Medicine
Save the Baby does not actually save babies
Save the Baby is a cough and cold medicine first created back in 1874. Products continue to be sold under that brand name today.
But at a certain point in time (I'm not sure exactly when) the owners of the brand felt compelled to put the following disclaimer on the packaging:
An odd disclaimer because the name would definitely seem to imply that the product saves babies.
image source: lawhaha.com
Perhaps the disclaimer was a response to a 1929 suit against it by the FDA ("United States v. Certain Bottles of Lee's 'Save the Baby'") arguing that it was "misbranded."
Whatever the case may be, the disclaimer evidently allowed the name "Save the Baby" to continue to be used. And when the brand was sold to a new owner in 1983, the uniqueness of the name was a "major factor" in the deal. As the article below notes:
Newsday - Nov 17, 1983
Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 21, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Medicine, Odd Names
Recurrent Sudden Death
One of the stranger medical problems a person could suffer from is "recurrent sudden death." In fact, one might think it impossible to suffer from such a problem. However, the term appears fairly often in medical literature. A few examples:
Atlas of Heart Diseases - Arrhythmias : electrophysiologic principles, 1996
New England Journal of Medicine - June 3, 1982
I think, though I'm not entirely sure, that "sudden death" is being used as a synonym for "cardiac arrest." Doctors are aware that the term "recurrent sudden death" sounds absurd. Stedman's Medical Dictionary (2006) advises them not to use it:
And yet the term continues to appear.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Jul 15, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Death, Medicine
Headache Hanger
Full patent here.
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 15, 2024 -
Comments (3)
Category: Inventions, Patents, Medicine, 1910s, Head
Aspirin-Induced Musical Hallucinations
A 1985 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine reported the unusual case of a 70-year-old woman who kept hearing music playing in her head, particularly the song "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." After ruling out other possible causes, her doctor eventually suspected the music might be due to the high doses of aspirin she was taking. And sure enough, when she reduced her aspirin intake, the music stopped.I would never have thought that aspirin could cause musical hallucinations!
Tampa Bay Times - Apr 2, 1986
The letter itself is behind a paywall, but I was able to find a brief article that the woman's doctor (James R. Allen) wrote about the case in the magazine of the Minnesota Medical Association.
Minnesota Medicine - Nov 2008
Posted By: Alex - Wed May 01, 2024 -
Comments (5)
Category: Medicine, Music, Psychology
Fish Surgery
This is not a topic I had given much thought to, before encountering this report from 1955.Then I found more-current info.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 25, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Medicine, Fish, 1950s, Twenty-first Century
For relief of emotional stress
For housewives on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Medical Economics - Mar 2, 1959
Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 20, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Medicine, Psychology, 1950s
A case of hypervaccination
The Lancet reports on the case of a 62-year-old German man who received 217 Covid vaccinations over a period of 29 months. That works out to getting vaccinated approximately every four days.When I got the Covid vaccine I felt for a day like I'd been run over by a truck. The German hypervaccinator, on the other hand, felt no vaccine-related side effects.
Presumably the guy thought that all the vaccinations would give him super-immunity. When medical professionals realized what he had done, however, they were more worried that the opposite would happen — that he would build up "immune tolerance" and be more susceptible to Covid, not less. But when they checked him out, he seemed just fine.
More info: arstechnica.com
Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 07, 2024 -
Comments (2)
Category: Medicine
Husbands too like Premarin
Make your wife pleasant again with Premarin!By the 1990s, Premarin had become the most frequently prescribed medication in the United States. Now, according to Wikipedia, it's down to number 283.
The word 'Premarin' is a portmanteau of PREgnant MAre uRINe.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 05, 2024 -
Comments (1)
Category: Medicine, Advertising, Husbands, Wives, 1950s
Tumor Paintings
In 1834, Dr. Peter Parker obtained a medical degree from Yale University and then traveled to China as a medical missionary. There he commissioned Chinese painter Lam Qua to make portraits of patients at the Canton Hospital who had large tumors. Yale now has 86 of these portraits in its collection.Peter Parker seems to have been a fairly common name before it became permanently associated with Spider-Man.
More info: Yale University Library
via Design You Trust
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 31, 2024 -
Comments (0)
Category: Art, Medicine, Nineteenth Century
Follies of the Madmen #582
Posted By: Paul - Sun Nov 26, 2023 -
Comments (3)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Medicine, Advertising, Stop-motion Animation, 1960s
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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. Contact Us |