Browsing: Health/Medicine

A Brief History On March 26, 1999, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, alias “Dr. Death,” was convicted of second-degree murder in Michigan for giving a terminally ill man a lethal injection at the man’s request.  The 52-year-old man was succumbing to Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), a particularly dreadful way to die. Digging Deeper Kevorkian had previously championed the right of dying people to end their own suffering with medical assistance and had devised machines that allowed the patient to kill themselves by either adding a lethal drip to an IV or by inhaling lethal gas through a mask they put on themselves.  He had already been tried…

A Brief History On February 16, 2006, the United States Army decommissioned the last of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals, or MASH as they were called.  Since the Army is staffed by educated and intelligent people (mostly), they obviously had a backup plan, and that is the Combat Support Hospital (CSH pronounced cash). Digging Deeper Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals had served the combat medical needs of the U.S. Army since their inception in 1945, continuing through the Korean and Viet Nam Wars and then in the conflicts in the Middle East until being replaced by Combat Support Hospitals. Famously depicted in the 1968…

A Brief History On January 2, 2009, Maria de Jesus of Portugal died in her home at age 115.  At the time of her death, she was the oldest living person in the world and the 20th oldest recorded person ever to live.  Maria ate fish, but not meat, and never drank alcohol or smoked.  Digging Deeper Every so often, you hear of a centenarian who drank and smoked every day of his or her life right up to the end, which was not the case with Maria.  So what does the trick?  Did Maria live so long due to her healthy diet and habits? …

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…