I’ve spent the last five and a half years being tended to by a score of doctors and nurses and it saved my life. It’s given me time to really examine their profession and the the abilities they have to save lives. Todays post will introduce odd facts and historical information where the roots of our current medical treatments began. Some of it is a little strange and also a little frightening but that’s how we’ve learned the skills being used today.
The first image of the doctors stitching up a wound can be found on the Edwin Smith Papyrus (1600 B.C.).
Ancient Egyptian medicine was considered so advanced that the rulers of neighboring kingdoms would often bribe, cajole, or even send someone to kidnap the Pharaoh’s best doctors.
The 3000-year-old “Ebers Papyrus” was written on a 65 foot long scroll and describes treatments for the eyes, skin, extremities, and organs. It also lists medicinal plants such as mustard, saffron, onions, garlic, thyme, sesame, caraway, and poppy seed, and offers more than 800 recipes for their use.
The Egyptians used opium as crude forms of anesthesia when operating on patients. They also created a milder painkiller by mixing water with vinegar and adding ground Memphite stone. The resulting “laughing gas” was inhaled.
The first known surgery for cataracts was performed in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in about A.D. 100.
A collection of 37 surgical instruments is engraved on the wall in the Egyptian Temple of Kom-Ombo (2d century B.C.). Some show amazing similarities to modern surgical instruments and includes scalpels, scissors, needles, forceps, lancets, hooks, and pincers.
The original Hippocratic Oath was written by a school of philosophers known as the Pythagoreans and was actually a reaction against the writings of Hippocrates. The Pythagoreans were conservative and even backward looking in many ways forbidding many medical practices, including the surgery.
The Romans considered cabbage to be a magically protective food. The philosopher Cato wrote that Romans should not only eat cabbage at every meal, but also drink the urine of someone who’d eaten cabbage two days before.
In both ancient Greece and Rome, doctors didn’t need licenses or any formal training to practice. Anyone could call himself a doctor. If his methods worked, he attracted more patients, if not, he found himself another job.
Most Roman surgical instruments were made of bronze, or occasionally of silver. Iron was considered taboo by both Greeks and Romans and was never used for surgical instruments on religious grounds.
For me these last four years have consisted of constant doctor visits, nurses, oncologists, chemotherapy, scans, MRI’s, Cat-Scans, multiple blood tests and surgeries. It’s still causes me to break out in a cold sweat anytime I drive by a hospital or hear an ambulance go by. Even a hospital janitor in a white coat freaks me out a little. My blood pressure soars a minimum of thirty points just by walking into their offices and it takes another 20 minutes for it to lower itself to acceptable limits. With all of that in mind here is my contribution of “one-liners” for all of those outstanding yet truly annoying medical professionals.
“Doctor, I’m sick and tired of finishing crosswords so quickly.” Then try not to get two down.
“Doctor, the whole worlds ganging up on me.” “Hold on a minute. Hey lads, he’s in here!”
“Doctor, I think I’m addicted to “X”. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.”
This guy went to his doctor with a piece of lettuce sticking out of his ass. “Ah yes,” said his doctor. “Thats just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Doctor, I can’t stop singing The Green Green Grass of Home.” “That sounds a lot like the Tom Jones Syndrome.” “Is that common doc?” “It’s not unusual.”
“Doctor, I keep thinking I’m a German vodka.” “Well, Schnapps out of it.”
My doctor told me that jogging could add years to my life. He was right. I feel ten years older already.
So, I went to the doctors to ask if he had anything for excessive wind. He gave me a kite.
A guy goes into a psychiatrist’s office wearing only clingy short shorts. The shrink said, “I can clearly see your nuts.”
A man went to see an eye doctor. The receptionist asked him what was wrong. He said, “I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes.” She said, “Have you seen a doctor?” He said, “No, just spots.”
We woke up to five inches of snow this AM. I was forced into snow-blowing the driveway at 7:15. I’m really glad I didn’t wait because the snow was slowly melting and getting heavy making the snow-blower work extra hard. The driveway is now clear making it possible for my shopaholic better-half to get out and about. I really haven’t decided what to post today so taking a tip from some of my teachers of years ago, when in doubt they just gave us a pop quiz. Since food always seems to interest everyone, here are ten questions for you foodies out there. The answers will be listed below.
