The Face of Medicine
I wrote this long post out of boredom. It talks about the history of medicine, and I think it is very interesting. I even discuss how the modern vibrator came to be... Let me know what you think.
I do not know about everyone else, but I always had the idea that modern medicine was up to par with star trek when I was a child. I never thought there was a magical device that you can wave over someone and miraculously heal their wounds, but still, I thought that a doctor knew everything and that medical procedures were extremely advanced. Many procedures are, but if you actually go to a hospital and watch some of the basic procedures they do, or if you read medical stories.... It is almost like we are still in the dark ages. We as a race have come a long way though. The man who is referred to as the father of surgery was an Indian (of the slurpee variety, not the casino kind) by the name of Sushruta. He lived in the sixth century BC, and his writings are the oldest known text concerning surgery. He is also the considered the father of plastic and cosmetic surgery, so for all you women who want or have fake tits... This is the man to thank. His methods of fixing noses (rhinoplasty) are still used today, practically unchanged. Back then, one method of punishment for certain crimes, was to have one's nose cut off. Sushruta would take some skin from the forehead, and use it to build a person a new nose. Considering that fatality rates for any form of surgery were almost 85% until the late 1860's early 1870's... This is amazing.
Joseph Lister (where the name Listerine comes from) was the first to have the idea that perhaps the surgical instruments used should be clean, and this was not until the late 1860's, after the civil war. An example of what surgery was like before Lister came along..... A proper way to sharpen a scalpel was taught to all medical students. This technique involved lifting your foot and sharpening the scalpel against the leather of your shoe. I would think that I do not even need to explain how bad that is, and the high rate of post op infections that occurred as a result. The high fatality rate is why many of your grandparents were terrified of hospitals. They grew up hearing stories about their parents and hospitals. Today most of us just do not like hospitals, imagine what it was like to know that going to the hospital was the equivalent of a death sentence. There was a surgeon before Lister named Ignaz Semmelweis that introduced the concept of hand washing before surgery or delivering a baby. He discovered that if a doctor were to wash his hands before delivering a baby, the mother had a less likely chance of becoming infected and dying of puerperal fever. This is why most people were delivered by a midwife in these times. Imagine giving birth back then... You have a doctor that was likely poking around on a cadaver (dead body) or picking his nose, maybe he was even wiping his ass with his bare hand. Imagine the problems that can arise with his unwashed hands up in your business. Keep in mind that latex gloves were not even around until the 1950's. Some of our parents could have been delivered by ungloved doctors. Common sense now a days, right? Well the doctors at this time said that he was crazy. They did not want to accept that it was their fault that so many women were dying during child birth. Semmelweis was stripped of his medical license and was then locked away in an insane asylum where he died of the very disease he was trying to abolish by simply washing hands. How fucking insane is that?
Most people have heard the name of Florence Nightingale, but many have no clue as to what she did. Other than being the reason that all hospitals are kept clean, she came up with the idea to wash bandages... Thats right. Imagine that you were a wounded soldier during the civil war. You are placed on a hospital bed next to a soldier that just died of a gangrene infection he developed on his bandaged wound. With a shortage of fresh bandages and no knowledge of the importance of a clean bandage, your doctor takes the bandage from the dead soldier and immediately uses it to wrap your wound. You now have that soldiers gangrene, blood, pus, and everything else wrapped tightly around your open wound. Need I say more?
I could go on and on... The evolution of lobotomies and other brain surgeries, is very interesting. But I am just going to end this with one last story for the women out there.
Now a days, most women have no problem admitting that they own one or ten vibrators. But do you know where the vibrator came from? It has its roots in medicine... Back then when a woman would do something improper, such as talk back to her husband or show an over eagerness for sex, she would be diagnosed with hysteria. The cure for this was for a woman to go to the doctor's office and have him massage her genitals until she reached what was called "hysterical paroxysm." Hysteria of this form was considered a real disorder until the 1940's. As one can imagine, women would go every week to the doctor's office to have this "medical procedure" performed. This spread quickly and soon women everywhere were claiming to suffer from hysteria. Obviously this became a labor intensive job for the doctors to perform this procedure, so people came up with the idea of creating a device that shot jets of water onto the woman's genitals, causing her to reach this "hysterical paroxysm." This turned out to be messy though, so a British doctor in the 1880's created the first vibrator. It became a permanent fixture in many doctor's offices. Here is the picture.
