/r/historyofmedicine
A place to discuss the history of medicine, the fascinating evolution of medical science, the anecdotes of the people who have made medicine what it is today. Topics of discussion may include (but is not limited to!) the history of medical procedures, treatments, and devices, historical persons of interest, the history of epidemiology and public health, and other related areas of interest.
This subreddit is dedicated to the discussion of the history of medicine, as well as the histories of epidemiology and public health. Submissions and comments should be on topics related to these subjects except when otherwise permitted.
Also check out our wiki (Note: wiki is in development. Have a suggestion? Message the moderators).
This is a subreddit for civil and informed discussion. No hate material or open hostility is acceptable. Those users found to be in violation of this rule will have their comments removed and will be warned. Any subsequent violations of this rule will result in a ban.
Please follow the twenty-year rule: only post and comment about topics prior to 1993. This is to avoid the discussion of current events, which is more appropriate for other subreddits.
When posting, find the most relevant source. All controversial or possibly insensitive materials should include a thorough bibliography of sources. Blogspam is not acceptable. If you would like to post a link to a blog, that is fine, but multiple postings of singular blog entries by a single user will be considered spam, and that user will be banned.
Joke answers, memes, pun threads, reaction .gifs, MFWs and anything of the sort are strictly forbidden.
Downvote for irrelevancy, low content, or unhelpful content. Upvote for rich and interesting content.
If you have any questions, concerns or comments about the subreddit, please message the moderators directly.
Users are allowed to create their own flair.
You may include whatever you like as the text - either a primary area of interest or an area in which you consider yourself and expert.
In order to further distinguish novices and experts - if your flair represents an area of interest please select the color blue; if you consider yourself an expert on a topic, please select the color red.
Expert defined as either: extensive knowledge of a subject usually obtained through the completion of an undergraduate degree, or extensive self-study - please be willing and ready to expand on an issue or provide good sources, if asked.
/r/historyofmedicine
8,000 Subscribers
WWII, Cancer, and Pharmacology
During WWII, all sides agreed not to use poison gas, based on the horrific experiences of WWI, however neither side fully trusted the other to completely abide by this. To prepare for this possibility, the US developed mustard gas bombs to be used if Germany broke the treaty first. Unfortunately, on 02Dec1942, an unanticipated disaster ensued.
An American Liberty ship, the USS John Harvey, was docked in Bari, Italy with 2,000 secret mustard gas bombs on board, when a Luftwaffe air raid destroyed her. Since the cargo was top secrets, nobody knew that the oily mixture in the water, on surfaces, and atomized in the air were poisonous, until days later when patients started presenting with difficulty breathing, burns and blisters. They were diagnosed with "Dermatitis NYD" (not yet determined), and there were 617 casualties, including 83 deaths. The top brass knew what happened, but that information was suppressed and not communicated to doctors treating the victims.
Several years later, two clinical researchers at Yale reviewed the clinical findings from this disaster and noticed that mustard had a strong suppressive effect on cell division, and they used that knowledge to develop mechlorethamine, the first effective treatment for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. This discovery launched what is now call "chemotherapy" for cancer.
And, if you studied pharmacology over the last few decades, you may be familiar with the "Blue Bible of Pharmacology", Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. G&G were the two researchers at Yale who discovered mechlorethamine for the treatment of NHL.
Source: https://www.history.com/news/wwii-disaster-bari-mustard-gas
13:20 UTC
1873 guy bonks his head, knocks himself out, but is otherwise totally fine. Three years later, he has a seizure, then forgets those three years.
23:55 UTC
how did they keep the eyes open during icepick lobotomies?
07:18 UTC
What was Russian healthcare like for foreigners in the 1920s (1923)?
Hi, I hope this is the correct subreddit for this question. I am writing a short story for a school assignment and it features a student from Warsaw in Petrograd who falls ill to leukemia. He does not have citizenship. I found some articles about Russian medicine in 1923, but I haven't found much that specifies if everyone qualified for free healthcare. What would treatment in this case for him be like?
Thank you for any answer in advance!
