Category:
Medicine

Crippled Children

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Sometime we forgot how much civilization has advanced in 90 years. What was common becomes weird.

Of course, at my age I still recall childhood polio as a danger.

Original ad here.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Aug 13, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Body, Feet, Medicine, Advertising, Children, 1920s

Don’t tell me my kid is fat!

A study recently published in the journal Pediatric Obesity has found that when parents go to the doctor, they don't like the doctor to tell them that their little angel is "fat, chubby, overweight or obese." Instead, they prefer it if doctors use non-medical euphemisms such as, "Your kid is large," or "Your kid is gaining too much weight." And the problem is that if the parents feel offended, they often stop listening to the doctor altogether, which results in their large child growing even larger. Link: eurekalert

Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 01, 2012 - Comments (13)
Category: Medicine, Children, Parents, Eating

Image of Corneal Transplant

The Encyclopedia of Surgery explains:
In corneal transplant, also known as keratoplasty, a patient's damaged cornea is replaced by the cornea from the eye of a human cadaver. This is the most common type of human transplant surgery and has the highest success rate...
the eye is held open with a speculum. A laser is used to make an initial cut in the existing cornea. The surgeon uses scissors to remove it, and a donor cornea is placed. It is stitched with very fine sutures.

Image via reddit.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 31, 2012 - Comments (10)
Category: Medicine, Surgery

Electric Bitters

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I can't find the ingredients for this patent medicine, but I'll bet it packed a kick.

Here's the story of its creation, as given also below.

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Posted By: Paul - Mon Jul 23, 2012 - Comments (11)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Medicine, 1900s, 1910s, Alcohol

Orwell’s Cough

I just read an advance copy of Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough by John J. Ross, M.D. It examines some of the literary greats (Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Herman Melville, etc.) from the viewpoint of a doctor, diagnosing what medical problems they may have suffered from (they tended to be a sickly bunch), and also discussing what medical "cures" doctors of the time subjected them to. It's good stuff that I imagine will appeal to many WU readers.

For instance, Jonathan Swift suffered from bouts of dizziness and deafness. Here's Ross on how 18th Century medicine treated him:

Swift took a variety of useless medication for his 'giddiness.' These included asafoetida, the herb so foul-smelling that it is known as devil's dung, as well as 'nasty steel drops' (a crude iron supplement). Swift also took something that he called 'a vomit.' This vile treatment was based on the ancient Galenic theory of ridding the body of evil humours. It could have been one of many drugs, ranging from the merely unpleasant (ipecac) to the potentially toxic (arsenic or antimony). Had Swift taken arsenic or antimony only rarely, he probably would not have had long-term side effects, as most of the dose would have quickly left the body in the urine and from both ends of the gastrointestinal tract. His doctor pal John Arbuthnot prescribed confection of alkermes (a scarlet syrup in which the active ingredient was crushed parasitic insects), the vigorous laxative castor oil, and cinnabar of antimony (mercuric sulphide). Swift thought the cinnabar helped. This is just possible: some mercury compounds are mild diuretics.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jul 19, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Medicine, Books

Good For What Ails You

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Original ad here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jul 12, 2012 - Comments (8)
Category: Medicine, Self-help Schemes, Advertising, 1920s, Alcohol

How to anesthetize a hippo

Science Daily reports that progress has been made on the problem of how to anesthetize a hippopotamus:

for a variety of reasons it has proven difficult to anaesthetize hippopotamuses. The thick skin and the dense subcutaneous tissue make it difficult to introduce sufficient amounts of anesthetics and opioid-based anesthetics often cause breathing irregularities and occasionally even death. In addition, the level of anesthesia is only rarely sufficient to enable surgery to be undertaken: few vets wish to be around when a drugged hippopotamus starts to wake up.

The solution involves "a new anesthetic protocol based on the use of two non-opiate drugs." This protocol was experimentally tested on 10 hippos, all of which "recovered rapidly and completely from the procedure and showed no lasting after-effects."

The interesting detail left out of the Science Daily article, but which can be found in the original article in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, is that all 10 hippos were castrated while asleep. If they had woken up while that was happening, I'm sure they really would have been angry!

Posted By: Alex - Mon Jul 09, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Medicine, Surgery

Duffy’s Pure Malt Whiskey

Back in the day, the only medicine a real man needed was pure malt whiskey running through his veins. From the Chicago Tribune, Jan 18, 1908.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Jun 24, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Inebriation and Intoxicants, Medicine

Turpo

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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!

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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.



Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 20, 2012 - Comments (15)
Category: Health, Hygiene, Medicine, Cures for the common cold, 1920s, Russia, Diseases

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Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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