What animal is the source of milk used in making Roquefort cheese?
What part of the banana is used to make banana oil?
Two states have official beverages. Florida is orange juice, what is the other?
What words are found on the three rings of the Ballentine beer label?
How many quarts of milk does it take to make one pound of butter?
How much money did American Airlines claim to have saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each of it’s salads served in the first-class sections?
What fruit did the Visigoths demand in ransom when they laid siege of Rome?
What is the BRAT diet to eliminate diarrhea?
What do Eskimos use to prevent their food from freezing?
If you ordered the Five B’s breakfast in New England, what will you be served?
Answers
The Ewe (female sheep), None-banana oil is a synthetic, Ohio-tomato juice, Purity-Body-Flavor, 9.86 quarts, $40,000.00, 3,000 lbs. of peppercorns, Bananas-Rice-Applesauce-Toast, Refrigerators, Boston Baked Beans and Brown Bread
This will be a fun post but not if you’re a germophobe. I can deal with just about anything, but these items still have the ability to make my skin crawl just a little. If I had to sit around and obsess about bacteria and mites infesting my body like my better-half does, I would lose my mind. Hang onto whatever you like to hang onto, this ride might get a little bumpy.
Itchiness in humans is contagious. Watching someone else itch makes your brain think it’s experiencing an itch, even when it’s not.
The average bed is home to 10,000,000 dust mites.
It goes without saying that every day you inhale thousands of you own skin flakes since you lose approximately 40,000 flakes per minute.
Your skin contains billions of individual bacteria.
The most common bacteria found in your belly button is of the same species that make your feet smell.
There are mites that live in your hair follicles, eyelashes, and eyebrows. They walk around on your skin at night before returning to their hair follicles during the day.
Tapeworms inside humans have been measured as long as 20 feet.
Fungi thrive on the protein keratin found in hair, nails, and skin.
Men and women fart approximately the same amount each day, a half-liter of gas a day.
Did you know that defecaloesiophobia is the fear of painful bowel movements.
(Did you know?)
FART IS ONE OF THE OLDEST WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
The human body is an amazing organism. It can create miracles by healing itself to survive unbelievably nasty injuries. That doesn’t change the fact that it can also be truly disgusting as we all know. Today’s Thanksgiving post will review some gross facts about the human body and the things that it has the ability to produce after eating a turkey and all the side dishes. A little gross but what isn’t. This should be on your mind as you chow down on your big meal today. LOL
URINE
The average person produces approximately 3 pints of urine a day. In the normal adult the bladder rarely holds more than about 3/4 of a pint of urine, with the urge to urinate coming at the 1/2-pint mark. More than one pint causes pain and an intense urge to urinate immediately.
FUN FACT: In Roman times gladiators would brush their teeth with urine and then gargle with it too. They believed it was good for their gums.
SPIT
Most people produce approximately 8 cups of spit a day. It’s produced by three sets of salivary glands around the mouth area. That works out to about 50,700 pints produced in the average human lifetime. Thats enough to fill a couple of large swimming pools.
VOMIT
In humans very often after one person begins vomiting, it triggers vomiting in others (emetophobia). Compared to other animals, humans are relatively light on vomiting. Big vegetarian whales vomit every 7-10 days to help get rid of anything inedible they may have swallowed by accident. Dogs not only vomit frequently, but they’ll also eat their own vomit. Probably the most vomitus animals, however, are cows, who digest otherwise in edible grass by regurgitating it into their mouths, chewing it for a bit, and then swallowing it over and over again.
FUN FACT: Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting and of being around others who are vomiting. It is the fifth most common phobia according to the International Emetophobia Society.
SNOT
Snot is a defensive function, stopping for example germs, dirt and pollen from getting into your lungs. The average person produces approximately 1/2 pint of snot per day. When you sneeze, up to six pints of air is blasted out of your lungs at approximately 100 miles per hour, along with any germs you may be carrying at the time. Sneezing is also the main way that illnesses like colds and flu are spread among humans.
