I am working to catch up on some of my projects today, especially my writing.  I've been working literally night and day on several different web related projects and my hobby here at history of the book of medicine has taken a little to the backseat.  I've been helping several new bloggers get their blogs up and running, and I've been helping several clients initiate professional blogs, with a website and a shopping cart.  More importantly I've been working on several of my own business endeavors that help to fund my efforts here so I can spend the time cataloging the history of medicine is was taught a hundred years ago.  I'm also in the middle of a relocation from the Atlanta area to the Charlotte, North Carolina area and so I've been moving back and forth throughout all this preparing the new home and preparing to leave the old home.  In part this means that I have to setup and breakdown my office almost every day moving from one desk or location to the next.  One day I might find myself sitting on a couch and working, laptop and lap, and another day I might be sitting down to Kinko's in front of a row of modern desks or even sitting on the dock by the lake underneath a ceiling fan watching the dogs chase after insects and each other.

 

I noticed this week as google went through their update that our website here, got knocked down a peg or two and that doesn't bother me terribly much.  I have not been promoting this website terribly hard, as this truly is a hobby and not so much a business, that said it was a good reminder that I need to network more with other  websites that might have a similar aim or focus or even some that are tangentially related.

 

So if you have a medical related blog, and medical history blog or even alternative medicine blog or website, please leave me a comment I'd like to review possibly exchanging links and building up better network.  (Please no spamming comments, we can exchange more details off-line if necessary.)

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Impurities in Rain Water
  
  

  In a world where rain water is polluted more and more by run off following the decimation of forests, trees, and large tracts of land, it is no wonder that we suffer from ozone at ground level and not at stratospheric levels, its only a matter of time before we all have to invest in portable oxygen concentrators to keep our homes habitable.

  Impurities in Rain-Water.–It contains, however, small quantities of organic matter, nitric acid and ammonia, all of which are washed out of the air through which it descends as rain. The source of the nitric acid is believed to be the nitrogen of the atmosphere, which combines with oxygen under the influence of the electric spark during thunder-storms. Nitric acid in rain-water exists in such insignificant amount as to be entirely unimportant in itself ; but it adds very seriously to the danger of impregnation with lead from lead pipes, roofs and cisterns by rapidly dissolving that metal and forming the very soluble and highly poisonous salt, nitrate of lead.

• THE PUBLIC DRINKING CUP.
  
  

  THE PUBLIC DRINKING CUP.

  The drinking cup is a common carrier of disease. It can and does spread consumption, syphilis and typhoid fever. Any child or adult suffering from tonsilitis, diphtheria, scarlet fever or other communicable diseases can infect another by using a public tumbler or cup, whether at a public railroad station, school house, ball park, pump, railroad train, ferry boat or steamship of any kind, etc.

  The most of the State Boards of Health have had laws passed in recent years to abolish the public drinking cup and those states which have not done so are neglecting the public health by not enforcing this preventive measure, which would aid iu checking the spread of disease.
  The drinking cup should be replaced by a sterile paper cup which can be purchased in sealed packages or containers and are given away free of charge in trains, etc., and can be purchased for one penny from the slot machines in stations. They are destroyed after use and a more refreshing and sanitary drink is obtained and the danger of contracting disease eliminated. The Public Drinking Cup Must Go.

  The concept of a Public Drinking cup is extremely foreign to many of us in the US today.  In fact it is often difficult in this age of dishwashing machines to even get a person to use the same cup themselves more than once.  We live in an era where drinking out of a fresh drinking bottle or soda bottle or coffee cup is the norm and not the exception.  We can hardly conceive of going on Vegas vacations or trips to Disney World or even a trip to Wal-mart or McDonalds or wherevere and entering into a casino or ’saloon’ or restaraunt and drinking out of the same cup that hundreds or even thousands of others had utilized before us.

• Typhoid Fever from Polluted Water
  
  

  Typhoid Fever from Polluted Water. — the remarks which have been already made with regard to the influence of impure water on the spread of cholera, apply still with greater force to the causation of typhoid fever. So, does this move propagation that the assertion may be ventured that few readers of these pages have not lost some near relative or beloved friend from the dreaded disease arising in this way, although the true source of the infection was perhaps, at the time it occurred, quite unsuspected.

  Okay so if you have been following this recent series on typhoid fever and cholera, the general theme here is that polluted water and contaminants brought to water sources were extremely dangerous for what we would consider civilization just a hundred years ago.  It might be a little bit more difficult to picture something of an epidemic raging through London or New York City today.  However you might consider just how fragile ecosystems of the city’s are today.  They rely on massive systems to clean the water.  If power to those systems were to fail for an extended period of time, the spread of disease could rapidly start up with population centers at levels that are much higher than they ever were one hundred years ago.

  There is only so much that any government agency or even the military for that matter can do to potentially help in a situation like that.  We have recently seen what happened in New Orleans were a population of just one million people were essentially left behind.  That occurred during a flood after a hurricane, and so there were aspects of that situation that definitely complicated things.

  However, if we consider just how big of a failure a given city might experience when it has a population of several million people in it, things could be much more dangerous.  I’m not just talking about the potential for riots and looting, and the necessary levels of police forces, National Guard, and other members needed to come in and secure the area.  I’m talking about the need of infrastructure and support systems necessary to keep the city functioning.

  A possible better example of a complete breakdown of the system, could probably be evidenced in the failure that took hold in Baghdad following the invasion of US troops.  Not only did the system fail from a water supply and electricity supply perspective, but the residents took to sabotaging and looting some of the equipment that made those systems work.

  We often times here about how the military was unprepared for that particular situation, and we think about soldiers going into battle without the proper Kevlar vests, or armor plating on Humvees or even little things like replacement Kevlar helmets, or 5.11 Tactical Knives, or night vision goggles.  We don’t always think about the fact that they don’t go into a city armed with plumbers and engineers, and plumbers and engineers at levels large enough to actually run the city.

  So as we look back on this historical accounting of the perils of these diseases, we should not make the mistake of thinking, that this could not happen to us.  It is very possible that we are only a few days of electricity away from being reduced to a similar state or level of technology needed to protect us.  In Zimbabwe it actually took a couple years, as the President of that country systematically dismantled his country with one failed policy after the next, but we have also seen a President in the United States, whose bad policies have similarly brought an even larger more successful country down, it might not be impossible for a different President to finish the job.

  

  Technorati tags: Cholera Possible in America, Cholera New York City, Lessons Learned from Bagdad, Government Unprepared
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