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Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the first gunshots of the Civil War -and the first gunshot wounds. As it turns out, the bloodiest war in American history was also one of the most influential in battlefield medicine. Civil War surgeons learned fast, and many of their MacGyver-like solutions have had lasting impact. Here are some of the advances and the people behind them.
Life Saving Amputation: The General who Visited his Leg
The old battlefield technique of trying to save limbs with doses of TLC (aided by wound-cleaning rats and maggots) quickly fell out of favor During the Civil War, even for top officers. The sheer number of injured was too high, and war surgeons quickly discovered the best way to stave deadly infections was to simply lop off the area -quickly.
Among those saved by the saw was Daniel E. Sickles, the eccentric commander of the 3rd Army Corps. In 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg, the major general’s right leg was shattered by a Confederate shell. Within the hour, the leg was amputated just above the knee. His procedure, publicized in the military press, paved the way for many more. Since the new Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. had requested battlefield donations, Sickles sent the limb to them in a box labeled “With the compliments of Major General D.E.S.” Sickles visited his leg yearly on the anniversary of its emancipation.
Daniel Sickles' leg on display at the the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
(Image credit: Wikipedia user Nis Hoff)
Amputation saved more lives than any other wartime medical procedure by instantly turning complex injuries into simple ones. Battlefield surgeons eventually took no longer than six minutes to get each moaning man on the table, apply a handkerchief soaked in chloroform or ether, and make the deep cut. Union surgeons became the most skilled limb hackers in history. Even in deplorable conditions, they lost only about 25 percent of their patients -compared to a 75 percent mortality rate among similarly injured civilians at the time. The techniques invented by wartime surgeons -including cutting as far from the heart as possible and never slicing through joints- became the standard.
As for the nutty-sounding behavior of the leg-visiting commander, Sickles can be justifiably accused. In 1859, while serving in Congress, he shot and killed U.S. Attorney Philip Barton Key for sleeping with Sickles’ wife. Charged with murder, Sickles became the first person in the United States to be found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
The Anesthesia Inhaler: A Knockout Breakthrough
In 1863, Stonewall Jackson’s surgeon recommended the removal of his left arm, which had been badly damaged by friendly fire. When a chloroform-soaked cloth was placed over his nose, the Confederate general, in great pain, muttered, “What an infinite blessing,” before going limp.
Stephen Gaeta (featured previously) is a doctor and an artist. He uses visual humor to illustrate medicine and typography to create art about science. This graphic called Transgenic is composed of the text from the DNA of chromosome 1 of the human gene. It’s a very long code! See the full size version at his site. Link
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Just like humans, when an animal loses a leg or other important body part, a prosthetic can mean the difference between living a normal life and struggling on a day to day basis. Here are ten stories of animals that suffered loss and then learned to live with a new adaptation to their body.
While some people criticize the efforts put into these prosthetics, particularly in species that are not under threat of extinction, it is important to realize that these developments could help save a critical breeding member of an endangered species one day. Additionally, many of these techniques are brand new and by testing them on animals, researchers are developing useful insights to see if they may one day work on humans. If you end up losing a body part and get a bionic replacement twenty years from now, you might just have a cat or dog to thank for your top-of-the-line prosthetic.
Oscar lost his two rear legs in an accident with a combine harvester. After losing so much blood, his owners were told to expect the worst, but even after he survived the ordeal, their vet warned that cats rarely live happy lives with only two legs. Fortunately, he referred Oscars owners, Kate Allen and Mike Nolan to a veterinary surgeon who specializes in state-of-the-art animal medicine.
After looking at Oscar’s situation, Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick agreed to take on the new patient, surgically fitting him with implants that can eventually be attached to prosthetic paws. The surgery makes Oscar a notable kitty as he is the first cat to ever have prosthetic paws.
While the process was a success, Oscar’s paws haven’t yet been perfected for outdoor use. He has been made to be a house cat for the rest of his life, but really…that’s not all that bad now is it, especially when you consider how he was injured in the first place.
The first animal to receive such treatment though was Storm, a Belgian Sheperd, who lost his paw after it became infected with a tumor. The same vet that would later provide Oscar with his bionic paws, Noel Fitzpatrick, was the first to offer this service to any animal and Storm was the perfect candidate. Fitzpatrick says that he hopes his developments can eventually be used to help soldiers returning from Iraq and victims of the July 7th bombings in London.
