Things That Are Awesome
And everything else here.
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Just a short article about how much cooler my exact job would be if I were on that side of the Atlantic. I really need to do grad school over there.
For bonus points, I’ve stood on top of the thing in the last picture.
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You know that little box that shows up on the right side of the dashboard sometimes that lists two potentially interesting blogs your friends follow and one massively hipster piece of artsy crap? The non-useful-friends blog mine just suggested is Biomedical Ephemera. The pre-generated Tumblr ad thing randomly rolled to give me the most interesting and relevant blog it possibly could instead of something like galaxystarfashionqueen or fixies4lyfe or fuckyeahpbr.
This is so astounding it deserved its own post. Now go follow the blog full of creepy historical medical stuff.
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Antique surgical instruments, tonsil guillotine.
Very cool.
Tonsil guillotine.
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Demonstrating the use of a new model of prosthetic arm.
ca. 1950, Walter Reed Hospital
Putting this up for personal reference, do dee do…
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German medic in early-WWI gas mask
The first “masks” to protect against the deadly gasses such as chlorine (as they could actually result in fatalities, unlike the earliest gasses, which were only lachrymatory agents), were no more than damp cloths placed over the nose and mouth. It was believed that dampening the cloths with concentrated urine was more effective than simple water.
As the war went on, masks naturally got better, and easier to put on, so the effectiveness of gas weapons decreased significantly.
Wow, that filter looks like it inspired the Medigun/pack on TF2’s Medic pretty directly. Very cool.
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“May 1870 reciept for purchase of medical leeches” (The History of Medical Leeches)
Robbie and I almost went in halfsies on a medical leech, but didn’t know where we’d get raw meat to feed it in Beloit. Owning one or more is on my personal bucket list.
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A near complete French workshop kit displaying a wide range of the impeccable craftsmanship of bridges, crowns, prosthetic and porcelain teeth c.1920 by Vecabe.
I need a box of teeth.
(Source: shigella)
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Treponema pallidum manifestations
Top Right: Treponema pallidum pallidum - Venereal Syphilis
Top Left: Treponema pallidum pertenue - Gangosa (Yaws)
Bottom: Treponema pallidum pertenue - Frambosia (Yaws)The spirochete Trepanoma pallidum has several subspecies that affect man, though only T. p. pallidum (syphilis) is transmitted via sexual contact. The other common disease caused by the spirochete is yaws. This tropical disease was largely ignored for most of the 20th century, as it rarely affects affluent countries.
Its course of infection can sometimes resemble syphilis, with the ulcerating gummas, multiple stages of infection, and destruction of tissues, but it is transmitted via skin-to-skin contact, and is not known to cross the placental membrane (meaning that, unlike syphilis, babies cannot be born with it). The tissue destruction within the muscles, skin, and bones, is a feature of tertiary yaws, which arises years after the initial infection. When the facial tissues are destroyed, the disease is commonly called gangosa.
[A Treatise on the Diseases of the Skin. Henry W. Stelwagon, 1923]
[Human Parasitology. Damaso Rivas, 1920.]
Syphilis is arbitrarily my favourite disease. And now you have to look at it and its cousins on your dash full of art and kittens and fan stuff. You’re welcome.
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Doctors performing surgery in an underground operating room in the south Pacific, WWII.
(Source: undead-medic)
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Antique Medical Steel Skull Trephine Hand Drill Trepanning
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Lupus Erythematosus
The autoimmune disease known as lupus is most commonly found in women of childbearing age (15-35), but has the potential to affect anyone. It’s also known as “the great imitator”, as the symptoms that people experience can mimic many other diseases and conditions.
The most common form of lupus, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), is often more easy to diagnose than other forms of the disease - it produces a very distinct “butterfly” rash over the cheeks and nose in over 90% of cases. Though many people with lupus live regular and long lives these days, it wasn’t always that way. The effects of the autoimmune attacks on the heart, liver, and kidneys tended to kill patients within 10 years after diagnosis, and within a much shorter time span in those who had severe manifestations of the condition.
A Treatise on the Diseases of the Skin. Henry W. Stelwagon and Henry Kennedy Gaskill, 1923.
This time it’s lupus.
It’s also known as “the great imitator”, as the symptoms that people experience can mimic many other diseases and conditions.