FECES
If you add up all the time spent eating and drinking by an average human over the course of their entire life, it comes to approximately 5 years. This adds up to 33 tons of food, which is equivalent to eating six entire elephants. Unfortunately, what goes in must come out. Most of that mass is water that you lose through sweating, breathing, and peeing, or carbon that you breathe out in the form of carbon dioxide, while a lot of the rest goes into making new bits for your body that need replacing. The result is that during your lifetime you will produce a pile of feces about the size of a car.
FUN FACT: According to the World Toilet Organization, the average person visits the toilet approximately 6-8 times a day, or 2500 times a year, and spends three years of their life sitting on the toilet.
It seems that almost everyone is obsessed with their body image and that’s understandable considering the wide range of odd, shaped bodies we see every day. Even though there are so many variations, the functions and organs of the body are all too similar. Here are a few trivia facts about our bodies. They can be a thing of beauty or not and they can be a bit disgusting or not. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
Did you know that approximately 1 in every 18 men have a third nipple. People who have the condition will sometimes suffer from atelophobia, the fear of being imperfect. Celebrities Tilda Swinton, Carrie Underwood, Lily Allen, and Mark Wahlberg have third nipples. Mark Wahlberg’s third nipple was airbrushed out of his famous Calvin Klein underwear ad.
If you have a fear of facial hair, you could be suffering from pogonophobia. In ancient times beards were a sign of strength and wisdom and were only cut or sheared off as punishment or if someone was in mourning.
Were you aware that your left lung is slightly smaller than your right. It’s to allow room for your heart.
Did you know that women need more sleep at night than men. Women need an extra hour of sleep but sometimes don’t get it. Not getting that extra hour is believed to be one reason why women are more susceptible to depression than men.
My cat’s hairballs creep me out. I discovered recently that human beings can also have hairballs and they’re even more disgusting than the cats. The largest human hairball ever removed from the body measured 15 inches in diameter and weighed 10 pounds. The patient also happened to suffer from a condition called trichophagia (the eating of one’s own hair).
The heart is life. Over the course of a lifetime the human heart beats 3 billion times. Your heartbeat mimics the music you listen to and can trigger physiological changes that increase or decrease your blood pressure. The heart is a massive blood pump circulating blood through an average body every 23 seconds or approximately 4000 gallons of blood each day.
I love trivia that is unusual and odd. So today I’ll list a few items from one of the top three areas most requested from readers? SEX as always leads the list so for today, I’ll just eliminate FOOD & LIMERICKS. Here’s everything you need to know about SEX (LOL).
A recent survey revealed that 25% of Swedish women have had sex with more than 50 men.
The average sexually active woman has sex 83 times per year.
Sex burns off 360 calories an hour.
The heart beats faster during a brisk walk or a good argument then it does during sexual intercourse.
America’s first manufactured condoms appeared in 1870 and were made of vulcanized rubber. They were thick, insensitive, and intended to be reused.
Men are four times more likely to sleep in the nude than women.
One in every 300 births in the United States occurs in a vehicle.
11% of women and 5% of men claimed never to have masturbated.
Over the last three years I’ve been forced by circumstance to become somewhat knowledgeable about the medical profession and its many practices. It’s not something I ever wanted to know but fear is a great motivator. It motivated me to do a great deal of research to find out exactly what all my health problems were and suggested remedies. The following 10 items will give you a short education on trivia concerning the medical profession that you might find interesting. It’s much better to read them in a blog posting than in person.
The first contraceptive diaphragm – centuries ago – were citrus rinds – halves of oranges for example.
Male embryos, fetuses, and babies have a higher incidence of morbidity than females. Correspondingly, there is a higher rate of language disability among boys than girls.
Ketchup once was sold as a patent medicine. In the 1830s it enjoyed a measure of popularity in the United States as Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato.
Victims of disease -people and animals – are buried underground, and yet the soil remains fairly free of disease germs. Germs are destroyed by the bacteria and other microscopic organisms living in the soil.
For every ounce of alcohol you drink, it takes an hour to regain full driving faculties, that is, normal, alert, clearheaded reactions. If you have 5 ounces of alcohol around 8 PM, you should not drive until at least 1 AM the following day.
Influenza was so named because the cause of the disease was supposedly the evil “influence” of the stars. This “influence” was believed also to be the cause of plagues and pestilences.
Opium frequently was used as a pain killer by army doctors during the U.S. Civil War. By the end of the war, according to conservative estimates, 100,000 soldiers were addicted to opium – at a time when the total population of the country was only 40 million.