Earlier this year, Naki’o became the first dog in the world to be fitted with a full set of bionic paws from Orthopets, a leader in the pet prosthetics industry. Far from just helping him walk easier, the paws are so well attached that he can now run and swim just as he did before the accident. Naki’o lost his paws due to severe frostbite after his previous owners abandoned him to fend for himself throughout the freezing winter in Nebraska. Despite the fact that the poor pup had to crawl on his stomach to move, he still found a loving adoptive family who worked tirelessly to raise the money to get Naki’o the prosthetics he desperately needed. Their efforts paid off as Naki’o is now thrilled to have his bionic paws and is eager to run, jump and fetch with his new family.
When you watch a movie or TV show featuring characters in your own profession, it’s natural to criticize the fact that the writers are not as familiar with that profession as someone who actually does it for a living. It would be nice to get professional credit for such criticism, wouldn’t it? A doctor from the Netherlands managed to get his study published in a medical journal from research obtained by reading romance novels. The eight novels were set in the world of medicine, and the actual medicine in this fiction was found to be “sometimes incorrect.”
CONCLUSION: The doctors novels which were studied give an unbalanced and distorted view of medical practice. The medical information was sometimes incorrect, partly due to lack of knowledge by the author, partly due to incorrect translation from English. The reality of medical practice was not represented accurately in either of the series investigated, although the medical information in the ‘Doctors novels’ series appeared to be accurate more often than that in the ‘Dr. Anne’ series.
I wonder if he got a grant for this. Read more at Improbable Research. Link
From diamond patches to genetic modifications, these might sound like they are merely sci-fi ideas, but they are real. Check out some of the most futuristic cancer cures being tested right now over at Cracked.
Bees have an impressive sense of smell and New Zealand biologists now believe they may be able to train them to help identify people with tuberculosis by the faint floral odor victims of the disease develop.
“When we tested them with the tuberculosis odours we found the bees can still smell it down to parts per billion,” says Max Suckling.
Christchurch zoologists are training bees to associate the smell of the disease with a sweet treat and to stick out their tongues when it’s present.
While TB is common worldwide, it is most prevalent in poverty stricken areas and the bees could provide an inexpensive screening solution for these people.
Link Via BoingBoing
Image Via Dendroica cerulea [Flickr]
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Doctors save lives every day, but as in any profession, there are a few bad apples. The manslaughter conviction of Michael Jackson’s personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray inspired this list of horrible doctors. For example, there’s Dr. Prabir Kumar Ghosh, who had a perfectly logical explanation for working while drunk:
A doctor in India was arrested recently when he showed up drunk for his emergency room shift. It may not have been the first time he knocked back a few before turning up for work: local complaints said that he’s been drunk on the job for years. Dr. Prabir Kumar Ghosh admitted he was intoxicated but said he had his reasons, one of which was that he was simply trying to relieve his joint pain. If only he could’ve gotten to a hospital for proper treatment, then this whole problem could’ve been avoided and… oh, wait. Never mind.
There’s more medical misery and malpractice at Ranker. Link
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Scientists sometimes have an experiment in mind that would be unethical, or more likely too dangerous, to ask volunteers to submit to. If the scientist wants to know the answer badly enough, he (these six are all men) may just use himself as the experimental subject, no matter what the danger. You’d have to be pretty curious to inject yourself with a deadly disease like cholera.
Pettenkofer was a late 19th century medical researcher and public health advocate who developed the very first large-scale pure-water system in Munich, Germany. And even though that’s probably very impressive, from now until the day you die, if you remember anything about Pettenkofer, it will be this: Max Josef von Pettenkofer drank a steaming cup of cholera bacteria that he cultured from a patient’s diarrhea bombs.
Yeah, he got sick. But he didn’t get sick enough to die, and Pettenkofer considered that proof of his theory that the cholera bacterium needed a victim who practiced poor sanitation. Of course, one could argue that without poor sanitation, the bacterium wouldn’t be spread, outside of scientists who ingested it on purpose. Anyway, read about Pettenkofer and five other scientists at Cracked. Link
The Science Museum of Minnesota obtained the collection of the Museum of Quackery and Medical Frauds and set it up as the “Questionable Medical Device” collection.
