Coca Does Not Equal Cocaine

Use of coca leaves, the leaves which can be used to make cocaine, is traditional in the Andes. In fact, its consumption dates to the very earliest of ancient South American cultures. We have evidence that coca was consumed in what is today Ecuador as early as the 8000s BCE. This is hardly surprising. Coca is extremely useful.

The leaves contain a powerful alkaloid which acts as a stimulant. Its effects include raised heart rate, increased appetite, and suppressed hunger and thirst. Its muscle-relaxing properties mean coca leaves are great for menstrual cramps. And that also helps treat altitude sickness, but opening up the respiratory tract and relieving the feeling of shortness of breath and tightness in the chest. Further, coca leaves have antibacterial and analgesic properties. It also aids in digestion and preventing constipation. Finally, the leaves themselves are nutritionally beneficial. They are rich in iron, vitamin B, and vitamin C. No wonder coca leaves continue to be a large part of Andean culture through today.

Meet Lillian Wald (1867 - 1940). After growing up in Ohio and New York, Wald became a nurse. She briefly attended medical school and began to teach community health classes while attending classes. One day in 1892, she was approached by a young girl who kept repeating “mommy … baby … blood”. Wald gathered some sheets from her bed-making lesson and followed the child to her home, a cramped two-room tenement apartment. Inside, she found the child’s mother who had recently given birth and needed medical treatment. The doctor tending to her had left because she could not afford to pay him. This was Wald’s first experience with poverty; she called the episode her “baptism by fire” and dedicated herself to bringing nursing care, and eventually education and access to the arts, to the immigrant poor on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Lillian D. Wald started the Visiting Nurse Service in 1893, and two years later she opened the Henry Street Settlement. The Henry Street Settlement was initially named the Nurses’ Settlement. It was (and remains) not-for-profit social service agency in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It provided both medical care to those who could otherwise not afford it, and a social center with a gymnasium added in 1895. Wald also worked on behalf of women’s rights and the welfare of children, establishing the Women’s Trade Union League and spearheaded a federal organization to help children. After years lobbying for this idea, the Children’s Bureau was established in 1912.

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images: Jean-Louis Baudelocque, L’art des accouchemens. Paris: Méquignon, 1781. The Lawrence D. Longo and Beatty Jeanne Longo Collection in Reproductive Biology, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Cosme Viardel, Observations sur la pratique des accouchemens naturels, contre nature, & monstrueux …Paris: Edme Couterot, 1671. The Lawrence D. Longo and Beatty Jeanne Longo Collection in Reproductive Biology, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Eucharius Rösslin, Der swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Rosegarten. [Hagenau]: Heinrich Gran, 1513. The Lawrence D. Longo and Beatty Jeanne Longo Collection in Reproductive Biology, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

A. Levret, L'art des accouchemens: démontré par des principes de physique et de mechanique ; pour servir de base & de fondement à des leçons particulières. Paris: Delaguette, 1753. The Lawrence D. Longo and Beatty Jeanne Longo Collection in Reproductive Biology, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Angélique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray, Abrégé de l'art des accouchemens: dans lequel on donne les préceptes nécessaires pour le mettre heureusement en pratique…Paris: La veuve Delaguette, 1759. The Lawrence D. Longo and Beatty Jeanne Longo Collection in Reproductive Biology, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

The Civil War Confederate Bio-Terror Plot,

In the summer of 1864 Bermuda was experiencing a terrible yellow fever epidemic, most likely spread by passing sailors.  There to help with the epidemic was Dr. Luke Blackburn, a physician from Kentucky.  While Blackburn helped many patients during his stay in Bermuda, he had ulterior motives for his actions. Dr. Luke Blackburn was a Confederate supporter, and at the time the American Civil War was going badly for the Confederacy.  Dr. Blackburn’s goal was to spread yellow fever throughout northern cities, hopefully causing enough death and chaos to hinder the Union war effort.