Heh.
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Ways to Die: Poisonous Plants
Humans have been out to get each other since before we were even Homo sapiens sapiens. For the strong and the brash, there was always outright physical violence; a club to the head or a knife to the throat was a simple way to destroy an unsuspecting rival.
But humanity had more than just violence at its disposal. Those inclined to plan and use their brains over their brawn found that there was an easier way to kill, one that would not risk their own body in an attack, or let others know who killed their rival, or even if the rival was killed by another person in the first place.
Enter: POISONS. Historically largely derived from plants, humans have murdered each other, and at times themselves, using various species of plants. There is an expansive list of plants that can potentially kill a human, but a few have gained reputations over the millenia as premier agents of death…
- Acontium spp. - Wolfsbane or Monkshood: A genus of over 250 beautifully flowering plants, closely related to the buttercup. Grows throughout Eurasia, cultivated worldwide.
Acontium sp. was used by the Ainu of Japan to hunt bears, and A. napellus is used by the Minaro of Ladakhi to hunt ibex. A probable culprit in multiple Borgia murders. Large doses are almost instantaneously fatal. Causes poisoning similar to that of pufferfish - tetrodotoxin-sensitive channels are open, and flaccid paralysis will quickly ensue following exposure. - Cicuta maculata - Spotted Water Hemlock, Snakeweed, or Spotted Cowbane: The most deadly plant in North America, due to its roots occasionally being mistaken for wild parsnip.
Cicuta virosa killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother, due to its ingestion by a cow whose milk she drank. A relative of C. maculata, Conium maculatum (poison hemlock) was used in the death sentence of Socrates. - Datura stramonium - Jimsonweed, Thorn Apple, or Locoweed: A member of the nightshade (Solanaceae) family. Found mostly in North America, but other species of Datura exist in the rest of the Americas. Contains atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine, which lead to a complete inability to differentiate reality and fantasy (delirium - not hallucination as many people allege), tachycardia, hyperthermia, and bizarre/violent behavior patterns.
Tea made from Datura plants is sometimes alleged by quacks to be medicinally beneficial. It is not. Multiple people have come very close to death, and two (known) people have died in the United States because they thought it would have some positive hallucinogenic or medicinal effect upon them. The very unpleasant taste of the beans leads to few accidental deaths due to ingestion. - Strychnos nux-vomica - Strychnine Tree: Ahh, strychnine. Used as a poison in India from ancient times, and the source of a most unpleasant and violent death (or near-death episode). Strychnine causes prolonged grand mal seizures, due to the entire motor ganglia of the spinal cord being stimulated at one time, once the toxin makes it to the bloodstream.
Currently still used as a rodent poison in many parts of the world, but illegal in the United States. One of the most common agents of domestic murder in India and Pakistan today. Easily detected by mass spectroscopy, but despite several dozen murders in the US and Indoasian countries, specific testing for the agent is still not routine in those suspected to be poisoned. - Ricinus communis - Castor oil Plant: Indigenous to the Mediterranean, East Africa, and India. The attractive flowers have made this tree a popular installation in gardens throughout all tropical regions. This is where the toxic agent ricin comes from. This causes an extremely painful death, with convulsions, and intense conscious pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and spasms.
While its use in Africa as a “trial-by-fire” agent (if one did not die from ingesting the beans, they were innocent) has been around for centuries, its emergence in the West is relatively recent. In 1971, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was shot in the leg with a pellet of concentrated ricin from a weapon concealed inside an umbrella, and died four days later. Since then, over a dozen in the Western world have been convicted of murdering others with crushed castor beans, and several dozen other incidents are suspected.
Sources:
A Modern Herbal. Mrs. M. Grieve, 1931.
Plants and Civilization. Maintained by Prof. Arthur C. Gibson, from 1985 textbook.
- Acontium spp. - Wolfsbane or Monkshood: A genus of over 250 beautifully flowering plants, closely related to the buttercup. Grows throughout Eurasia, cultivated worldwide.
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Archeological remains of patients of brain surgery performed by ancient doctors of the Incan Empire in the 15th century.
Simon. 25. Archaeologist and general-purpose nerd. If a raised eyebrow could talk, that would be my narrative voice.