This collection of dubious medical devices reminds us that sometimes, medicine is best left to the doctors. Exhibits on display include a phrenological machine that gauges personality by measuring the size of bumps on the head, a foot-powered breast enlarger, and glasses and soap products designed for weight-loss.
You can still have your phrenology read by the fully functional machine today, and as the machine outlines the bumps on your skull, the phrenology reader “maps” intelligence, morality, and much more. Machines such as these were all the rage at State Fairs of the early 1900s, as were other questionable medical devices. The infomercials of their time, these snake oils and pseudoscience gadgets could cure impotence, tell how smart you were, and make you live forever.
Read more about this strange museum within a museum at Atlas Obscura. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user A.M. Kuchling)
Being a medical doctor is prestigious, but it’s not easy. Dr. Diego, Dr. Harry, and ZDoggMD sing about their work in this parody of “Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae. Read the stories that inspired the song at ZDoggMD. Link
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3D printers have been used to create some amazing things, from robot parts to minecraft models to flexible solar panels, but nothing compares to being able to print out body parts for surgery!
In Germany, researchers have created artificial blood vessels by putting a mix of synthetic polymers and biomolecules, so that the vessels aren’t rejected, into the 3d printer ink reservoirs, and the results are a finely detailed set of transplant worthy capillaries precisely detailed in every way.
Now that they have succeeded in creating blood vessels, researchers are looking at ways in which to print out internal organs and bones. I wonder how much those ink cartridges cost to replace?
Link -image via Fraunhofer IGB
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President Cleveland
When Grover Cleveland contracted cancer, it didn’t kill his career; it killed someone else’s.
In early June of 1893, President Grover Cleveland discovered a large tumor on the roof of his mouth. The cancer was progressing quickly. Doctors determined that if the patient were to survive, the growth had to be removed. But the procedure was complicated, and Cleveland’s doctors feared the surgery could trigger a stroke. There was also a 15 percent chance in those days that the president could die under the knife. After weighing his options, Cleveland chose to have the tumor removed, under one condition: The operation had to be conducted in total secrecy. The president feared that Wall Street -already reeling from falling stock in the midst of a depression- would panic if news of his illness leaked. Even his vice president, Adlai Stevenson, was to be kept in the dark.
On the morning of June 30th, under the cover of night, President Cleveland and six of the nation’s finest physicians assembled on board the Oneida, a yacht anchored in New York harbor. Sitting in a deck chair, the president smoked cigars and chatted amiably with the men as the boat set sail for Long Island Sound. The following morning, the doctors scrambled below deck to prepare for the surgery. In lieu of an operating table, a large chair was bound to the mast in the yacht’s parlor. A single light bulb, connected to a portable battery, would provide all the light. The doctors boiled their instruments and pulled crisp white aprons over their dark suits. Shortly after noon, the president entered the parlor and took his seat.
Using nitrous oxide and ether as anesthetics, the doctors removed the tumor, along with five teeth and much of Cleveland’s upper left palate and jawbone. The procedure lasted 90 minutes. It also took place wholly within the patient’s mouth, so that no external scars would betray the clandestine operation.
Four days later, on July 5, Cleveland was dropped off at his summer home on Cape Cod.
He healed remarkably fast. By the middle of July, he was fitted with a vulcanized rubber prosthetic that plugged the hole in his mouth and restored his normal speaking voice. All the while, the public was told that the president had merely suffered a toothache.
THE HEALTH CARE CONTROVERSY
Elisha Edwards
On August 29, The Philadelphia Press published an expose by Elisha Jay Edwards. The headline read, “The President a Very Sick Man.” Edwards, the paper’s Manhattan correspondent, had been tipped off by a New York doctor who’s heard rumors of a secret surgery. After some additional digging, Edwards located Ferdinand Hasbrouck, the dentist who had administered the anesthetic to Cleveland, and verified the details.
The Philadelphia Press story was remarkably accurate. In fact, it still stands as one of the greatest scoops in the history of American journalism. But it wasn’t perceived that way by the public. The Cleveland administration categorically denied the charges and launched a smear campaign to discredit and embarrass the reporter. Newspapers denounced Edwards as a “disgrace to journalism” and a “calamity liar.” The tactics were effective. The public sided with Cleveland, who’d built his reputation as the “Honest President.” Meanwhile, Edwards’ career was effectively ruined. For the next 15 years, the veteran reporter could barely find work. In 1909, he landed a job as a columnist for a struggling young newspaper called The Wall Street Journal. But Edwards’ career was still tainted by the allegations that he’d faked the story about Grover Cleveland.
