Cryonics
Not long ago it was assumed that by freezing and storing a body in a very low temperatures, it will be possible to keep the cells unscathed for an extended period of time and resurrect them in the future. Around the 60s and 70s, those suffering from untreatable disease were encouraged to undergo such procedure in hope of the advent of effective treatments in the future. Now around a couple hundred bodies are frozen through cryonics in the US. According to today's science, there is much doubt about the success of body conservation in this way. Nowadays cryonics is considered a pseudoscience and has lost favor. However, still some people let their bodies frozen in twenty first century.
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Trepanation
This may be the oldest surgical procedure in human history still practiced today (Although for different reasons). It's the practice of making a hole in the skull. In the past, they did this to let the devil spirits come out of the brain and now they do it to let the accumulated blood due to hemorrhage leave the skull and reduce the intracranial pressure. Archeologist have found hundreds of such skulls with a hole or two drilled in it all around the world. I once imagined if people undergoing such procedure in the past ever survived. And the answer is surprisingly yes. How can archeologists know if they survived after the procedure? The answer is that the cut edges of the holes found in these old skulls are not sharp and this means that those people survived and the hole edges had time to remodel. This resemble to the cut edge of a branch in a tree. You can easily guess a cut edge in a tree is new or old.
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Treatment With Fever
Wagner-Jauregg
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I always knew that fever is a sign of an illness. But I never imagined inducing fever was once used to treat a disease. Yes that is true. In the beginning years of twentieth century an Austrian psychologist, Wagner-Jauregg noticed that inducing fever can help treat patients with dementia, paralytica, or the third stage of syphilis (neurosyphilis). But how can you produce fever in these patients? Jauregg decided to inject malaria parasite to these patient and induce malaria in them. Hey, the results proved to be successful. The malaria itself could later be treated with quinine. Although 15% of these patient died of malaria, but it was worth trying because otherwise all those with neurosyphilis were doomed. The doctor won a Nobel prize. This obsolete way of treatment was known as pyrotherapy or malariotherapy.
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Albert Einstein
We all know Albert Einstein and the theory of relativity. No doubt he was a genius. He brought about questions and answers in physics never thought about before. People (including me) always wanted to know if he and his brain was really different than normal. it looks that scientists had the same curiosity at the time of his death. Einstein's brain (and also his eye) was studied after his death. Although there is much dispute around it, scientists have found some differences in Einstein's brain that may justify his ingenious mind. The brain had more glial (supportive) cells! Einstein's corpus callosum ( the tissue of fibers connecting the two hemispheres) were thicker than usual, probably leading to a better communication between the two sides of the brain. He even lacked a part of brain that other people have! It's hard to believe but scientists say its true.
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Albert Einstein
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Medicinal Leeches
There is a slough next to our home with a nice trail. In rainy days during summer the trail and sidewalk becomes full of leeches. There are some other leeches, from the same family as the ones near me, called Medicinal Leeches. These have had great roles in the history of medicine. Medicinal leeches have found to secret 60 different kinds of proteins in their saliva, from coagulation inhibitors (hirudin) to vessel dilators, and even anesthetics. Leech therapy was used for an extended period as bloodletting to remove some blood as a part of a process to balance the humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile). Nowadays it still has some application in plastic surgery. It stimulates circulation to salvage skin grafts and other tissues.
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Lobotomy
Another obsolete medical procedure with a Nobel prize winner is Lobotomy or Leucotomy. This barbaric method was not long ago; the Portuguese neurologist advocating this procedure won the Nobel prize in 1949. It was used for treating mental disorders. In this procedure they damaged the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain. It had catastrophic complications. Some got better but many went debilitated. Thousands of patients underwent lobotomy during the 40s and 50s in mental institutions. A few years after, it was abandoned. Did they really need that much casualties to understand that its risks and complication far exceeds its benefits? John F. Kennedy's sister was one of the many patients who underwent lobotomy that left her incapacitated for the rest of her life.
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Mercury Intoxication
According to evidences, the metal mercury was discovered around 1500 BC. Now we well now how toxic and dangerous this fluid metal is. Until a hundred years ago, people believed that mercury can have an effective role in treating many diseases including syphilis, typhoid, and parasites. When the poor patients died of the side effects of mercury, they attributed it to exacerbation of the disease itself. Some relate the death of the great Austrian musician, Mozart, to the complication of his syphilis treatment with mercury; god knows. Nowadays, intoxication with mercury is still a point of concern, but this time with wild fish infested with mercury in free waters, another complication of human manipulation of the environment.
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Heroin
Heroin (not heroine) is an ominous addictive substance, worse than opium and even morphine. The first time heroin came into the market, it was not meant to be a street drug; it was just a simple cough cough and it worked very well. But it started going downward. After a while, patients came craving for more and more. Yes, they had become addicted. The company which introduced heroin was the some German company that formulated aspirin for the first time. Yes, Bayer! You can still see the five letters of B-A-Y-E-R on some aspirin pills. Bayer was so proud of manufacturing heroin which is why they named it that. The German term "Hero" referred to an ancient Greek hero who was honored as a demigod.
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Tuskegee Syphilis
Have you ever heard of the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment? It was a project that studied what happens to syphilis patients if not treated. This means that they were able to treat these patients but didn't do so (which is really unethical) to investigate the natural history of the disease in untreated patient. Do you know where and when this happened? And who performed this study? It was conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the state of Alabama. The poor African American men were selected for this study. Although volunteers were promised to receive a free medical care, that was not true. Do you think Bill Clinton's apology on 1997 on behalf of the state can compensate for this shameful act?
Quinine
Quinine is an effective medicine against malaria. It was first extracted from the bark of a tree, native to Latin America. Jesuit missionaries first noticed its role in treating malaria and brought it to Europe. its introduction became a great milestone in the history of medicine. Although once native to Peru and only known to Quechua people of that region, it gradually became widespread all around the world. By the first decades of twentieth century Dutch East Indian Company monopolized its production in Java, so when Japanese occupied Indonesia during WWII, this miraculous medicine became unavailable to allied forces and the territories controlled by them. This well show how medicine and people's health and wellbeing is intertwined with political matters.
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