I do not know about everyone else, but I always had the idea that modern medicine was up to par with star trek when I was a child. I never thought there was a magical device that you can wave over someone and miraculously heal their wounds, but still, I thought that a doctor knew everything and that medical procedures were extremely advanced. Many procedures are, but if you actually go to a hospital and watch some of the basic procedures they do, or if you read medical stories.... It is almost like we are still in the dark ages. We as a race have come a long way though. The man who is referred to as the father of surgery was an Indian (of the slurpee variety, not the casino kind) by the name of Sushruta. He lived in the sixth century BC, and his writings are the oldest known text concerning surgery. He is also the considered the father of plastic and cosmetic surgery, so for all you women who want or have fake tits... This is the man to thank. His methods of fixing noses (rhinoplasty) are still used today, practically unchanged. Back then, one method of punishment for certain crimes, was to have one's nose cut off. Sushruta would take some skin from the forehead, and use it to build a person a new nose. Considering that fatality rates for any form of surgery were almost 85% until the late 1860's early 1870's... This is amazing.
Joseph Lister (where the name Listerine comes from) was the first to have the idea that perhaps the surgical instruments used should be clean, and this was not until the late 1860's, after the civil war. An example of what surgery was like before Lister came along..... A proper way to sharpen a scalpel was taught to all medical students. This technique involved lifting your foot and sharpening the scalpel against the leather of your shoe. I would think that I do not even need to explain how bad that is, and the high rate of post op infections that occurred as a result. The high fatality rate is why many of your grandparents were terrified of hospitals. They grew up hearing stories about their parents and hospitals. Today most of us just do not like hospitals, imagine what it was like to know that going to the hospital was the equivalent of a death sentence. There was a surgeon before Lister named Ignaz Semmelweis that introduced the concept of hand washing before surgery or delivering a baby. He discovered that if a doctor were to wash his hands before delivering a baby, the mother had a less likely chance of becoming infected and dying of puerperal fever. This is why most people were delivered by a midwife in these times. Imagine giving birth back then... You have a doctor that was likely poking around on a cadaver (dead body) or picking his nose, maybe he was even wiping his ass with his bare hand. Imagine the problems that can arise with his unwashed hands up in your business. Keep in mind that latex gloves were not even around until the 1950's. Some of our parents could have been delivered by ungloved doctors. Common sense now a days, right? Well the doctors at this time said that he was crazy. They did not want to accept that it was their fault that so many women were dying during child birth. Semmelweis was stripped of his medical license and was then locked away in an insane asylum where he died of the very disease he was trying to abolish by simply washing hands. How fucking insane is that?
Most people have heard the name of Florence Nightingale, but many have no clue as to what she did. Other than being the reason that all hospitals are kept clean, she came up with the idea to wash bandages... Thats right. Imagine that you were a wounded soldier during the civil war. You are placed on a hospital bed next to a soldier that just died of a gangrene infection he developed on his bandaged wound. With a shortage of fresh bandages and no knowledge of the importance of a clean bandage, your doctor takes the bandage from the dead soldier and immediately uses it to wrap your wound. You now have that soldiers gangrene, blood, pus, and everything else wrapped tightly around your open wound. Need I say more?
I could go on and on... The evolution of lobotomies and other brain surgeries, is very interesting. But I am just going to end this with one last story for the women out there.
Now a days, most women have no problem admitting that they own one or ten vibrators. But do you know where the vibrator came from? It has its roots in medicine... Back then when a woman would do something improper, such as talk back to her husband or show an over eagerness for sex, she would be diagnosed with hysteria. The cure for this was for a woman to go to the doctor's office and have him massage her genitals until she reached what was called "hysterical paroxysm." Hysteria of this form was considered a real disorder until the 1940's. As one can imagine, women would go every week to the doctor's office to have this "medical procedure" performed. This spread quickly and soon women everywhere were claiming to suffer from hysteria. Obviously this became a labor intensive job for the doctors to perform this procedure, so people came up with the idea of creating a device that shot jets of water onto the woman's genitals, causing her to reach this "hysterical paroxysm." This turned out to be messy though, so a British doctor in the 1880's created the first vibrator. It became a permanent fixture in many doctor's offices. Here is the picture.
Ask your Grandmother if she ever went to the doctor for "hysteria".
I love history and I love medicine. My grandfather moved to Texas in a covered wagon in 1901, and before his death he was flying around the country in a jumbo jet plane. I think the people of my generation will live to see a vaccine for HIV, a cure for parkinson's disease, alzheimers, and perhaps cancer. I think we will see humankind set foot on Mars. What technological and medical advancement will our children live to see?
Best fucking post EVER!!!
That was amazing. I learned so much.
Such an interesting approach to instruction...you could consider teaching.
Crediting you, of course, I'm going to copy and paste this into my MySpace blog.
Posted by
Magdalena |
8:58 PM
P.S. Let me know if you want me to delete it.
Posted by
Magdalena |
8:59 PM
That was a pretty interesting post. Although I have to say I'm not to keen about asking my grandma to validate the vibrator theory. That makes me wanna vomit.
You should write text books.
Posted by
SXYMMA |
9:53 PM