Medicins – History of Sorts

The Weird World of Medical advertising. Please do not follow the advise.

Mornidine advertisement, 1959.
Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 81, No. 1, p. 59.

Now she can cook breakfast again
… when you prescribe new MORNIDINE (brand of pipamazine)
A new drug with specific effectiveness in nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, Mornidine eliminates the ordeal of morning sickness.
With its selective action on the vomiting center, or the medullary chemoreceptor “trigger zone,” Mornidine possesses the advantages of the phenothiazine drugs without unwanted tranquilizing activity.
Doses of 5 to 10 mg., repeated at intervals of six to eight hours, provide excellent relief all day. In patients who are unable to retain oral medication when first seen, Mornidine may be administered intramuscularly in doses of 5 mg. (1 cc.).
Mornidine is supplied as tablets of 5 mg. and as ampuls of 5 mg. (1 cc.).
G. D. Searle & Co. of Canada Ltd. 247 Queen St., E., Brampton, Ont.

* *
Historical footnote:
Pipamazine (Mornidine) was removed from the U.S. market in July 1969, following reports of liver toxicity.

Quaaludes were a sedative and hypnotic used as a sleeping aid between 1962 and 1985. They were, in a word (and in every sense of that word), volatile. Many of the helpless insomniacs and anxiety sufferers who took the drug to get a little shuteye ended up becoming manic, seizing, convulsing, vomiting, and sometimes even dying.

Or, they ended up addicted. Quaaludes are now considered a Schedule 1 drug (like heroin and LSD), but even before being approved by the FDA, research pointed to possible issues of dependence and abuse. By the 1970s, Quaaludes had become a wildly popular street drug. In 1982 alone, there were 2,764 reported emergency room visits as a result of Quaalude use.

Valium advertisement, 1970.
Hospital & Community Psychiatry, Vol. 21, No. 5.

35, single and psychoneurotic
The purser on her cruise ship took the last snapshot of Jan. You probably see many such Jans in your practice. The unmarrieds with low self-esteem. Jan never found a man to measure up to her father. Now she realizes she’s in a losing pattern — and that she may never marry. Valium (diazepam) can be a useful adjunct in the therapy of the tense, over anxious patient who has a neurotic sense of failure, guilt or loss. Over the years, Valium has proven its value in the relief of psychoneurotic states — anxiety, apprehension, agitation, alone or with depressive symptoms. Valium 10-mg tablets help relieve the emotional “storms” of psychoneurotic tension and the depressive symptoms that can go hand-in-hand with it. Valium 2-mg or 5-mg tablets, t.i.d. or q.i.d., are usually sufficient for milder tension and anxiety states. An h.s. dose added to the t.i.d. dosage often facilitates a good night’s rest.
VALIUM® (diazepam) for psychoneurotic states manifested by psychic tension and depressive symptoms
Indications: Tension and anxiety states; somatic complaints which are concomitants of emotional factors; psychoneurotic states manifested by tension, anxiety, apprehension, fatigue, depressive symptoms or agitation; acute agitation, tremor, delirium tremens and hallucinosis due to acute alcohol withdrawal; adjunctively in skeletal muscle spasm due to reflex spasm to local pathology, spasticity caused by upper motor neuron disorders, athetosis, stiff-man syndrome, convulsive disorders (not for sole therapy.)
Contraindications: Known hypersensitivity to the drug. Children under 6 months of age. Acute narrow angle glaucoma.
Side Effects: Drowsiness, confusion, diplopia, hypotension, changes in libido, nausea, fatigue, depression, dysarthria, jaundice, skin rash, ataxia, constipation, headache, incontinence, changes in salivation, slurred speech, tremor, vertigo, urinary retention, blurred vision. Paradoxical reactions such as acute hyperexcited states, anxiety, hallucinations, increased muscle spasticity, insomnia, rage, sleep disturbances, stimulation, have been reported; should these occur, discontinue drug. Isolated reports of neutropenia, jaundice; periodic blood counts and liver function tests advisable during long-term therapy.
Roche Laboratories ~ Division of Hoffmann LaRoche Inc. Nulley New Jersey 07110.

PTZ/Metrazol was used to provide convulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. Originally, it was intended to be a circulatory and respiratory stimulant, but neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna discovered that high doses caused convulsions, so he decided to treat schizophrenics with it.

As damning as that sounds for Meduna, convulsive therapy is actually an effective, last-resort psychiatric treatment still used today. PTZ/Metrazol has since been replaced by electric shocks as the preferred mechanism for convulsive therapy, a treatment that can effectively induce seizures to provide (often temporary) relief to people suffering from major depressive disorder, mania, and catatonia.

