernail surgery" to remove 'em. That's what he does!
However, Lundberg's advice hasn't met with universal approval from the medical community. Among the resonses to his editorial on MedGenMed is this one:
To the Editor:
I find your piece embarrassing and unworthy of your Internet service.
If you had bothered to do some research, even just reading eMedicine, you would find that curettage, not excision, is the recommended treatment -- a far more sterile version of a fingernail surgery. The curettage procedure is usually nonscarring though rarely some mild hypopigmentation may result.
The use of fingernail surgery is to be condemned as it is a bacterially contaminated area.
Picking at one's own skin with the fingernails is a bad habit and in its extreme form can become obsessive and result in scarring -- a disorder known as neurotic excoriation.
Many elderly gentlemen will pick at solar keratoses on their scalp, leaving it in a persistent state of bleeding and infection; I sincerely hope that you are not headed in this direction.
If your medical colleagues excise your seb warts or cause significant scars, or if you suspect that they choose their therapies on the basis of cost benefit to themselves, I suggest you take the matter up with your State Medical Board rather than indulging in self-injury.
If there is any doubt about the diagnosis, the curetted specimen can be sent for pathology.
Cheers,
Philip Bekhor
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
1) Did girls and women acquire those same Charles Atlas muscleman biceps shown on the box, or just boys and men?
2) Do they eat Pep on the International Space Station today?
3) Does anyone today still say, "He's got pep!" or "I feel peppy!"...?
And if you haven't had enough cereal trivia, please allow me to highly commend this new book, which is a lot of fun. My review will appear soon at THE BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW.
Back in March, patty reported here on a Chinese man who – after being born without one – received a surgically constructed artificial anus. Now scientists have gone one better and actually grown a working anal sphincter in the laboratory. The team, who hail from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, grew the artificial orifices from cultured human muscle and nerve cells in about six weeks. Then, to test if they worked, the sphincters where implanted in laboratory mice. Ultimately, the scientists hope a patient’s own muscle and nerves could be used to create ‘personalized’ replacements, avoiding any immune response. In the near future, the “test tube” anus could be a boon for both the faecally incontinent and former porn stars alike (CBS News).
But an artificial exit may be just the start, as scientists are now one step closer to understanding the development of the entire intestine, in this case, why it coils the way it does. A rare collaboration between Harvard’s Medial and Engineering schools finally untangled the problem of why the intestine coils so predictably during the growth of the foetus while essentially unconstrained. Previously it had been thought that growth of the gut might be being restricted by the abdomen, but that didn’t explain why nearly everyone’s intestines fold into exactly the same shape. Then a chance conversation led Harvard Professor of Applied Mathematics, L. Mahadevan, to suggest a simpler hypothesis, the gut and its connective tissue, called the mesentry, grow at proportionally different rates. Now two teams, led by engineer Thierry Savin and biologists Natasza Kurpios and Amy Shyer, have confirmed that insight with a combination of computer and physical models and experiments, finally unravelling what makes our insides so loopy (Science Daily).
And speaking of loopy, what would you prescribe to someone with chronically inflamed bowels? Well for a growing number of people, the best medicine is a healthy(?) dose of parasites. The parasites in question are whipworms, also known as helminths, hence the name of the process, helminthic therapy. It has been known for over a century that some parasite infestations seem to reduce the symptoms of other diseases, but it is only fairly recently that any serious study has been made into why this is so. The current hypothesis is that the worms, which live in the human intestine, partially suppress the host’s immune response to protect themselves, and in doing so prevent the aggressive autoimmunity behind conditions such as Crohne’s disease and IBS, and so far the results have been startlingly good. However the success of the treatment is causing its own problems as some sufferers are refusing to wait on the medical establishment and are treating themselves by deliberately swallowing doses of the parasites’ eggs obtained over the internet. The worry for some is that the parasites, which are naturally infectious, might spread to very young or otherwise vulnerable people where they might have more serious effects (University of Massachusetts (PDF)).
Yet as one weird treatment rises, another shall fall. Colonic irrigation, the practice of repeatedly flushing out your lower intestines with water or various herbal infusions, has no medicinal benefit according to a study by doctors from the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Moreover, it can actually be harmful, carrying not just a risk if perforation of the bowel, but a list of side effects that range from intestinal cramps and nausea to renal failure. The team, lead by Dr. Ranit Mishori, looked at over 20 studies carried out in the past 10 years and found little to no evidence of any health improvements associated with the treatment, but a litany of problems, including cases of anaemia and increased liver toxicity. She also highlighted the dangers from poorly trained and regulated operators performing the procedure, and from “do-it-youself” detoxing kits that often combine a less invasive form of the therapy with strong laxatives (The Independent).
Category: Health, Hygiene, Medicine, 1920's, Russia, Diseases