[meteorite-list] Meteorite from Jupiter-- uh, I mean TO Jupiter

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Jun 22 03:29:11 2006
Message-ID: <009b01c695cd$82864630$b0e5fb44_at_ATARIENGINE>

Chris,

    You do the medical profession of the XIXth
century a great disservice, particularly from the
period following the Napoleonic Wars which,
for a complex set of reasons I won't reiterate
here, transformed medicine from medieval
scholasticism to true science.

    Many people assume that because physicians
had so many fewer tools to utilize than today's
doctors, they were made poorer doctors for it.
On the contrary, many were forced to be better.
In the particular matter of amputation, warfare,
especially with artillery, had made this a particularly
well understood therapeutic problem.

    It is true that amputation was more commonly
performed in the XIXth century, but that is due
to untreatable infections that threatened the life of
the patient. The conditions which required it were
also well understood, what degree of sepsis and
so forth.

    I did not elaborate on the details of the Swedish
injury, but the humerus was shattered, with many
large fragments and a wealth of bone splinters. Bone
possesses a remarkable ability for reconstruction if the
many pieces can be kept aggregated in approximately
the correct position, but additionally, the muscles
which would have maintained the positioning of the
bone while knitting, were shredded to an unrecon-
structible degree, and all the intervening vascular
tissue was hopelessly damaged or missing. There
would have been no blood supply to the injured
area nor the remainder of the limb. Amputation
was the medically correct treatment, and might
still be the preferred, and preferable, treatment today.

    It is just barely possible that now, with a collection
of specialists, a major surgical center, and 22 hours in
the O.R., bone support implants, grafting the patient's
saphenous veins into the arm and some vascular shunts
too, mesh re-growth sheaths for the muscles, a mountain
of antibiotics, and $300,000, this arm might have been
saved. There would almost certainly have been no nerve
function distal to the injury site and little function to the
limb of any kind. A totally disfuntional limb also poses
on-going risks of serious complications. Lifelong
massage and circulatory therapy, and likely electro-
myographic stimulation would be required.

    I think you're seen too many Western movies
where "Doc" is a hopeless drunk with a five-day
beard, sitting all day in the saloon, in a dusty cowtown,
and treats all illnesses with paragoric and all injuries by
pouring whiskey over them. A cliche that may have
had a few actual antecedents, but an entertainment
industry and dime novel cliche just the same; not reality.

    Of course, not every XIXth century doctor was
a Lister, Pasteur, Koch, Ehrlich, Carrel, but I doubt
that there were any more bad doctors then than now
(not that there aren't a certain number of sub-standard
practioners in any era). In fact, it would be harder, in
those therapy-poor eras, to hide being a bad doctor.
Folks will tend to notice if most of your patients die...
Nowadays, if you don't improve, you just go to
another doctor until you find one that gets the job
done. I'm on my sixth cardiologist, but he's a keeper.

    Not to belabor the point unnecessarily (probably
already have), but I think you're being glib and dismisive
on the basis of crude generalities that have little to do
with reality.


Sterling K. Webb
------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Peterson" <clp_at_alumni.caltech.edu>
To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:20 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorite from Jupiter-- uh, I mean TO Jupiter


> And in the 19th century, people had their arms (or worse) amputated
> sometimes for the most trivial of injuries, so I'm not sure what we can
> conclude about that meteorite, either.
>
> Chris
>
>
Received on Thu 22 Jun 2006 03:28:50 AM PDT