Dr. W.W. Keen
One of the doctors who performed the surgery, W.W. Keen, always regretted how Edwards had been so unjustly maligned. In 1917, a quarter-century after the operation and a decade after Cleveland’s death, Keen finally decided to do something about it. He published a confessional in The Saturday Evening Post, hoping to “vindicate Mr. Edwards’ character as a truthful correspondent.” The admission was successful. The old newspaperman was inundated with congratulatory letters and telegrams, and the outpouring deeply moved him. Edwards even wrote to Keen to thank him for restoring his reputation.
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The article above is reprinted with permission from the July-August 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!
No one wants to come out of a lake or river covered in leeches and if your doctor pulls them out, you probably ought to run away as fast as you can…that is, unless you have arthritis. As it turns out, they can be particularly useful in those cases:
Slap four leeches on your knee and after 80 minutes, the pain and stiffness of osteoarthritis melts away. Of the 16 patients in the trial, the 10 who received leech therapy felt instant relief after application, and the comfort lasted for four weeks. The control patients continued experiencing pain. Researchers claim the leeches’ saliva works as an anti-inflammatory.
The man calling himself the Eyeborg has put together a short documentary detailing modern bionics and cutting edge prosthetics, part of which was filmed using his eye camera.
Rob Spence lost his eye in a firearm accident a few years back, but the filmmaker refused to stop doing what he loved, so he had a prosthetic eye camera specially designed, and thus became the first person to have a implanted camera replace their eye.
Square Enix are Rob’s newest sponsors, and they have commissioned him to make a video that compares modern prosthetics and bionics to the bodily enhancements found in the new game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Follow either of the links below and check out this amazing, cutting edge video by the first bionic cameraman, and see how medical science is quickly catching up to science fiction.
When you think about it, Winnie the Pooh makes a lot more sense when you consider all of the characters simply live inside of a mental institution. Dan Meth hit the nail on the head with this great medication chart.
Link via Laughing Squid
A new rave scene is about to kick off in your local doctors office, but this time the glow sticks won’t be the only things that are glowing-your guts will be too. That’s because researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University recently developed a fluorescent protein that will illuminate the inside of our bodies like never before, making internal organs far more visible, even if they appear downright toxic, and eliminating the need to cut the patient open in order to see what’s going on inside.
Link Image via Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
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The other day, I posted a story about Jax, the pup allergic to grass, but Oddee has since compiled a list of 6 more animals who have strange allergies. Above is Joey, who is allergic to meat and has to eat potatoes and porridge every day instead. Read about the rest at the link.
How do you diagnose a 150 pound turtle with seizures when she’s too big for a standard MRI machine? Find an MRI that’s big enough to fit her inside and then send her on the 300 mile long journey to the medical center where the machine is located. Fortunately, while the cause of the problem is still uncertain, Snorkel seems to be doing ok and tests have confirmed that she doesn’t have any cancer or brain tumors.
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Miss C’s most recent Mental Floss article features 8 amazingly heroic dogs. My favorite story is the one about Belle, a beagle who has been trained to recognize when her diabetic owner, Kevin Weaver, should check his blood sugar levels. Even more impressive, she’s may have saved his life when he went into a seizure by biting down on the #9 on his cell phone, which called 911. Now that’s a good dog.
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Walter Freeman was one of the biggest proponents of the “ice pick” lobotomy, performing more than 3,000 during his lifetime. He’s one of the ten most dangerous doctors to have ever lived and you can read more about him and the rest of these men in this great Ty.rannosaur.us article.
Every spring, many thousands of Westerners travel high in the Himalayas to climb Everest and other mountains. Because of them, many thousands of Nepalese work to guide them, carry their belongings, and build facilities for the tourists -all at altitudes at which people do not normally live. Dr. Luanne Freer established a medical clinic at Everest Base Camp in 2003 to address the health issues that come with high-altitude tourism. Not only was the base camp area lacking medical expertise, but local people who worked in the tourism industry (and could not pay for care) were being ignored elsewhere.