In 1777, George Washington had the entire Continental Army – then 4000 men- vaccinated. This action was considered controversial at the time because few American doctors believed in vaccination. It may have saved the Army as a fighting force.
The use of antibiotics did not begin in this century. Early folk medicine included the use of moldy foods or soil for infections. In ancient Egypt, for example, infections were treated with moldy bread.
About 8 ounces of lamb’s blood were injected into the veins of a dying boy, temporarily restoring him, in the first blood transfusion on record. It was performed in 1667 by Gene Baptiste Dennis, physician to King Louis XIV of France.
I don’t know about you but I’m a bit of a foodie. As like everyone else I have certain foods that I absolutely love but very few that I dislike. I like trying new things and I’ve eaten some things I regret. I spent two years in Korea and inadvertently ate dog soup and spring rolls made with cat. Those for sure I don’t recommend because the resulting projectile vomiting ruined my meal. With that disgusting thought in mind, I felt a post on food trivia was called for. Eat up . . .
Chocolate was once considered a temptation of the devil. In Central American mountain villages during the 18th century, no one under the age of 60 was permitted to drink it, and churchgoers who defied this rule were threatened with excommunication.
Vinegar was the strongest acid known to the ancients.
Most healthy adults can go without eating anything for a month or longer. But they must drink at least 2 quarts of water a day.
A herd of mountain sheep in Alberta, the Canadian province, has been in danger of being killed off. The herd neglects the normal grass diet in favor of the candy and other junk food offered by tourists. The animals are losing weight, and the females may not be producing enough high-quality milk.
When tea was first introduced in the American colonies, many housewives, in their ignorance, served the tea leaves with sugar or syrup after throwing away the water in which they’d been boiled.
The annual harvest of an entire coffee tree is required for a single pound of ground coffee. Every tree bears up to 6 pounds of beans, which are reduced to a pound after the beans are roasted and ground.
The Manhattan cocktail – whiskey and sweet vermouth – was invented by Jenny Jerome, the beautiful New Yorker who was the toast of the town until she went to England as the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, in 1874, and shortly thereafter gave birth to Winston.
A highway 55 feet wide and 6 feet thick that’s built entirely of grain and stretches around the world at the equator – that’s how much the world’s annual consumption of grain comes to: 1.2 billion metric tons.
Kernels of popcorn were found in the graves of pre-Colombian Indians.
While Europeans in the 16th century did not live by bread alone, it can be said they almost lived by grain alone. Beer and ale, both derived from grain, were consumed in vast quantities. Dutch soldiers on campaign in 1582 received 2 gallons a day. Queen Elizabeth’s men got only one.
I’ve talked about “Fake News” in the past and it seems to be a current buzz word when talking about the politicians and media. What many people don’t realize is that fake news is nothing new. It’s been around forever. For years as I grew up, I accompanied my mother and two ex-wives on food shopping trips. While they were checking out, I had the misfortune of killing time reading some of the cheesy tabloids available at the registers. They were full of impossible news items which were funny as hell but hopefully only a fool would have thought any of them to be true. Here is a small collection of headlines from that era that will bring a smile to your face.
1993
BAT WITH A HUMAN FACE
TOWN ELECTS MIDGET POLICE CHIEF
BABY CATCHES BULLET WITH HIS GUMS
KID WITH 3 ARMS IS BASEBALL SENSATION
JUNK FOOD CAUSES TEENS TO WORSHIP THE DEVIL
MY WIFE’S GOST STILL COOKS, CLEAN & IRONS MY SHIRTS
HUMAN JELLYFISH SAYS RUB MY BELLY
WHALE EATERS UNITE
MAN KILLED BY FALLING BIBLE
SWORD SWALLOWER LAUGHED SO HARD HE SLIT HIS THROAT
GOLIATH’S SKULL FOUND IN HOLY LAND
STADIUM HAS SPECIAL AREA FOR NUDISTS
SECRET INGREDIENT IN NEW SKIN CREAM – GOBS OF HUMAN FAT
CHURCH COMMUNION CAN SPREAD AIDS
MAN GIVES GIRLFRIEND PERFUME MADE FROM HIS OWN SWEAT
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