Biomedical Ephemera, or: A Frog for Your Boils

First okapi born in captivity, in Antwerp

This photograph was taken at 5 years of age with the giraffe and okapi caretaker at the Antwerp zoo. I believe he was one of the native men (who assisted in the live trapping) that came from the Congo with one of the transports of central African wildlife. I don't have his identity, though, so I don't know.

Being naturally shy and quiet creatures, transporting live okapis out of their environment into zoos and wildlife parks was far too stressful for them to survive the trip, even when they had proper food and care. So, for a long time, only taxidermied specimens were seen outside of the Congo region. The first okapi to survive the trip lived at the Antwerp zoo, so it's only fitting that the first successful breeding of okapis would happen there, as well.

Click to enlarge & read.

I've been doing some research about the general history of antibiotic development/resistance and came across this article. I found it rather, ah, colorful? in its presentation of antibiotic resistance. I can just see a little demon germ accompanying these words in a children's book. I love it.

Article from the Victoria Advocate. October 23, 1957.

Sorry, I lied. This one is a serious gem. I mean, the other ones are really typical of the time, but this one has the best conversation from the 1950s that I've heard thus far:

"Hey, you know something?" "No, what?" "I had a wet dream last night." "A wet dream, what's that?" "Oh, you know, sperm comes out of your penis." "Sperm?" "Yeah, sort of a sticky stuff, a guy's part of a baby. Didn't your brother tell you about that?" "Nah, he doesn't tell me about much of anything. So...you can start a baby now..." 

Now, I wasn't born in the 50s, and I've never talked to anyone in the 50s about this, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a typical scene to have guys sitting in the grass around a push mower talking about their nocturnal emissions...but hey, I could be wrong. I could be grossly misinformed about an entire era of United States history.