09:22 UTC
ISO Power code for vintage ECG machine
Hello all, not sure if this the right place to look, but I recently acquired a vintage Cambridge Instruments Simpli-Scribe Electrocardiograph machine and all that is missing is the power supply. I would like to test its functionality however I am coming up empty handed in my search for the proper power cord online. Any advice or leads would be very much appreciated! Thanks again
01:40 UTC
Treatment for Sepsis
I'm doing research for a novel I'm writing, but I'm struggling to find information on sepsis. The book is set in the late 1800s.
In the scene, a character receives an appendectomy after the appendix has burst. He then goes into sepsis and dies. My question is: What treatment would doctors give for sepsis back then? Bloodletting? Anything else?
19:34 UTC
When they added anti-freeze to an antibiotic in 1937 to make it sweet.
The Elixir sulfanilamide disaster that killed more than a hundred people and hastened the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/histories-product-regulation/sulfanilamide-disaster
01:49 UTC
Prehistoric medicine
Could any one suggest to me a book/article that covers some big points about the development of medicine from its earliest beginnings(prehistoric medicine) to the ancient Egyptian civilization.
20:58 UTC
First Informed Consent Form : Yellow Fever Commission 1900
For those involved in clinical research, here's the first informed consent form used for human research. Created by the Yellow Fever Commission in Cuba, headed by Walter Reed. There was some public outcry there and in the US following some adverse medical events, and this was created under some pressure. It is more for legal protection rather than true informed consent like the ones we use now (with very specific Good Clinical Practice elements).
From the Philip S Wench Walter Reed / Yellow fever Collection
15:47 UTC
A brown velvet hat that belonged to a street "dentist" or travelling tooth puller in London in the 1820s-50s. It is decorated with 88 decayed human teeth from his former patients, each drilled with a hole and attached with twine
20:10 UTC
Electron Microscopy Image
This is a rather famous image. I just completed a narrative about it. But I'm curious how familiar it actually is to history of medicine buffs.
15:52 UTC
Choir of the Dead. Late 1950s film to promote cardiac resuscitation.
A late 1950s film showing survivors of cardiac arrest, and saved by resuscitation. It was produced by renowned surgeon Dr Claude Beck as a sort of public service announcement (with a rather morbid title) to advocate for cardiac resuscitation education. It is a precursor to present day CPR and the ubiquitous AEDs we see all over. It was in 1947 when Beck saved a 14-year-old boy (the tall guy in the back row to the right) who went into ventricular fibrillation on his operating table. The medical team spent more than an hour trying to revive him, and it was the first successful use of a rudimentary device in a wooden box, called a defibrillator. (Not sure if the sound will come through, but the link to the journal article with the video is provided below. You'll need to click "Play Stream")
Source: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/suppl/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.610907
01:40 UTC
Has anyone heard of a practice called "tierbaden" from the 19th century or earlier?
A friend and I came across this term in a book talking about Robert Schumann, the husband of composer and pianist Clara Schumann. We are looking for any other historical references that might suggest this was an actual medical practice.
22:16 UTC
When Cigarette Companies Used Doctors to Push Smoking
23:29 UTC
Note card recording the first clinical use of extract
1921 "Note card recording the first clinical use of extract" written by Fred Banting. Joseph Gilchrist was his med school classmate and friend who had diabetes and was not doing well. Banting gave him a pancreatic extract to take orally. It had "no beneficial effect". The extract was meant to be injected, not swallowed. A few weeks later, a 14-year-old boy received the first injection of insulin, and that too did not work very well. The extract was further refined, and the teenaged boy, who was at death's door, was saved. He went on to work, often drank on weekends, "had fun", and lived another 13 years.
22:57 UTC
The Birmingham child who paved the way for the heel prick test
04:09 UTC
'The Cow Pock, or, The Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!' James Gillray's satirical depiction of Cow Pox vaccination misinformation and its purported bovine-morphing effects (1802).
13:30 UTC
Marking 100 Years of Insulin Treatment in England
21:01 UTC
Question...
What was the name of the surgeon who was afflicted with a pathology, who created a classification system for said pathology and pioneered its surgical management?
My brain has hit a wall.
20:16 UTC