Dr. Blackburn gathered the clothing of dead victims, all of which were in good enough condition to pass as brand new clothing, and gathered them up in trunks.  He then had them shipped to Halifax, where they were then to be shipped to clothing merchants in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Norfolk, and Washington D.C.  Another trunk was also to be sent directly to Abraham Lincoln as a gift. The plot failed when authorities discovered the plot, Dr. Blackburn was arrested in Montreal, and the clothing confiscated and burned.  Nurses in Bermuda became suspicious of Dr. Blackburn and alerted the constabulary.  In addition, Blackburn’s accomplice, Edward Swan, alerted the US Consul in Toronto when Blackburn couldn’t pay him upfront to deliver the trunks of infected clothing.

Amazingly, Dr. Blackburn was only charged with violating Canadian neutrality law, but was acquitted and allowed to return to the US.  He served one term as Governor of Kentucky, passing away in 1883.

As its turns out, yellow fever cannot be spread from contaminated items, only through mosquito bites and contact with bodily fluids. So the plot would have failed anyway.

“The Physician’s Handbook: English medical and astrological compendium”, ca. 1454 via Wellcome Library on Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

happy new year

Tacuinum sanitatis, Rhineland 15th century

BnF, Latin 9333, fol. 96v

Lillie Rose Minoka-Hill (1876-1952)

Art by Meagan Young (tumblr, deviantart)

The daughter of a Mohawk mother and a white father, Lillie graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1899.  While working at the Lincoln Institute (today Lincoln University), Lillie met an Oneida man named Charles Hill.  The two married in 1905 and moved to his Wisconsin reservation.  They had six children together before Charles died in 1916.

Lillie ran a clinic out of her home in Wisconsin.  For much of that time, she was the only physician on the reservation.  She was also technically unlicensed until 1934 when she finally took the Wisconsin medical board exam.

Lillie was officially adopted into the Oneida tribe on Thanksgiving Day 1947.  She died in 1952.  In front on the Oneida Health Center, there is a monument to Lillie.  It reads: Physician, Good Samaritan, and friend to all religions in this community, erected to her memory by the Indians and white people. ‘I was sick and you visited me

Unit 731 was a World War II Japanese facility responsible for the death of thousands of men, women, and children in unethical human experimentation (including vivisection). Unit 731 was set up in 1938 with the aim of developing biological weapons. It was located in Harbin, a city in Japanese-occupied China, and the experiments were done on local Chinese who the Japanese considered inferior people. Unit 731 also operated a secret research and experimental school in Shinjuku, central Tokyo, which had doctors and scientists supplied by local universities who were complicit and enthusiastic about the research being done. 

Before Japan’s surrender, the site of the experiments was completely destroyed, so that no evidence was left of what happened there. The mice kept in the laboratory were then released, which could have cost the lives of 30,000 people, since the mice were infected with the bubonic plague. Then, the remaining 400 prisoners were shot and employees of the unit sworn to secrecy.  After the war the United States gave immunity to researchers of Unit 731 in exchange for their data.

Cecilia Grierson (1859-1934), qualified as a physician in 1889

Art by Beaandandy (tumblr)

Cecilia Grierson began her career as a teacher, entering medical school in her late 20s.  She graduated in 1889 as Argentina’s first female physician.  Her interests and accomplishments spanned numerous fields.  She initially focused on women’s health, writing her thesis on ovary extraction, and she founded the National Obstetrics Association in 1901.  Cecilia was also interested in kinesiology.  She created a massage therapy course for medical students at the University of Buenos Aires and wrote a textbook on the subject.  After she attended an the Third International Conference of the Red Cross, Cecilia founded the Argentine First Aid Society in 1892.  She also published a book on the care of accident victims.  She was a founding member of the Argentine Medical Association.

