An invite!
 

This Saturday, the 24th, is the Annual Colonial Faire and Muster of Fyfes & Drums at Longfellow's Wayside Inn, Sudbury, MA. If you're in the area, come on down! I'll be there as the Company Surgeon...and I'll be looking for volunteers for demonstrations involving amputations, tooth extractions, and the judicial use of catheters.

Here's the website: http://www.sudburyminutemen.org/faire.htm

Doc sign Bobk up for a catheter followed by an amputation!


Sounds like fun, have always wanted to see one of the many re-enactments that happen out your way. Will have to come out some time!

Trav

I'm Qualified
 

Since I've seen so many, I'm qualified to be your visiting Protologist Emeritus, if I'm in the area, no pun intended! :D

Scout! Excellent! C'mon down (no pun intended)! I'll just lube it up with a bit of olive oil, or mineral oil, or goose grease and send it home. I also have a clyster, which was essentially used for dispensing medicines...rectally. If you'll be my assistant for the day, I'll guarentee to cure you of your ills; or make you feel so bad you'll forget what originally ailed you!

...er.
 

To quote that famous line from "Cool Hand Luke," I think what we have here is a failure to communicate! According to my resume, I do consulting only, no practicums, ergo, if I do consulting, you'll have to do yourself! :D

Hope everything comes out in the end!

No Brain Transplants Yet!

You fellows way back then were a little crude in your practises.

Keith

Keith,

Yeah, I think you're right....medicine was fairly uncomplicated then.

If you ailed BELOW the neck, it was "consumption". If you ailed ABOVE the neck, it was "congestion of the brain".

And, I think, "blood letting" and leeches came into the picture somewhere. :D

Rigger,

I think Doc is good at blood letting. Anyway from his posts he sounds good at it.

Keith :D

Blood-letting (or phlebotomy, as we experts called it); one of the great "cure-alls". For example, if you had a headache in the 18th century, a surgeon would open the sephalic vein in your wrist and drain you of a pint of blood, because that particular vein goes right to your brain thereby relieving the pressure.

Or if you came down with what was known as "The French Pox" (syphilis, to the uniformed), I'd treat you with a regimen of purgatives and mercury. The mercury would be ingested, applied directly to the afflicted organ, or the organ itself could be injected using the clyster. Now if you had a very bad case, I'd use my bullet probe, heated in a fire, and inject it straight into your penis to burn it the infection. Then I'd insert the catherter to make sure you'd urinate while it healed. The best part is, you'd be wide awake and alert during this whole procedure.

Ain't science grand?!

"The BEST part" ????


Doc,

I am thoroughly convinced that you are re-incarnate from the Inquisition!

Couple of questions for ya along this line....

I read somewhere that George Washington (it could have been some other famous American, can't remember) probably would have survived longer had he not been "bled" so much that he became weak and unable to fight his illness.
Is that true?

Also, how much truth is there to the standard "Hollywood" depictions of ingesting large amounts of alcohol as an anesthetic before removing bullets, amputations, etc ?

When did viable anesthetics first appear? What were they?
Ether?