"Praise the Lord and pass the penicillan?" Ohmy Gawd....ROTFLOL! That is too much!
Now no more of the social disease discussion. Gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it! *shudder*
Hehehe. I just finished indexing my last volume of a historical medical journal (and the year of said volume? 1897--coincidence? I think not
) I've done at least a half dozen of these volumes and by now have read more articles about v.d., consequences thereof when passed on to unsuspecting wives and their children, and various treatments then I ever cared to. Didn't care too much for all those articles featuring neurosyphilis (if it's not caught in time, it can affect your brain and you go mad), "foul discharges," and pus, but it is a pretty interesting topic really and far more prevalent in the 19th century than I ever knew.
What is really and truly frightening is how diseases and illnesses were treated. My personal favorite: the doctor who thought that too many physicians were taking out appendixes for appendicitis, when really the best solution was to give those patients enemas; surgery being completely unnecessary! Mercury was often prescribed for whatever ailed you and my God, and when cocaine first hit the market--every doctor and his brother was out there pushing it for everything. It was the new miracle drug.
The articles about "neurasthenia" are eye-opening. That's one of those terms that's a catchall: schizophrenia to "hysterical" women. Several inventive individuals created "devices" that would cure these frustrated and hysterical spinsters--forerunners of modern vibrators
When a shrink suggested that just maybe epileptics shouldn't be kept in the same facilities as your garden-variety lunatic because it seemed like they really weren't mentally ill afterall, it was considered a daring and radical concept.
When the city of Buffalo started purifying its water supply, the death rate dropped by
50%. For a long time. Many respected physicians argued about the dangers of using diptheria antitoxin even when epidemics were raging.
These are the kind of things that makes you glad not be back in the days of yore
Luciaphil
