Browsing: Health/Medicine

A Brief History On December 23, 1972, the survivors of an airliner crash in the Andes Mountains were finally rescued after 73 days.  Rescuers soon discovered the grisly evidence that the survivors had lived only because they had eaten those who had died. Throughout history, there have been instances where humans have eaten other humans, sometimes out of sheer desperation to survive, other times just because they wanted to.  Here 10 more such incidents are listed. (No, Hannibal Lecter does not count, even if they do call him “Hannibal the Cannibal!”)  In case you feel cheated out of a couple famous cannibals, consider…

A Brief History On December 15, 1973, with a vote of 13-0, the American Psychiatric Association agreed to remove homosexuality from its list of psychiatric disorders.  Obviously, prior to this, the psychiatric world of medicine had considered homosexuality a mental problem, and this ruling was a major step in the social definition of sexual orientation. Digging Deeper Other questions remain unanswered though; at least consensuses have not yet been reached in their regard.  For example, is homosexuality something a person is born with, or is it a learned behavior brought about by a person’s life experiences?  Is homosexuality perhaps a choice, something that…

A Brief History On August 6, 2005, Creme Puff, the oldest cat to make it into the 2010 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, died at the age of 38!  Digging Deeper For those of you who have ever owned a cat, you know that 38 years is more than a ripe old age; it is next to impossible for any cat to reach.  In human terms, this particular cat made it to 169 years of age, an age certainly not experienced by any man or woman in modern history.   If your cat makes it to 15, that is already good, and every year beyond that is…

A Brief History On December 14, 2012, in Chenpeng Village of Henan Province, Chinese citizen Min Yongjun stabbed an 85-years-old lady in her own home with her own knife and then took the knife to the primary school next door and began stabbing children aged 6 to 11. Digging Deeper Apparently China’s emergence as a world economic and industrial power has caused changes in society that have unsettled many of its citizens, and for the past few years, there have been several such attacks on school children as a result.  In them meantime, security guards are posted at all Chinese schools. Although…

A Brief History On December 9, 1979, history was made when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the smallpox virus in nature had been made extinct.  Only samples in labs for scientific purposes remained. Digging Deeper Smallpox is the first and so far only (major) human disease to be totally eradicated by the efforts of human science and medicine.   A terrible disease, smallpox may have first shown up in humans anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 years ago and regularly killed millions of people each year.  Many historical figures died of the disease, and the mummy of the Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt even…