The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Civil War Medicine - March 5th, 2005

http://www.civilwarmedicine.aphillcsa.com/index.html ^

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks Victoria.

[snippy_about_it]

Slacker!!

You were no help, you didn't even notice!

[snippy_about_it]

Our local historic site had a Civil War Ghost Trail for Halloween

Now that's different. I wonder how many Civil War sites do something like that?

[snippy_about_it]

You two are a couple of Bird Brains!!!

[Soaring Feather]

LMAO!!

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks for the history on Lister.

As for Churchill's speech...

And--he might have added--it is in large measure due to that baboon's ass Roosevelt and my own acquiescence in the shameful betrayal.

What they did was shameful. I'll second the call to Sherman for the way-back machine!

From our thread on Katyn and in memory of the 65th anniversary of that tragedy, a memorial tribute.

Katyn Woods



Katyn cannot sleep
hear the lamenting of the slaughtered masses
never forget what happened here

the soul of the Polish nation
was poured out on this forest soil
but it did not die here

you cannot kill the spirit of freedom
or the pride of a nation that desires it


sai

[Valin]

DITTO!

[Wneighbor]

We had a good day and it gives us hope for the future.

God Bless you Snippy and Sam. I know I'm new here but I am just as excited as can be about your new business. :-)

I'm thrilled that you had a good day today and I'm glad I made it into the Foxhole in time to witness your grand opening!

I spent a lovely blessed afternoon with PE, msdrby, elfboy and bittygirl. Just can't tell ya'll how much they blessed me by their visit. Photos to come....

[Wneighbor]

I'm late to the party, any leftovers? It all sounds yummy!

I got lots of leftovers of everything. Just about to start packing it all up but sure wish that ya'll could run on by for a late night snack here. :-)

[Wneighbor]

I'm jealous you're going to get to give her smooches. She's so adorable.

I don't know that I got my fill of cuddles and smooches, bittygirl was a busy little bee playing the almost the whole time they were here. She was just so good and so happy! I got lots of cuddles and smooches in the midst of her play though. Was nice cause my grandbabies just live *way* too far away from me.

[w_over_w]

You could never be that bad!

Agreed. And I'm showing this comment to my mother, wife and daughter as proof. ;^)

[w_over_w]

You were no help, you didn't even notice!

LOL! Congrats. on a successful GO . . . enjoy your dinner . . . er . . . breakfast . . . er . . . late night meal and Sam check the coordinates and range on snips ping launcher for tomorrows thread. Goodnight

[Humal]

Very interesting article, Snippy. My great, great uncle was held in a small cell at Camp Chase, Ohio, during the War Between the States, with three or four other men. All contracted small pox, but only my ggreat uncle survived. His step-brother, Crockett Bartlett (Crockett Brown as he called himself) died of small pox. As the article says, twice as many men on both sides died of disease than wounds from battle.

[colorado tanker]

Congratulations and best wishes for your Grand Opening!

Let's drink a Foxhole toast to the capitalist commandos behind blue state lines! Root beers on me.

[Wneighbor]

Pictures!!!!!

I had a lovely afternoon welcoming P.E., msdrby, elfboy and bittygirl to my home and feeding them. Wish all of you could have been here as well but here are some pictures of this lovely family. :-)

Isn't this a nice lookin' little family? :-)

Soup's on! :-)

And I just love this. Bittygirl is a gal after my own heart. Here she is trying to pickpocket her Daddy's knife. :-)

PE has a long drive back home and is still driving I'm sure. But I've got my kitchen cleaned, am sitting here enjoying a little of the gift P.E. was thoughtful enough to bring me and I'm smiling from a wonderful visit. :-)

[msdrby]

We're home! Only one small hitch in the drive home. I'll let PE tell ya 'bout that.

A good time was had by all. The food was spectacular, the atmosphere down home, and the conversation... priceless.

[msdrby]

LOL, I adore that pickpocket photo!

[Iris7]

I think every hardware geek with an historical bent honors Doctor Lister. There is another name in this same story, Ignatz Philipp Semmelweis.

---

Following is written by John Lienhard of The University of Houston's College of Engineering. Hardware geek, natch.

"In 1847 Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis's close friend, Jakob Kolletschka, cuts his finger while he's doing an autopsy. Kolletschka soon dies of symptoms like those of puerperal fever.

That gets Semmelweis's attention. Puerperal fever is killing 13 percent of the women who give birth in his hospital. The death rate is driving him nuts. He can't figure it out. A nearby obstetric hospital, run by midwives, loses only two percent of its patients to fever.

No one has connected germs with disease yet. The first hint of that connection will come from England six years later. Lister won't show us how to kill germs for another 18 years.

Semmelweis is a Hungarian doctor teaching medicine in Vienna. He notices that students move between the dissection room and the delivery room without washing their hands. On a hunch, he sets up a policy. Doctors must wash their hands in a chlorine solution when they leave the cadavers. Mortality from puerperal fever promptly drops to two percent.

Now things grow strange. Instead of reporting his success at a meeting, Semmelweis says nothing. Finally, a friend publishes two papers on the method. By now, Semmelweis has started washing medical instruments as well as hands.

As outside interest grows, we begin to understand Semmelweis's silence. The hospital director feels his leadership has been criticized. He's furious. He blocks Semmelweis's promotion. The situation gets worse. Viennese doctors turn on this Hungarian immigrant.

Finally, he goes back to Budapest. There he brings his methods to a far more primitive hospital. He cuts death by puerperal fever to less than one percent. He does more. He systematically isolates causes of death. He autopsies victims. He sets up control groups. He studies statistics.

Finally, in 1861, he writes a book on his methods. The establishment gives it poor reviews. Semmelweis grows angry and polemical. He hurts his own cause with rage and frustration.

In 1865 he suffers a mental breakdown. Friends commit him to a mental institution. There -- as though to close the circle on his brief 47-year life -- he cuts his finger. In days, he dies of the very infection that killed his friend Kolletschka and from which he's saved thousands of mothers.

That same year Joseph Lister begins spraying a carbolic acid solution during surgery to kill germs. In the end, it's Lister who gives our unhappy hero his due. He says, "Without Semmelweis, my achievements would be nothing."

[Iris7]

At one of the state museums is displayed an 1861-65 surgeon's amputation kit. First time I saw it it gave me the willies. Nicely made, though. A collection of knives from 8" to a foot and a half, three saws like wood cutting handsaws, and two hammers, as I recollect, in a fitted leather case.

[PhilDragoo]

Early opponents of the geocentric dogma were similarly punished.

Ayn Rand also speaks of society's gracious acceptance of invention.

We owe our survival to these pioneers who suffered the trial by ordeal of the establishment.