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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Scene in an operating room over a hundred years ago:
'Puffer Billy' was properly a steam locomotive.
" Two young men lounged in front of this,
one threading needles, the other doing something to a
brass coffee-pot-like thing which hissed out puffs of
steam.
"That's Peterson," whispered the senior, "the
big, bald man in the front row. He's the skin-
grafting man, you know. And that's Anthony Browne,
who took a larynx out successfully last winter. And
there's Murphy, the pathologist, and Stoddart, the
eye-man. You'll come to know them all soon."
"Who are the two men at the table?"
"Nobody--dressers. One has charge of the
instruments and the other of the puffing Billy. It's
Lister's antiseptic spray, you know, and Archer's one
of the carbolic-acid men. Hayes is the leader of the
cleanliness-and-cold-water school, and they all hate
each other like poison."
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
It's Lister's antiseptic spray, you know, and Archer's one of the carbolic-acid men.
Lister, of course, being one of the 'father's' of antiseptic medicine.
He devised a machine that filled the air with carbolic acid vapors, to sanitize it.. it's curious.. he knew 'germs'(micro-organizism) caused disease, but the theory of a miasma or 'bad air' causing diseases was so strong, Lister thought it best to 'sanitize the air' in a OR, to 'kill the germs' that lingered in the air from the 'breath' of the sick--(he also recommended sterilizing all surgical equipment, using carbolic acid, and washing with carbolic soap. (in the Oz presentation A Town Like Alice, about prisioners of war and civilian prisones of the Japanese in south east asian during WWII, the civilian women, at one point, recieve a red cross care package, and ooh and aah over a bar of carbolic soap.)
Listerine, is still based on an antiseptic he developed.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear of troy: to some extent the old miasma lives on in the form of aerosols. E.G. it could be shown that the pattern of distribution of a disease caused by slaughter of infected animals in Chicago was related to prevalent wind direction. The NIH had a case of Q fever, which could only be explained by very long travel down a couple long corridors on different levels. In about 1956, I think it was, NEJM published article about anaethetist who was carrier for penicillin resistant staph, causing wound infections by passing flatus in the OR. In WWII, workers building airfield in Southern California stirred up spores of crytococcus, I think it was, causing numerous cases thereof. So miasma theory wasn't all baloney. They just sliced it too thin.
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