Questions tagged [medicine]
For questions regarding the history of more or less scientific methods of healing.
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How old is the idea that humans have 360 joints?
I know that the idea that humans have 360 joints appears in a few old sources. One is from the Islamic tradition, from Sahih Muslim 1007a, a text that was first written maybe in the 9th century AD. I ...
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Were hippies in the USA "refused ambulance service" for some reason?
In one episode of The Simpsons, Homer buys an old ambulance from the 1960s (I think). This is very vague in my memory, but at some point, somebody says something along the lines of:
Many hippies were ...
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Why did slave dealers and buyers in the Antebellum South especially value enslaved persons with "good teeth" and "good front teeth"?
Open Yale Courses: HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877. Lecture 3 – A Southern World View: The Old South and Proslavery Ideology says,
" Ads in newspapers, like this one in ...
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Who treated Hitler when he was wounded in World War 1?
Hitler was wounded in World War 1 (October 1916) and was treated for two months at a hospital in Brandenburg.
Is it recorded which doctor(s) treated Hitler during this period? If yes, did he/she say ...
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Origin of barber/surgeons: did it have to do with tools?
Although today it sounds absurd that someone who shaved men and I guess also cut hair would be entrusted to performing medical procedures, is it possible that few people had the tools or the ability ...
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In what countries were plague doctor masks were most common?
Based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor_costume:
The clothing worn by plague doctors was intended to protect them from airborne diseases during outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague in Europe.
...
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When did Averroes start to study medicine?
I'm doing research about Averroes, especially his interest in medical sciences. And I want to know his interest motivation, indication, and his age when he started to study medicine.
I looked at what ...
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Is the former adviser to the prime minister Dominic Cummings related by marriage to Andrew Wakefield? [closed]
Is Dominic Cummings, the British prime minister's former chief adviser, related by marriage to Andrew Wakefield, director of the 2016 film "Vaxxed"?
Dominic Cummings, the former adviser to ...
user44627
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Were blue-tinted glasses prevalent in Victorian England and, if so, why?
Whenever I happen to read Chesterton, Conan-Doyle or some other British writers of the era, there will occasionally be mentioned people wearing blue-tinted spectacles.
Chesterton especially, in his ...
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How old is the practice of removing wisdom teeth?
According to this brief history of wisdom teeth removal, wisdom teeth may have been helpful in prehistoric times, but are now removed due to their general incompatibility with the human jaw. However, ...
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What did medical treatments for fractured or broken bones cost in 1900-1915?
Let's say that you are in the year 1915, living in rural Eastern Europe, and you just got badly injured in an earthquake (not a huge earthquake, just big enough to crumble a small and poorly built ...
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Have there been negative large-scale long term effects from vaccines?
This is in regards to the COVID-19 vaccines.
As far as I am concerned, the speedy availability is the conjunction of 3 things coming together:
superior biotech compared to even 10 years ago, both in ...
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Did anyone at the time blame the Great Plague on rats or fleas?
The Great Plague of London occurred in 1665, before the advent of the germ theory of disease. Nonetheless, people back then had some general notion that the disease could be spread through social ...
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How prestigious was the medical profession given the inefficacy of most treatments?
I have read that doctors were until the advent of penicillin not more effective than not seeing one. I am not sure what that meant: surely for some things, it was better to see a physician than not to ...
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Does the long dense habitation and cultivation of lands correlate with a high incidence of tetanus and gangrene in badly disinfected wounds?
William Keen claims in his Treatment of war wounds (written at the end of WW1) that the soil of France, since it was inhabited and cultured since antiquity, was extraordinarily infected with bacteria ...
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What was the estimated malaria death toll for US Forces during World War II?
Recently I run onto an article listing 10 most deadliest epidemics in the human history, this contradictory article was from Russian website that looks rather low quality, but what attracted my focus ...
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Were there Early Modern precursors to eugenics?
Eugenics, which I'll define here as the selective breeding, sterilization, and biological engineering of humans with political or utopian aims, was a major historical force between the Late Victorian ...
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Why was gout so prevalent in the past among rich people?
I'd like a general explanation about this fact.
I know it's a big error to judge behaviors in history with the current knowledge we have now, but for gout, people could have easily got to know that ...
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Did healers in medieval Europe use moldy bread in poultices for wounds?
In a Song of Ice and Fire, injured characters are frequently given a poultice made of, amongst other things, moldy bread.
We drowned the wound with boiling wine, and closed you up with a poultice ...
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Is there any truth to my family's story about "Cooper's Pie Wagon"?
According to family lore, my great-uncle Dr. John Cooper
"was a surgeon on Gen. Sherman's and Gen. Fremont's staffs. Credited with the invention of the ambulance; soldiers nicknamed it as Cooper's "...
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How did ancient people treat acne? [closed]
In the modern era, people have creams and antibiotics to treat acne. How did ancient people treat acne given that there is rarely an ancient picture which illustrates ancient people with acne. Did ...
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Is it true that first surgeons were barbers?
Talking with a friend, he told me that the first surgeons were the barbers. In part it made sense as they are used to cut and cure people as they shave them. Even the striped bar red white and blue ...
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Why was compulsory vaccination abandoned in the UK?
There is currently talk in the UK of making school attendance conditional on vaccination. Similar schemes operate in various places around the world now.
Vaccination against smallpox was compulsory ...
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How were concussions treated in late 19th-century America?
It’s 1899 America, a person has a bleeding head wound after an impact (the rest of their body being unharmed for the sake of the focus question).
They have a concussion and, when they wake up, they ...
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How was the black death spread? [closed]
When discussing the black plague, many historians believe it to be the bubonic plague transmitted by fleas on rats.
