I can't imagine what it was like to get your leg cut off with a hacksaw before they used general anesthesia. Yow!
Quote:
On amputating a leg: "Cut quick with a crooked knife before covering the stump with the remaining skin," French medical author Joseph Charriere recommended. On treating wounds: "If the wound be only in the flesh you may bathe it with brandy and cover the part with a compressed dip in a warm wine quickened with spir vini," Charriere wrote. "If the wound is to the nervous parts you can dissolve sugar candy, camphire and myrrh in it." (Charriere was kind of onto something: A study in 2007 found wine kills germs in the mouth and throat.)
I've read that back in the day, peasants and serfs had a much higher rate of survival for things that caused fevers, etc. than their nobility did, as they had no recourse but to let the body do its work, while nobility often injested various poisons and chemicals to "cure" these ailments.
I've read that back in the day, peasants and serfs had a much higher rate of survival for things that caused fevers, etc. than their nobility did, as they had no recourse but to let the body do its work, while nobility often injested various poisons and chemicals to "cure" these ailments.
Nobility and emperors always looked for things to achieve immortality.
Most of them ended up being poisoned
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One of the most horrific movie scenes that I ever saw was in the surgical scene in dances with wolves where they sawing through a soldiers leg, and he's screaming "Please stop"
My stomach turned.
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One of the most horrific movie scenes that I ever saw was in the surgical scene in dances with wolves where they sawing through a soldiers leg, and he's screaming "Please stop"
My stomach turned.
I thought the most horrific aspect of Dances With Wolves was Kevin Costner's acting.
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I've read that back in the day, peasants and serfs had a much higher rate of survival for things that caused fevers, etc. than their nobility did, as they had no recourse but to let the body do its work, while nobility often injested various poisons and chemicals to "cure" these ailments.
Well, it's a bit different. Certainly there was a lot of poisoning due to misunderstandings of nutrition and toxicity.
In ancient Rome, they didn't have many real sweetners aside from honey. What they did instead of make sugar of lead. Yep, of LEAD - pb. You treat lead with vinegar and you get Lead Acetate and of all things...this stuff is SWEET, better than Equal or Splenda or all the crap we have today. The problem is of course that it's made of lead and therefore it gives you lead poisoning and might have contributed to the fall of the roman empire.
Mercury or quicksilver, being seen as a magical substance, was eaten by the nobilities of countries all across the world up until the 20th century. Of course you then get mercury poisoning...
Then there is stuff with nutrition like in China and Japan where the poor had to eat unmilled rice and the rich would eat polished white rice because of wealth and status. Turns out you get beri beri because polishing rice removes all it's vitamins (like B1), minerals, and nutrition aside from base carbohydrates.
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OK, true enough! But isn't that was the FDA is for? Or the non union Canadian equivelent?
The Canadian equivalent is the sick and elderly, young, and infirm. They eat the Maple Leaf hams first, then you hear about it in the news and learn not to eat Maple Leaf ham.
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One of the most horrific movie scenes that I ever saw was in the surgical scene in dances with wolves where they sawing through a soldiers leg, and he's screaming "Please stop"
My stomach turned.
I think for me it was Master & Commander, a scene where he's patching people up ad blood is pouring in from the upper decks.
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I think for me it was Master & Commander, a scene where he's patching people up ad blood is pouring in from the upper decks.
My favorite picture books as a kid were the ones from that period, the hundred year wars, napoleonic wars, etc. and all the pictures of cannonballs smashing into ships and breaking off limbs and splinters exploding through people like a bloody mess and cannons rolling back and crushing crewmembers and the doctors madly hacksawing off arms and legs in the sickbay of the ships and all the graphics descriptions.
Next time I am at the local library, I have to remind myself to goto the kids section and find the Stephen Biesty books again. I haven't read one since 1995.
Well, it's a bit different. Certainly there was a lot of poisoning due to misunderstandings of nutrition and toxicity.
In ancient Rome, they didn't have many real sweetners aside from honey. What they did instead of make sugar of lead. Yep, of LEAD - pb. You treat lead with vinegar and you get Lead Acetate and of all things...this stuff is SWEET, better than Equal or Splenda or all the crap we have today. The problem is of course that it's made of lead and therefore it gives you lead poisoning and might have contributed to the fall of the roman empire.
Mercury or quicksilver, being seen as a magical substance, was eaten by the nobilities of countries all across the world up until the 20th century. Of course you then get mercury poisoning...
Then there is stuff with nutrition like in China and Japan where the poor had to eat unmilled rice and the rich would eat polished white rice because of wealth and status. Turns out you get beri beri because polishing rice removes all it's vitamins (like B1), minerals, and nutrition aside from base carbohydrates.
That reminds me of the Franklin Expedition stories in the 1800s. Canned food was considered somewhat of a luxury, but it was also tainted with leached metals. The officers on the crew ate so much canned food that they became poisoned. As a result, they because mentally fatigued and lost some cognitive abilities. Then when the officers started dropping, the other crew member ate the same tainted food.
The irony was, apparently some of the Inuit who lived in the area found them and offered them food, such as; whale and seal blubber, but the crew thought that it was a trick and that the natives were trying to poison them.
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The Horror of 18th Century Surgery
