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July 13 - July 27, 2017
If you were a peasant and someone said, “If you live in a sewer, the bubonic plague won’t kill you,” your reaction likely wouldn’t be, “I am curious to hear the science behind that.” Your response would be, “Point me to the nearest sewer.”
(Fun fact: you can’t kill someone by finely grinding up glass and mixing it in their food. Either they’d be able to detect it, or it would be too finely ground to kill them. I’m too smart for you, potential murderers who are after my history-book-writing fortune.)
Part of the bias against frogs might be because they were associated with this cure. The “exploding frog cure” was almost certainly not its technical name. It’s definitely the only way I’ll ever refer to it, though.
This may be the most insane, ineffective cure in the world, but if you have the opportunity to travel back in time, please go see it performed, even though visiting the fourteenth century is dumb, so dumb, just so dumb.
I realize that “Do No Harm” is the first rule of medicine, but “Don’t apply human shit to an open wound” seems like a good second one.
But the bubonic plague never went away entirely. It still exists today. The World Health Organization reports that in 2013 there were 783 cases worldwide; 126 people died.
If you have been out hiking in a dry area like the American Southwest and find egg-shaped growths developing under your armpit, it is exceedingly important that you go to a doctor within twenty-four hours. Maybe it’s a normal rash, but maybe you have the plague, so you should check that out really quickly, as quickly as you can.
:-O
If you have to choose between living in an isolated, uncaring community with plentiful penicillin or a very warm and loving world without drugs, team up with the guys with penicillin. It’s a lot easier to make people nicer than it is to develop medicine.
At the time, though, vaccination was controversial. Many were opposed.
When smallpox vaccine was invented, unlike now, vaccine was controversial
In a 1911 issue of American Magazine, Sir William Osler, M.D., addressed the people who refused to vaccinate against smallpox: Here I would like to say a word or two upon one of the most terrible of all acute infections, the one of which we first learned the control through the work of Jenner. A great deal of literature has been distributed casting discredit upon the value of vaccination in the prevention of small-pox. I do not see how anyone who has gone through epidemics as I have, or who is familiar with the history of the subject, and who has any capacity left for clear judgement, can
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Parents refusing to vaccinate their children are doing something akin to allowing their kids to run about in traffic because they are irrationally afraid of sidewalks or they believe being struck by an oncoming car might be good in the long run.
If you believe the many biographies of great men and women, none of them ever had syphilis.
This might be a good time to mention that if you learn about an airborne virus that seems to be killing otherwise healthy young people in your area from a reputable medical journal, you are reading very bad news.
Well, Zimbabwe now has a higher immunization rate for one-year-olds against measles (around 95 percent) than the United States does. So do 112 other countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).37 We are down to a 91 percent vaccination rate for measles, which, according to the WHO, makes us much more vulnerable to outbreaks.
Refusing to vaccinate puts at risk not just your children but the people in our communities who most require our protection. This is a substantial downside for people deciding to protect their kids via star signs and “good vibes” instead of medicine.
