Browsing: Health/Medicine

A Brief History On August 9, 1969, members of the Manson Family, followers of cult leader Charles Manson, murdered actress Sharon Tate, her unborn baby, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and 3 other people.  Although definitely nutty people with bizarre, cult ideas about sparking a race war through senseless murder, none of these people successfully played the insanity card.  Charles Manson died in prison in November of 2017 one seriously deranged dude that seemed to be a shoo in for the loony bin.  We previously discussed “9 Blatantly Nutty People Not Found Insane” and today we nominate another 3 goofy people…

A Brief History On July 6, 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested his vaccine against Rabies on a boy that had been bitten by a rabid dog. Joseph Meister successfully resisted the deadly disease which prior to the Pasteur vaccine was a death sentence for anyone that contracted Rabies. Today we commemorate this great advance in the science of medicine by listing 10 diseases that either kill you or leave their victims in a horrible, debilitating state.  (Note: The Rabies vaccine does not cure Rabies, it prevents the onset of the disease.) if you are a praying person, perhaps praying…

A Brief History On June 3, 1861, in the first organized land battle (barely a battle in reality) of the American Civil War, the Union Army with 3,000 men routed an untrained force of 800 Confederate volunteers in what it now West Virginia at Philippi, a small town that today has only about 3,000 residents. Touted as a huge victory for the Union, the “battle” would be fairly inconsequential except for the wounding of 2 Confederate soldiers that both required battlefield amputations, one of which fashioned his own homemade artificial leg that proved so successful the wounded soldier founded a…

A Brief History On May 8, 1794, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, the man generally regarded as the Father of Modern Chemistry, was put to death on the guillotine during the Reign of Terror period of the French Revolution. It seems this man of noble birth who had such an enormous impact on the sciences of chemistry and biology was more than merely a scientist, but also a businessman and an agent of the Ancien Régime, the monarchy of France prior to the Revolution. Digging Deeper Born in Paris in 1743, Antoine was given a fine education (earning a degree in law…

A Brief History On May 7, 2018, while the latest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Infinity War, is breaking box office records, we stop to ask about the main premise of the film, the arch villain Thanos and his plan to reduce life in the Universe by half in order to prevent an overpopulation catastrophe. Our question is, “Has anyone tried this plan in real life?”  In 1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich published a book titled, The Population Bomb, a dire warning about the catastrophic consequences of overpopulation of people on Earth.  So far, those predictions have not…