The ER’s locale might be glamorous, but the work is often not. Headaches, diarrhea, upper respiratory infections, anxiety and ego-related issues disguised as physical ailments are the clinic’s daily bread and butter. And although the clinic’s resources have expanded dramatically over the past nine years, there is no escaping the fact that this is a seasonal clinic housed in a canvas tent located at 17,590 feet. When serious incidents do occur, Freer and her colleagues must problem solve with a severely limited toolbox. Often the handiest implement is duct tape.
“There is no rule book that says, ‘When you’re at 18,000 feet and this happens, do x.’ Medicine freezes solid, tubing snaps in the icy winds, batteries die—nothing is predictable,” says Freer. But it’s that challenge that keeps Freer and many of her colleagues coming back. This back-to-basics paradigm also engenders a more old-fashioned doctor-patient relationship that Freer misses when practicing in the States.
Read more about Dr. Freer and she clinic she established at Smithsonian. Link
(Image credit: Molly Loomis)
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It has to be the toughest decision anyone could make, but a man has decided to voluntarily amputate his hand. However this looks like a better alternative as he is going to replace his damaged limb with a bionic one.
An Austrian man has voluntarily had his hand amputated so he can be fitted with a bionic limb. The patient, called “Milo”, aged 26, lost the use of his right hand in a motorcycle accident a decade ago. After his stump heals in several weeks’ time, he will be fitted with a bionic hand which will be controlled by nerve signals in his own arm.
Update: Also check out this great video of Milo using his new hand: Video Link
We use the term “snake oil” for anything promoted as a cure-all that doesn’t work, whether it is medicine or political policy. But back in the 1860s, Chinese immigrants who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad used oil from the Chinese water snake to treat sore muscles, and it worked!
A 2007 story in Scientific American explains that California neurophysiology researcher Richard Kunin made the connection between Chinese water snakes and omega-3 fatty acids in the 1980s.
“Kunin visited San Francisco’s Chinatown to buy such snake oil and analyze it. According to his 1989 analysis published in the Western Journal of Medicine, Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), one of the two types of omega-3 fatty acids most readily used by our bodies. Salmon, one of the most popular food sources of omega-3s, contains a maximum of 18 percent EPA, lower than that of snake oil.”
However, it wasn’t until several years after Kunin’s research that American scientists discovered that omega-3s are vital for human metabolism. Not only do they sooth inflammation in muscles and joints, but also, they can help “cognitive function and reduce blood pressure, cholesterol, and even depression.”
So how did “snake oil” come to mean a scam? The rest of the story is at Collectors Weekly. Link -Thanks, Ben!
This brilliant animation begins with a man doing restoration on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The ladder he’s working from is knocked out from under him and he sustains serious injuries when he falls to the ground. Can modern science put him back together? Perhaps, but he may have some trouble getting through airport security from now on.
Ghost Productions is a medical animation studio that produces surgical training, patient education and marketing materials for medical device manufacturers, hospitals, pharmacological firms, television stations, and public health organizations.
Link – Via Kuriositas
Dr. ZDogg and Dr. Harry are physicians and comedians who bring you medical advice that you can laugh at, or entertainment that might save your life. They’ve produced several musical videos on subjects ranging from a doctor’s workday to STDs. One in particular instructs men on how to check for testicular cancer. The video made me laugh out loud alone in the room, but is just slightly too adult to embed here.
I awoke one morning from a vivid fever dream in which the heavenly spirit of Michael Jackson appeared to me in the form of a sequined glove lovingly grasping a perfectly smooth oblong jade stone. On closer inspection, the stone had a small flaw that slowly, menacingly enlarged, until the entire dreamspace filled with its malignant presence. MJ’s distinctive voice intoned, “They’re ignorant, Dr. Dogg, they must be taught. Touch these young males in a way that I am no longer able to. Hee hee…OOOH!”
My dream-self shifted uneasily, and before the King of Pop could finish I awoke to find myself drenched in sweat, one hand “down there,” instinctively curled in a primitive protective gesture. It was this very fever sweat, noted so crudely by Dr. Harry in his screed above, that dampened the axillae of my garment. Having rushed to his home to convey the high mission given us, I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm at the prospect of shielding the young from such a cancerous scourge.
You have to see it for yourself. And guys, be sure to check yourselves every month. Link -Thanks, Zubin!