While convulsive therapy can be effective, PTZ/Metrazol was an overzealously convulsive drug. It was pulled off the market — after 48 years — for causing uncontrollable seizures, pulled muscles, and spine fractures in an estimated 42% of patients.

aldwin’s Nervous Pills, circa 1883

Cures nervousness, irritability of temper,
want of strength and energy,
fear, dread, neuralgia,
hysteria, disturbed sleep,
melancholy, insomnia,
and all nerve pains and diseases.

PRICE 1’1½d. & 2’9 PER BOX
POST FREE.

sources

http://www.bonkersinstitute.org/medicineshow.html

https://allthatsinteresting.com/fda-mistakes/3

Edith Eleanor McLean- The 1st incubator baby.

Seeing babies in incubators nowadays is a fairly common sight.

Infant incubators are used to provide a warm environment for babies born prematurely or for other infants who are unable to maintain a normal body temperature. The infant incubator is a relatively small, glass-walled box that may have portholes fitted with long rubber gloves through which nurses can handle and care for the infant. Most infant incubators are fitted with special devices that can control the concentration of oxygen inside the incubator; this is necessary because some infants need either greater or lesser amounts of oxygen owing to particular diseases they may have. Infant incubators also regulate the humidity inside the enclosure.

The concept of the incubator was developed in France as early as 1857. The first device in the USA was built by William Champion Deming at the State Emigrant Hospital on Ward’s Island, New York.

The device was warmed by 57 liters of water. The forerunners of this constant temperature sensor in the uterus were the Ruehlsche cradle in Moscow in 1835 and the ” warming bath ” introduced by Credé in Leipzig in 1864.

On September 7, 1888, an incubator was used for the first time in the U.S. to treat a premature baby. Edith Eleanor McLean, the baby in the photo above, was the first child to be placed into such a device. She weighed 1,106 grams at birth.

There is not much known what happened to baby Edith afterwards.

Update December 2.2021

One of Edith’s grandchildren contacted me and gave me the following additional information.

“I know what happened to little Edith. She is my grandmother. Her name was changed to Myrtle Eleanor. She went on to give birth to 13 children. My mom was the 12th.”

sources

https://www.onthisday.com/photos/baby-incubator

The first incubator baby was named Edith

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkubator_(Medizin)

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The good fortune of Joseph Meister but yet a tragic end.

I hear a lot of fear mongering in relation to vaccines. One argument given by some people for not taking a vaccine is that one of the side effect is death. Usually these arguments are given with the back up of a meme, but never with actual facts.

It is true that one of the side effects could be death, but this can be said for every medical procedure. If the adhesive used on a plaster can cause an allergic reaction in people causing death.

When it comes to vaccines it is less then 1 percent of a risk. Not taking it will give a much higher risk in death.

On July 4th,1885, a rabid dog attacked a 9-year-old boy from Alsace, France. His name was Joseph Meister. The vicious and crazed dog proceeded to throw the boy to the ground and bite him in 14 places, including the hand, legs and thighs. Some of the wounds were so deep that he could hardly walk. Twelve hours later, at 8:00 in the evening, a local doctor named Weber treated Joseph’s most serious wounds by cauterizing, or sealing them, with searing doses of carbolic acid, in and of itself a horribly painful process.

This procedure did not help on July 6,1885, the boy’s mother brought her son to Paris, she suspected the boy had contracted rabies. She had heard rumours of a scientist who could prevent rabies. This scientist turned out to be Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur was so taken by the boy’s plight that he consulted two physicians, Alfred Vulpain and Jacques Grancher at a weekly meeting of the French Academy of Sciences. They, too, were struck by the need to do something, and to do it fast. Pasteur later reported, “Since the death of the child appeared inevitable, I resolved, though not without great anxiety, to try the method which had proved consistently successful on the dogs.”

Bacteriologist Louis Pasteur, who kept kennels of mad dogs in a crowded little laboratory and was hounded by medical criticism, had never tried his rabies vaccine on a human being before.

Pasteur escaped the medical license dilemma by having his medical colleagues present when the vaccine was first administered on July 6, 1885, some 60 hours after the initial dog attack. Mrs. Meister expressed little concern over the potential dangers of the experimental vaccine because she was so fearful that her son would die and she readily gave Pasteur her consent. The first injection was made in a fold of skin covering the boy’s right upper abdomen. Over a period of three weeks, Joseph was given 13 such inoculations.

For three weeks Pasteur watched anxiously at the boy’s bedside. To his overwhelming joy, the boy recovered.

