Another smoking haven bites the dust. Now, let it be known, I am a non-smoker and also have mild asthma. I don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke. My moronic father used to smoke in the car when he was driving, and I used to get so carsick, but do you think the asshole would put out his Kent? Not a chance. Everywhere he went, he had a lit cigarette, and even used to smoke in our windowless non-ventilated bathroom. Anyway, my father’s lack of mental functional is another story, but the point being, I do not have fond memories of cigarettes and smoking.

But while I can understand smoking bans in public areas, in airplanes, and in areas where employees are packed into one room, ie, cubicle farms, I don’t think that the government has any right to ban smoking in private businesses. For instance, if a person has a private office, why can’t they smoke in there? And why can’t restaurant and bar owners decide for themselves whether or not they want to ban smoking?

I know, it’s to protect the employees. Well, a person does have a choice whether or not to choose a smoke friendly or smoke free environment to work in. The very nature of a bar indicates that it is a place where people come to indulge in a very unhealthy habit–drinking alcohol. If we really want to protect the health of employees, then we should ban bars–and that would help prevent people from being killed and injured by drunk drivers.

They put a new law in place in Seattle. So now, the streets are full of smokers, standing outside and blocking the sidewalk. Loud noisy drunks blowing cigarette smoke. Cool. We get to sniff smoke en masse, and people passing by have to weave their way through a forest of smoke and loud tipsy folks. I have read of people in NY complaining of the street noise now, beneath their window, as smokers come out of bars to puff away. They usually come out in twos and groups, so now residents living above the bars get to listen to annoying conversation until the wee hours of the morning. And smell the smoke wafting up.

Personally, I prefer eating and drinking in a smoke-free environment. But philosophically/politically, the decision of smoking on the premises should be left up to restaurant/bar owner, not the government.

And here’s an interesting health related tidbit. Usually smokers are fairly spread out in restaurants, and the smell from a lone cigarette doesn’t bother me. But walking in and out past a herd of them makes me cough. Sometimes there may be five or more people out front smoking, and all of that smoke, together in one spot, is really irritating to my lungs. So much for improving health.

There’s a great editorial in the NYTimes today about the tragic mining disaster in West Virginia. While everyone is focused on the media blunder, ie, telling the families that 12 miners had survived when in fact, 12 had been killed, the real story has gotten pushed aside.

Greed. Profit. Safety regulations lax and basically, an accident waiting to happen. Which did.

The mine, with more than 270 safety citations in the last two years, is the latest example of how workers’ risks are balanced against company profits in an industry with pervasive political clout and patronage inroads in government regulatory agencies. Many of the Sago citations were serious enough to potentially set off accidental explosions and shaft collapses, and more than a dozen involved violations that mine operators knew about but failed to correct, according to government records.

Perhaps if more attention had been paid to safety, and stiffer fines instituted, this tragedy might have been averted. But as the editorial points out, the Bushwogs have stuffed important posts in the Department of the Interior with individuals heavily entwined with the coal, oil and gas industry.

…this mining tragedy should focus us all on another forgotten, mistreated corner of society. The Sago mine disaster is far more than a story of cruel miscommunication. The dozen dead miners deserve to be memorialized with fresh scrutiny of the state of mine safety regulation and a resurrection of political leadership willing to look beyond Big Coal to the interests of those who risk their lives in the mines.

NY Times

And now, another chapter in the annals of medical history. I love historical stuff, so bear with me. The first medical society in the U.S. was formed in Massachusetts, home of the Boston tea party and Paul Revere’s raid. Of course, before we pat the state on the back for being the birthplace of the U.S., we do have to remember that the first European colonies were in the South. The first Europeans formed an ill-fated colony on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina, and then Jamestown was settled in Virginia–all of this way before the Pilgrims ever set sail on their rickety little Mayflower.

But Massachusetts was the hot spot for the beginning of the Revolutionary war, so it’s not surprising that they were very proud of organizing the first American medical society. A group of doctors formed the Massachusetts Medical Society on Nov. 1, 1781, and temporary officers were chosen later that month–on this day, November 28. The charter was signed by two famous founding fathers: Samuel Adams, as president of the Senate, and John Hancock, as governor of Massachusetts.

In time, the society would begin published the highly regarded New England Journal of Medicine. It has grown from a tiny group of 70 doctors, practicing medicine in a brave new country, to over 16,500 members. I’m sure that its founding members would be mesmerized as to how medicine and knowledge has advanced since their day, and also horrified by some of the turns that it has taken.

Here’s an interesting tidbit of history, and one which seems rather astonishing. The inventor of the lobotomy, a man named Egas Moniz, was actually awarded the Nobel Prize for his work. Talk about being desperate for a recipient. Of course, I imagine that this topic is one that the medical and scientific community would just as soon be forgotten, but unfortunately, lotobomies refuse to die a quiet death. NPR, just did an interview with a man who was lobotomized when he was only 12 years old.

It all goes to show how wrong medical “expertise” often is. Lotobomy was touted by some as the cure for all mental ills, just as it was formerly believed that tonsils were just some useless piece of tissue whose only purpose was to get infected. Some doctors still think that a woman’s uterus and ovaries are useless if she’s not actively breeding, but that’s another story.