Comments Off You know that placebos can relieve pain, but did you know you can suffer withdrawal symptoms after taking them? This video from Professor Funk has a lot more about placebos and how they work. -via Nag on the Lake
Comments Off Snake Oils, Hangover Cures, and Other Questionable Medicine
THE DOCTOR IS IN (THE BARN)
Folk medicine in Ireland used to rely heavily on the belief that you could magically transfer an illness from a person to an animal (usually a pig or a donkey). These “transference cures” were especially popular for treating mumps and whooping cough, and it’s no wonder that when Irish immigrants settled in America, they brought the practice of transference with them. Of course, understanding the origin gives a little insight into why some people in Appalachia used to swear that the surest cure for a crick in the neck was nuzzling up to a tree recently rubbed against by a hog. (Image credit: Flickr user Dave Morris)
A LIVER WILD
Folk medicine wasn’t just about faking cures; sometimes practitioners went that extra mile and invented entire diseases. Take “white liver”, an ailment that supposedly caused white spots to appear on said organ, but whose external symptoms affected organs of a different kind. Sufferers of white liver, which were primarily women, were said to have insatiable sex drives. In the 19th-century American South, women who had survived more than one husband were sometimes known as “white livered widders.” The proof being that they had, in fact, pleased their husbands into an early grave.
HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
Hawkers of quack medicine were always in search of a fortune, but occasionally they lucked into fame as well. In the late 19th century, the seven daughters of former preacher Fletcher Sutherland found their ticket to stardom when they started selling a vegetable oil, alcohol, and water mixture marketed under the name Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower. With a collective hair length of 37 feet, the girls were their own best advertisement, and they knew it. The sisters toured the country as drug reps for 38 years, eventually becoming some of the best-known women in America and earning millions of dollars. Not even death could stop their public relations steamroller. When the youngest of the lot, Naomi, died in 1893, the others simply replaced her with a well-maned actress. But, as anyone who’s watched “E! True Hollywood Story” knows, fame is a harsh mistress. By the 1920s, the sisters were broke. Promises of starring in a movie version of their lives brought them to Hollywood, but the deal fell through. Shortly thereafter, when another sister died, the five remaining girls (unable to afford a burial) were forced to leave her ashed in California.
OIL RIGGING
Snakes -you just can’t trust ‘em. First they go around getting us humans kicked out of Paradise, then they trick us into believing their oil is going to cure what ails us. Turns out, the whole snake-oil scheme started in the late 19th century and took flight thanks to a cowboy named Clarke Stanley, known as “The Rattlesnake King”. At the time, snake fat was believed to have curative powers, and no snake-fat solution was more curative than “Stanley’s Snake Oil”. The king made a name for himself hawking his wares at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where he dressed in flamboyant Western togs and convinced thousands of customers that his oil could (and would) cure everything under the sun. We’re talking mosquito bites to rheumatism! Despite snake oil’s miraculous reputation, though, Stanley was careful to point out that it was for external use only. Good thing. When the U.S. government finally ran some tests on the stuff in 1917, they found out that our “oil” tycoon had slipped in a few ingredients you wouldn’t want going down the hatch, including: mineral oil, used as a laxative; camphor oil, which is used primarily in perfume or as an embalming fluid; and turpentine, a key ingredient in paint stripper. As for the promised rattler nectar, good ole Stanley had used easier-to-acquire beef fat instead.
TURN YOUR HEAD AND COUGH
Hairballs aren’t so pretty when they turn up on your rug, but during the Renaissance, these gross gastrointestinal phenomena were prized for their healing powers. And while we’re familiar with the wet, stringy hairballs that kitty hacks up, the pharmaceutical version, called bezoars, were glassy masses formed in the stomachs of goats and other cud-chewing animals. People believed these compressed hair and food balls could suck poison or even rabies out of the body. In fact, members of the Medici family, who controlled much of Europe at that time, carried them around obsessively for protective purposes (though not without reason, as poisoning members of the Medici family was something of a continental sport). Bezoars live on in today’s medical literature, but mostly in the psychiatry section. Doctors occasionally have to remove them from stomachs of people who obsessively chew on their hair.
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The above article was reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the September-October 2004 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
In 1989, a shipwreck from about 130 B.C. was discovered. Divers retrieved dishes and other artifacts. One surprising discovery was a chest of vials and containers with tablets in them, some still dry! Evolutionary geneticist Robert Fleischer said they were made of compressed vegetation.
