Answer key and related questions


1. Which of this drinks was first marketed as a cure for morphine addiction?
Coca cola a lot of people forget that this beverage was invented in a drugstore as a patent medicine.

2. Which of these tools was developed then kept in secret by a generation of Italian family of doctors?
Obstetric forceps  There is a story that in order to discover the secret of this medical marvel industrial espionage
had to be employed. Here is the story. Operating theaters had to be open to the sky to provide enough light.
One day a young man climbed on to the roof  to observe the forceps in action. His notes and sketches were
rapidly distributed throughout the medical community.

3.WWI nurses used this material  in operating theaters and improvised pads  as sanitary napkins
Kleenex or Cellucotton and at the end of that terribly bloody conflict there was mountains of Cellucotton left over.
Yet no one would have thought to use it for tissue paper or sanitary napkins.
Like diapers, hankerchefs and rags were mad of cloth and were used then washed.

4. This device was use by Louis Pasteur to demonstrate that fermentation is caused by the growth of micro-organisms (biogenesis), and  not  spontaneous generatio
swan neck With all his work on medicine and vaccinations it is easy to forget that Dr Pasteur also worked on Chirality.

5. Aspirin
Because of similarities to its effect in  Reye's syndrome aspirin is suspected of excaberating the symptoms of infuenza just after the first world war.
You may wish to check out  1918 flu pandemic - Wikipedia,      1918 Spanish Influenza Outbreak: The Enemy Within   LETTER 1918 FLU AND SARS

6. Who invented the pie chart used by companies and managers all over the world?
Florence Nightingale to convince the British top brass made a "kitchen analogy" to illustrate hospital mortality during the Crimean War.

7.This person dramatically reduced patient mortality  from childbed fever by  simplely  requiring physicians to wash their hands before treating women in childbirth.
Ignaz_Semmelweis after dramatic reducing deaths in the maternity ward, lost his job.

8. He invented and took the first medical X-Ray yet when Wilhelm Röntgen  first saw an xray of his own hand he started to work in secret because he felt 
no one would believe him. When his wife saw a photo of her skeleton made with his device she told Wilhelm  "I have seen my death!"
Röntgen died on 10 February 1923 from carcinoma of the intestine. 

9.This scanner uses a probe with one or more acoustic transducers to send pulses into a material to produce medical images.. 
Ultrasound 

10.Willem Einthoven, using  the string galvanometer that he invented, measured the heartbeat and from his work sprang the_____________  machines that we use today.

EKG from the German  Elektrokardiogramm

I am glad it is easier today.

Questions
Most patent medicines "worked" because of the placebo effect. Since many people were reassured and sometimes
received some benefit should we encourage medicinal lying?

Much of our medical research today remains shrouded in mystery. It is obscured by scientific jargon and copyrighted, trademarked and patented.
Should this knowledge be freed?

Have you ever thought of different ways to use everyday items? software? electronic devices?
Hospital waste is an increasingly serious problem. Because of sanitary considerations most items are  disposable.
Have you thought of any ways to reduce medical trash?
What do you think of a disposable society? Could you use cloth diapers today?

Many people feel that firms run or managed by a woman are more profitable and a better place to work. How would that be possible. Do you agree, why or why not?

Who do you think  is the lady of the lamp?

Florence Nightingale   or  Mary Seacole

Aspirin may have killed millions in 1919, today it still kills many people from overdoses and Reye's syndrome yet is perscribed for many ailments and seems to prevent heart attacks.
Are there other instances of treatment that may injure as much or  more than they cure? What can we do about them?

In a related question, Ignaz_Semmelweis was right and the entire medical community was wrong. He was definately not rewarded for saving the lives of the women under his care.
Do you think this could happen today?

Ce texte © 2010 Christopher Yukna - tous droits réservés*/p>