A proponent of women’s education, Cecilia mentored female medical and pharmacy students at the University of Buenos Aires.  She founded Argentina’s first nursing school at Hospital Británico de Buenos Aires in 1890.  Two years later, Cecilia established the Society for Domestic Economy which later became the Technical School for Home Management.  She developed Argentina’s first Home Economics course for high school girls and published a book on women’s technical education.  In the nursing school and the home economics programs, Cecilia encouraged the development of best practice standards for child care.

Cecilia gave free consultations to children with special needs and she was particularly interested in the well-being of blind and deaf children.  She authored a textbook on the education of the blind.

Cecilia was a leader in the women’s rights movement.  She founded the Argentine Women’s Council in 1900 and petitioned the government to provide better social welfare programs for working class women.  She also co-founded the Association of Argentine University Women which campaigned against women’s inferior legal status.

Cecilia retired from academia in 1916, but continued to work as a family physician and teacher.  She died in 1934 at the age of 74.

Laura Martínez de Carvajal (1869–1941), qualified as a physician in 1889

Art by Deanna Brigman (website, tumblr)

In 1889, nineteen year old Laura Martínez de Carvajal graduated from the University of Havana as Cuba’s first female physician.  Shortly after, Laura married an ophthalmologist and joined his practice.  The couple were among the first ophthalmologists in Cuba and they collaborated on numerous scientific articles.  They also raised seven children. 

Sergeant Alfred A. Stratton of Co. G, 147th New York Infantry Regiment, with amputated Arms

Under the Knife: The Butchers

Amputations constituted roughly 75 percent of all operations performed during the Civil War, at this time, most of the vast numbers of wounded men made it impossible for surgeons to undertake more delicate and time-consuming procedures such as building splints for limbs or carefully removing only part of the broken bone or damaged flesh. Critics, like Confederate surgeon Julian John Chisholm, charged that inexperienced doctors were too eager to attempt amputation as a way to improve their skills, and accused them of experimenting, often exacerbating existing injuries. Soldiers nicknamed such enthusiasts “butchers” and some even went so far as to treat themselves to try to avoid the painful intervention of the surgeon.

 “Angel’s Glow" Soldiers with Glowing Wounds at Shiloh-Wounded soldiers who had to remain at the battleground in the rain and mud for up to two days before medics could reach them noticed that their wounds were glowing in the dark. 

P. luminescens’s presence at Shiloh and the reports of the strange glow- bacteria, along with nematodes, got into the soldiers’ wounds from the soil. This not only turned their wounds into night lights, but may have saved their lives.

Tennessee in the spring is green and cool. Nighttime temperatures in early April would have been low enough for the soldiers who were out there in the rain for two days to get hypothermia, lowering their body temperature and giving P. luminescens a good home. Based on the evidence for P. luminescens’s presence at Shiloh and the reports of the strange glow, bacteria, along with the nematodes, got into the soldiers’ wounds from the soil. This not only turned their wounds into night lights, but may have saved their lives. The chemical cocktail that P. luminescens uses to clear out its competition probably helped kill off other pathogens that might have infected the soldiers’ wounds. Since neither P. luminescens nor its associated nematode species are very infectious to humans, they would have soon been cleaned out by the immune system themselves.

Two high school students, Bill Martin and Jon Curtis from Bowie, MD won the Intel International Science Fair competition in 2001 with their research into the curious story of soldiers who survived being wounded at the Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War in the spring of 1862.

http://xenophilius.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/why-some-civil-war-soldiers-glowed-in-the-dark/

http://bio230fall2010.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/civil-war-ghost-soldiers/

Where I live in Alabama, this stuff is all over the place. At least once a week my footprints will glow in the dark. It's really kind of cool

(via daisydandelions)

"Dandelions: The flower petals, along with other ingredients, are used to make dandelion wine and is one of the ingredients in root beer. Dandelion leaves contain abundant vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins A, C, and K and are good sources of calcium, potassium and manganese." 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicinal_properties_of_dandelion#Uses

Never underestimate a dandelion.