Posts Tagged ‘anaesthetic’
Fighting the Law of Gravity…
From the good folks at 2D House, a wonderfully-loony look at what would happen if Rube Goldberg took on Isaac Newton…
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As we reconsider our options, we might recall that it was on this date in 1844 that “painless dentistry” was born. The previous day, Dr. Horace Wells had attended a demonstration of the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide gas, conducted by a travelling lecturer, Gardner Quincy Colton. At that demo, Wells noticed that a man under the influence of the “laughing gas” cut his leg, but claimed to feel no pain. To test the potential of nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic, Wells was his own guinea pig; he arranged for Colton to administer nitrous oxide to him, then had one of his associates (Dr. John M. Riggs) extract one of his teeth.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G…
From artist and illustrator Neill Cameron, a celebration of superheroes, celebrities, comic characters– and the allure of alliteration: “The A – Z of Awesomeness.”
As we parse our pleasures, then pause to ponder pain, we might recall that it was on this date in 1842 that anaesthesia was used for the first time in an operation– by Dr. Crawford Long. Long, a physician and a pharmacist, used diethyl ether in the removal of a tumor from the neck of James Venable in Jefferson, GA; given success with Venable, Long then used ether in other surgeries and in childbirths. He published the results of these trials in 1848 in The Southern Medical and Surgical Journal (an original copy of which is held in the U.S. National Library of Medicine).
It’s cool that Long is the subject of one of the two statues representing Georgia in the crypt of the U.S. Capitol. It’s cooler that Long was the the cousin of Doc Holliday.
What’s Bad is Good for You, Part 13…
source: Babble.com
Uttering expletives when you hurt yourself is a sensible policy, according to scientists who have shown swearing can help reduce pain.
A study by Keele University researchers found volunteers who cursed at will could endure pain nearly 50% longer than civil-tongued peers.
They believe swearing helps us downplay being hurt in favour of a more pain-tolerant machismo.
The work by Dr Richard Stephens’ team appears in the journal NeuroReport.
Dr Stephens, from Keele’s school of psychology, came up with the idea for the study after swearing when he accidentally hit his thumb with a hammer as he built a garden shed.
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Read the entire d*mned BBC report here.
As we savor alternative anaesthetics, we might think loving thoughts of “Laura” as her dedicated poet, Francesco Petrarca– Petrarch– was born on this date in 1304. Considered by many to have been “the Father of Humanism,” and reputed to have coined the term “Renaissance,” Petrarch was famous for his paeans to his idealized lover “Laura” (modeled, many scholars believe, on the wife of Hugues de Sade whom he met in Avignon in 1327, and who died in 1348). But Petrarch’s more fundamental and lasting contribution to culture came via Pietro Bembo who created the model for the modern Italian language in the 16th century largely based on the works of Petrarch (and to a lesser degree, those of Dante and Boccaccio).
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