Joseph Meister did not only recover but also went to work for Louis Pateur in later life. For decades he worked as a concierge at the Institut Pasteur, Louis Pasteur’s laboratory where some of the most important discoveries elucidating infectious diseases were made.

On June 14, 1940, the Nazis invaded Paris from Germany. Fearing for their safety, Meister, then 64 years old, sent his family away and stayed behind to protect the Pasteur Institute from the German soldiers. Ten days later, on June 24, 1940, Joseph Meister was overcome with guilt because he was certain that his family had been captured by the Nazis. He committed suicide by a gas furnace. In an ironic and sad twist of fate, his family was safe. They returned to the Institute just a few hours after Meister committed suicide.

Although his life was cut short by suicide. If he hadn’t received the vaccine against rabies he would have died aged 9.

I can understand why some people are reluctant to take any of the Covid 19 vaccines today. The misinformation that goes around on social media is phenomenal. But do not base your decision on anecdotal evidence(which is often made up) but base it on medical scientific facts. Inform yourself.

If I was to believe some of these antivaxers , this blog would not have been possible because I should be dead, given the fact I had a double does of the Moderna vaccine. Several members of my family received different vaccines and I am glad to report they are all alive and well.

sources

https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/joseph-meister/m051w1w?hl=en

https://time.com/3925192/rabies-vaccine-history/

https://historydaily.org/the-life-and-death-of-joseph-meister

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/louis-pasteurs-risky-move-to-save-a-boy-from-almost-certain-death

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J.D. -The Forgotten WWII Hero.

2019-11-05

This most be one of the most intriguing WWII stories,not is it only one of those rare positive WWII stories it also ties in to WWI and the effects of it still apply today.

We have no name for this hero, all we know him as is J.D. . We know of J.D is that he was a Polish immigrant who worked as a steel worker in the US. We also know he had Lymphoma which is a blood cancer that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). He was terminally ill and did not have long to live. He was incased in tumors.

J.D was the first patient to be treated with a Chemotherapy.

Milton Winternitz at Yale, who had worked on sulfur mustards in WWI, managed to get a contract to study the chemistry of the mustard compounds from the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development. He approached two pharmacologists from the Yale School of Medicine, Louis S. Goodman and Alfred Gilman, to investigate potential therapeutic applications of chemical warfare agents.

Goodman and Gilman’s initial plan was to create anti dotes to mustard gas.They were afraid of a repeat of WWI. They discovered that soldiers who had been exposed to Mustard gas in WWI had a surprisingly low whit blood cell count.

They then reasoned that this agent could be used to treat lymphoma. Initially they set up an animal model by creating lymphomas in mice and showed they could treat them with mustard agents. Next, in co-operation with a thoracic surgeon, Gustaf Lindskog, they injected a related agent, mustine (the prototype nitrogen mustard anticancer chemotherapeutic), into the patient only known as J.D. He had volunteered for the test he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He got his first injection on August 27 at 10.00 AM, 1943 They noticed a dramatic reduction in the patient’s tumor masses .Although the effect lasted only a few weeks, and the patient had to return for another set of treatment, it would the first step to the realization that cancer could be treated by pharmacological agents.

Although J.D’s life was only prolonged for a few months it had given him at least a few reasonably good months.

2019-11-05 (1)

Although the study was concluded in 1943 , due to the secrecy associated with the war gas program, the results were not published until 1946.the publication of the first clinical trials was reported on October 6 1946 in the New York Times.

All the chemo therapies that followed work bascially on the same mechanism.

If it had not been for J.D. the treatment for cancer may have been completely different today. Therfore I believe he really was a WWII Hero.

Donation

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Sources

BBC

https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/68/21/8643

New York Times

What addiction? The weird world of medical advise.

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Substances we now know to be highly addictive and even lethal weren’t always seen that way. In the late 19th and early 20th century heroin was seen as a cough medicine and coca cola’s secret ingredient was cocaine.(Have a coke and a smile)

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Cigarettes were recommended for pregnant women. Even arsenic was used in confectionery and advertised as something that would keep you young.

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Below are just some of the examples of medical advise and advertisements used in the past.

What could go wrong?

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Why stop with beer? Why not use whiskey or rum to get your child to sleep. bf0a532a4949f6b196735524c8560968

Arsenious Acid granules. Nothing like a little Aresenic to cure what ails you. Notice the inconsistency of the dosage. Each granule could contain anywhere from 1 to 50 grain and you were to take 1-2 granules, therefore you may have from 1 to 100 grain in any one dose. Thankfully they have now labelled it as poison just in case.

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