What other gems of wisdom have we heard over the years? Well, in 1969, the Surgeon General announced that we basically had “won” the war on infectious diseases and could now “close the book.” Margarine was touted as a healthy food, hormone replacement therapy was believed to curtail heart disease in post-menopausal women, and routinely using antibiotics for everything and anything was considered the status quo.

By the way, Dr. Moniz was shot by one of his disgruntled ex-patients, and remained paralyzed for the rest of his life. Sweet revenge…

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And now, for another entry into the great annals of healthcare history. I’m a day late, but well, such is life. Anton won’t hold it against me.

For those of you with a fascination for microbes, today (yesterday) marks the birth of one of the most famous experts on teensy organisms, and indeed, a man who certainly advanced the science that we now know as microbiology. I was forced to take microbiology, 2 semesters of it, as a prerequisite for nursing school, and it’s a shame that one of the professors was such a dork. I think her goal in life was to fail as many students as possible, by making her exams totally unreadable. Several students complained to the dean about her, so it wasn’t just my lack of intelligence or personal vendetta against this bitch that was making me imagine that she had some screws loose.

But back to the info at hand–onn this date in 1632, Anton van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, The Netherlands. Same city as the artist VerMeer. Van Leeuwenhoek was a cloth merchant by trade, not a scientist, but apparently, the sciences intrigued him far more than did his cottons and linens. He created over 400 primitive hand-ground lenses and completely fascinated by the unseen world, he used to his lenses to study the microscopic make-up of things such as hair, blood, etc. He was able to magnify specimens over 200 times, which was quite a featm, and hired an illustrator to draw the hidden world that he had discovered. With his microscopes, van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, blood cells, sperm, microscopic nematodes and the rotifer, a minute aquatic organism.

Today is the birthday of Charles Everett Koop, M.D., best known for his tenure as Surgeon General of the U.S. from 1981 to 1989, when he defied Ronnie Reagan and dared to mention the word “AIDS.” Reagan would have preferred that the AIDS epidemic be ignored, and indeed, it wasn’t until 1987 that the word “AIDS” actually was publicly uttered by the president.

Koop wasn’t any less conservative than Reagan and his cronies (although Reagan seems almost daringly liberal compared to the Bush team), but he realized that politics and medicine don’t jive. A deeply religious man, he also realized that it was his responsiblity, as Surgeon General, to attend to the health needs of the nation. And at the moment, a new, misunderstood and rather deadly epidemic was underway.

I truly admire Koop. He is a hero, in that he refused to succumb to the ranklings of the Reaganites and pretend that AIDS was just a passing phase–and once it killed off all of the undesirables, it would go away. But instead of obediently obeying the President like a good little conservative, instead, Koop became the nation’s chief spokesman on the AIDS epidemic, creating untold controversy with his vocal support for early, candid sex education and the use of condoms. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995.

Just a few more details; he was born on this date in 1916, and served as chief surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia from 1948 to 1981. I shudder to think how far out of control the AIDS epidemic in this country may have gotten, had not Koop intervened and reversed the paralysis of our government.

So is the new James Bond going to carry around condoms and ask his “girls” if they’ve bugs in their crotch?

According to some, that’s exactly what he should be doing. Political correctness strikes again, it seems.

According to the latest “study” and I hesitate to use the word when discussing this nonsense, fictional character superspy James Bond was voted as the champion of unsafe sex by the medical world.

The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has released a study on 87 movies and came to the conclusion that films like “Basic Instinct”, “American Pie” and the James Bond movie “Die Another Day” showed frequent acts of sex, where the partners don’t use protections for sexually-transmitted diseases, the risk of HIV or birth control.

Dr Hasantha Gunasekera, the leading author of the paper and a research fellow in children’s health at Sydney University in Australia, said: “The study showed there were no references to important consequences of unsafe sex such as HIV transmission, spread of sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy.

In Die Another Day, released in 2002, there is no reference to contraceptive use in the sex scenes between Bond, played by Pierce Brosnan, and the leading female characters played by Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike.

I’m truly amazed at the incredible “research” that is popping up these days. James Bond doesn’t discuss safe sex with his partners. Yeah, and? James Bond is a fantasy character, who moves in a fantasy world where all women are beautiful, tuxedos never get wrinkled, martinis are shaken not stirred, gunshot wounds don’t cause bleeding, where a single mortal (James) can take down an entire army, and super villians always are the losers. That is the land of James Bond, where incidentally, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies do not exist. Sex does not have consequences, only pleasure.

If the authors of this study think that the Bond movies are supposed to be some kind of learning experience, and that they would somehow be enhanced by James flipping out a condom, well, then there’s really not much else to say. “Die Another Day” was one of the worst movies ever made, to say nothing of being the absolute worst Bond movie ever to hit the screen. But I can see that the idiotic plot and pathetic acting would really have been improved by the insertion of safe sex.

James: By the way, before we start screwing, I need to know if you’ve ever been tested for HIV. It really wouldn’t do for an agent on Her Majesty’s Secret Service to be catching and spreading STDs.