“It was assumed the pills were medicines that the physicians were using. There were things associated with this chest that led them to believe it was a physician’s chest,” said Fleischer.
Using DNA sequencing, Fleischer has identified some of the plant components in the tablets: carrot, radish, parsley, celery, wild onion, cabbage, alfalfa, oak and hibiscus.
Researchers are looking into the ingredients to determine what they were for. Speculation is that the tablets were used to treat dysentery, which was common among ancient sailors. Link
(Image credit: Harry A. Alden)
If you thought bloodletting, maggots and leeches were all outdated in our modern world, you were wrong. In fact, they are only a handful of the many bizarro medical treatments that will leave you both disgusted and fascinated with their effectiveness when you read about strange medical treatments that are actually quite useful.
To be fair, bloodletting is far from a cure-all like medieval doctors believed, but it is still a useful practice in some cases. When someone suffers from excess iron, known as hemochromatosis, bloodletting is an effective means of releasing the built up iron. The treatment is also used to help people who have too many red blood cells in their blood stream, a condition known as polycythemia.
I know most people think the last thing they should ever see at a hospital is a maggot, but they can actually be a quite effective and sanitary way to treat wounds that do not respond to conventional medicinal treatments. The bowfly larvae eat away dead tissue and bacteria, allowing the healthy, living tissue to thrive. “I call them microsurgeons,” said Edgar Maeyens, Jr., a doctor in Coos Bay, Oregon, who employs maggot treatment. “They can do what we can’t do with scalpels and lasers.”
In many cases, the maggots can help treat festering wounds that have been open for weeks, even years, within only a day or two. While the treatment is pretty gross looking, patients rarely feel anything and when they do, it’s generally an itching or tickling sensation and nothing more.
Image via OakleyOriginals [Flickr]
What happens when you cross bloodletting and maggot therapy, you get bloodsucking leech therapy. Of course, the leeches aren’t used for everything, including headaches and ear infections, like they were in medieval times; instead they are used to help drain blood from swollen parts of the body after reconstructive surgery. Doctors find they are particularly helpful when the areas contain many blood vessels that can easily clot up, like the ear.
New studies are underway to find the effectiveness of leeches in other treatments, such as the reduction of pain and inflammation of osteoarthritis.
Apparently there have been thousands of micro-surgeons swarming the earth before mankind began, we just never had the science to back them up until now. Worm therapy is yet another insect treatment that is quite promising, and incredibly disgusting. The treatment involves the use of a parasitic worm (the type depends on the specific condition) being intentionally released within the patient’s body.
While scientists have still not drawn any firm conclusions as to the effectiveness of this treatment and the reason it seems to work, preliminary studies have been largely favorable in showing the parasites do have a positive effect. The worms have been used in a variety of treatments including celiac disease, Chron’s disease, allergies, asthma, multiple sclerosis and ulcerative colitis.
Image via AJC1 [Flickr]
How did they treat syphilis before antibiotics were discovered? With a little dose of malaria, that’s how. While it sounds crazy, this treatment is relatively effective. The high fever from the malaria kills the syphilis bacteria and malaria can then be treated with quinine.
If you ever find yourself suffering from syphilis and happen to have malaria treatments on hand, but no antibiotics, you can always try this treatment. Otherwise, it has fallen out of favor since we now have safer methods to treat the STD. Even so, it is still used in some parts of the world.
Image via psd [Flickr]
If you were grossed out by any of the other treatments so far, then you may want to skip past this probiotic treatment. Fecal bacteroetherapy is exactly what it sounds like, the treatment of certain diseases with fecal mater. It works by transplanting healthy fecal material from a donor and then inserting it anally via enema into the patient. The healthy bacteria from the sample are believed to help restore normality to the patient.
The treatment is considered quite effective for treating severe inflammatory bowel disorder and may be a good alternative treatment for Chron’s disease and a few other conditions.
Image via locator [Flickr]
Smoking is a bad habit in most cases, but people at high risk of developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson disease may find the benefits to be worth the risks as studies have shown a 50% reduction in these diseases in smokers.
What’s the weirdest treatment you’ve ever undergone?
Source: National Geographic, Live Science, Wikipedia, Neatorama, Health Mad