I was wondering if there are any competing theories to what caused this mass death.
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Did the "ancients" use lead plates to prevent pain in their knees?
While reading The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, I came upon the following line:
Just before tea I told Nantz the anecdote of the ancients using lead plates to prevent pain in their knees, the ...
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Did people during the Renaissance believe that the heart had two chambers?
Short question (adapted from @Oddthinking at Skeptics.SE):
How many chambers did the scientific population of the world (excluding Leonardo da Vinci), think the human heart had during the Renaissance?...
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Strong movement to deregulate professions in the 1960's?
In chapter 11, page 209, of his book "predictably irrational", Dan Ariely writes:
"The word profession comes from the Latin professus, meaning "affirmed
publicly." Professions started somewhere ...
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What is the best book to learn about medicine in medieval times? (research for a novel)
I am writing a novel where the main character is a healer in medieval times / a low-technology environment. Most of his work would involve field medicine, or treating people generally as a village ...
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Where (if anywhere) were X-ray machines put on trains or trolleys to image "Everybody over 14 years old"?
The background image in this X-ray analysis sotfware page shows what looks like a trolley or train car on tracks with a sign that says "X-ray Now: Everybody over 14 years old".
Where might this have ...
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What is the origin of the name Fallopian tubes?
I read that the Fallopian tubes were described by the Italian anatomist Gabrielle Fallopio, somewhere in the 16th century.
The Wikipedia describes that the structure reminded the musical instrument, ...
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Did nutmeg really prevent infections during the Bubonic Plague?
Not sure if this comes under biology or history.
Years ago, a chemistry professor gave us a short lesson on the history of nutmeg. He said, the priests in Europe wore pouches around their neck ...
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How did Mehmed II die?
The different Wikipedias offer different stories.
English Wikipedia claims poison as a likely cause of death:
In 1481 Mehmed marched with the Ottoman army, but upon reaching Maltepe, Istanbul he ...
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How did historical peoples deal with choking?
These days, the use of the Heimlich Maneuver to deal with choking is so well-known that one might be surprised to learn that it was not invented until the 1970s, so this seemingly simple treatment is ...
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Prior to 1790, before dentist chairs, did dentists put the patient's head between their knees?
I read here (and similarly in a book of facts from the TV series QI), that in the 1700s, the dentist would have held your head between his knees as he operated.
I have read that before dentist chairs,...
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What oath did medical students take in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945?
The World Medical Association responded to Nazi
medical atrocities not by reasserting the time-tested
Hippocratic oath, but by asserting a new modern
oath, subject to change every 10 years. Source: ...
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How were knee injuries treated in Ancient Greece?
Today knee injuries, for example ACL tears*, are a pretty common injury, especially with fighters (Judo, Wrestling, BJJ, MMA, …). Since the Greeks practiced a lot of wrestling and pankration, knee ...
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When did western doctors first start predicting prenatal diseases and disabilities?
At what point did western medicine become invested in the idea of predicting that children might be born with specific illnesses or disabilities prior to their actual birth? And at what point did ...
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Source of quote attributed to Florence Nightingale: To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics
This is another classic quotation in the history of statistics, attributed to Florence Nightingale:
To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are
the measure of his purpose....
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Was the high consumption of (red) wine in Ancient Rome preventive of scurvy? [closed]
With daily consumption of wine estimated to be about 1 liter/day based on production, vitamin c requirements may be about covered. Was that a reason why these enormous consumption levels were thought ...
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Was the sprouting of seeds for food production known in Europe before 1800?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouting
Was this not known in Europe?
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Has Nursing Always Been Female Dominated Like Today (90+%)?
I had a discussion with a nursing friend (male nurse) and he said that he wouldn't be a nurse if he had the chance again due to often being asked to do things no other nurse wants (like getting the ...
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What is the meaning of Verte! at the end of Sisi’s autopsy report?
The following document is a picture of a copy of the autopsy report of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, on display in the Sisi Museum in Vienna. It describes, in French, the wounds and the cause of death ...
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Was there a time when it was easier for slaves than citizens to access state-sponsored medical facilities in Ancient Rome?
The Wikipedia article Medicine in Ancient Rome has this to say on the first hospitals in Rome:
The Roman medical system saw the establishment of the first hospitals;
these were reserved for ...
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What did people die of in 1665 London?
Wikipedia has an example Bill of Mortality from 1665, listing the causes of death for the London area. Many of the terms in it are unfamiliar, though, eg. "Kings Evill", "Rupture", "Livergrown". In ...
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Why did physicians recommend curing the "dancing plague" with more dancing?
The Dancing Plague of 1518 was an event in which nearly 400 people in Strasbourg danced for days on end, some even dying of exhaustion or other causes. One section of the Wikipedia article has me ...
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‘Avoid sleeping on your back’ & ‘breathe in toilet smells’ were seen as precautions against the Black Death. Why did doctors think these would work?
Browsing a school book, Medieval Britain by Brenda Williams, I came across three precautions recommended by doctors to help people avoid going down with the plague. These were:
cover windows
avoid ...
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How was body temperature checked before thermometers?
Medicine always advances, and it's obvious that many decades or centuries ago, some medical procedures were done differently.
I'd like to find out about how body temperature was checked in the past ...
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Why was "consumption of gypsum" seen as relevant medical problem following 'De Materia Medica'?
"It [lye ash] is also drunk against the consumption of gypsum and the bite of the spider."
But why would consumption of relevant amounts of gypsum occur in the first place?
https://en.wikisource.org/...
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Treatments for the Plague
We have all heard of the Plague Doctors, but is there any information on the Treatments that they offered the sick? I have looked at the work of
Guy de Chauliac but I have been unable to find a copy ...
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