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Don't Lose This Ticket! The Train to No-Diphtheria-Town

In April, we posted about "Deadly Diphtheria," an acute bacterial infection spread by personal contact, was the most feared of all childhood diseases. One in ten died from the disease, which suffocated its victims via a membrane that grew over the larynx. One of it's greatest horrors? It struck children under the age of five. Diphtheria vaccination first appeared in the 1890s, but only became widely used in the 1920s. Tracheotomy (opening the throat) and the intubation technique developed by Cleveland native Dr. Joseph O’Dwyer in the 1880s, which kept the airway open with a tube, provided last-resort means of...

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Arguing Insanity: The Trial of President Garfield's Assassin

Who Assassinated the President? When Charles Guiteau bought an ivory-handled British Bull Dog Revolver, he was thinking of which weapon was going to look best in a museum. Because his was a mission inspired by God; he was to kill the president. On July 2nd, 1881, after weeks of stalking him, Guiteau shot President Garfield at a public train station. The bullet from his revolver entered the president’s back, leaving shattered vertebra in its wake before becoming lodged somewhere behind his pancreas . Medical historians have since determined it was the probing of his wound with dirty hands and unclean instruments by Garfield’s...

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Flipping through Anatomical Fugitive Sheets

Bodies move and have layers. Yes, this is hopefully an obvious statement. But imagine you lived in the 16th century and were attempting to demonstrate this point. In print. When illustrations served as a primary means of study for students of anatomy and medicine, could a piece of paper adequately represent the complexity of the human body? How about multiple pieces of paper? Anatomical “fugitive” sheets, so named because of their unfortunate tendency of being torn or misplaced over time, allowed readers to visualize the layers of organs lying beneath an illustrated subject’s flesh . Any observer could see the interior of the...

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Morbid Matter: Public Health and Public Opinion

John Snow in Anesthesia and Epidemiology Today, June 16th, we remember the work of Dr. John Snow who died on this day in 1858.  During his lifetime, Snow’s innovative work in the fields of anesthesia and epidemiology was met either with public rejoicing or skepticism . As public opinion has shifted with new available information, technologies, and social expectations, so has the response to Snow’s endeavors. When the control and protection of bodies become subjects of public discourse, the morbid matters of health are determined not only by research, but by convention. Chloroform: The Popular Poison John Snow popularized the use of chloroform...

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