James: So do you prefer latex, lubricated, flavored, or what? I’ve got 150 different types of condoms, courtesy of Her Majesty.

Now that would really enhance a Bond movie, don’t you think? Wouldn’t diehard Bond fans really enjoy a discussion about STDs? Let’s make James Bond the purveyor of safe sex. Not only does he have a license to kill humans, but he has a license to kill STDs.

Dr. Gunasekera is obviously not playing with a full deck. While people are getting blown away in Bond movies, he is concerned that James may pick up a social disease. I think this doctor needs to get a life.

Gunasekera said: “Pretty Woman was the only movie with the vaguest reference to condom usage. Julia Roberts’s character gives the character played by Richard Gere a selection of condoms to choose from early in the movie. We then assumed a subsequent sex scene was protected sex.”

Well, that movie was a little bit different than a Bond flick. The movie was about a prostitute and her John, and so slipping in safe sex and condoms fit with the story line.

But even cuter are Dr. G’s observations about the movie Basic Instinct. According to the good doctor, there were six episodes of intercourse, and gasp–no condoms, no birth control measures, and no public health consequences.

Basic Instinct was filled with a line-up of characters who were borderline or full-fledged sociopaths. To say nothing of a roving homicidal maniac mincing bodies with an ice pick–and these characters are supposed to be concerned about safe sex? Surely you’re joking.

Let’s discuss those sex scenes. Foreplay is sitting around in a police station, crossing and uncrossing legs, wearing a short skirt and no underwear. Foreplay is also getting slammed into a wall, and having your carotid artery sliced by an ice pick. Safe sex, anyone?

The sexual encounters in this movie tended to be somewhat violent, based on crude lust rather than love and affection. The relationships between the different characters were dysfunctional at best, deadly at worst. I can see Michael Douglas groping Sharon Stone at the nightclub, trying to control his frenzied urge to screw her, and then scream, “Are you on the pill? Will there be public health consequences if we engage in sex?”

Or when he basically rapes Jeanne Tripplehorn (even though she was willing, it was still violent)–right before he slams it into her, she should have cried out, “Oh darling, I don’t know if I’m HIV negative. Wait, we need to get our blood checked before we can continue.”

The report also criticises films for portraying cannabis and other recreational drug use with no harmful consequences.

Uh, excuse me? No consequences for using drugs and getting wasted. Please watch Basic Instinct again and note how functional all of the characters are, and then what they do in their spare time. Drug use and drinking were very central to many of the scenes, and not in a very complimentary way. You got the idea that these characters were heading down the road to hell.

I don’t see anything wrong with inserting references to safer sex on a TV show, for example, or even a movie which may lend itself to that. But to point a finger to a Bond movie, and expect that he’s going to bag his dick in a condom, or expect that psychotic characters such as those in Basic Instinct are going to be concerned about contracting herpes, is ludicrous.

I think that Dr. Gunasekera has way too much time on his hands, and really needs to get out more. Sitting at home and obsessing about James Bond’s sex life is really not good for the soul–or the brain.
TimesOnline.com

Well, maybe not the end but a giant step forward for mankind (or should I say, humankind). From the annals of health history comes a major historical event–anesthesia. Imagine having surgery without it. I couldn’t even imagine getting a tooth filled without some sort of anesthetic, let alone getting sliced open.

Today in 1846, one of the most monumental events took place. I think it was even more monumental that figuring out handwashing helped prevent infections. American dentist William T.G. Morton (1819-1868) extracted a tooth from a patient named Eben H. Frost, using ether as an anesthesic. I bet Eben was in heaven.

Morton did not invent ether, nor was he the first one to use it during a surgical procedure. But he gets a foothold in medical history because he was the first to publicly demonstrate and document its use. So he brought ether out of the closet, so to speak, and paved the way for the general acceptance of anesthesia.

Here’s one for NICU nurses, and anyone else interested in medical technology. It may surprise you to learn just how far back the use of infant incubators goes. I always tended to think of them more as a mid-20th century invention, considering the dismal survival rate of premature babies prior to that. But live and learn. The first experiment in baby incubators dates to the 19th century. Scientists and doctors, in fact, have been playing around with different ideas for substitute wombs for over 150 years.

On Sept 7, 1888, a tiny infant made neonatal history. Edith Eleanor McLean, who weighed in at just 2 pounds, 7 ounces, became the first occupant of what was called the “hatching cradle,” the first incubator used in the U.S. She was born at the State Emigrant Hospital, Ward’s Island, in New York City, but I was unable to find any information concerning her gestational age. Judging by her size, I am assuming that she was born prematurely, rather than just being an undernourished small for gestational age type.

The device was a box, measuring 3 feet by 4 feet, and was warmed by 15 gallons of water. I’m assuming that the water needed to be continually reheated, and that it needed some sort of power source to keep the water hot. It built by William Champion Deming, M.D., who was in charge of the maternity ward. However, incubators were developed for infants in France as early as 1857.

For those of you interested in infectious diseases, and especially, mystery illnesses which plagued populations centuries ago, today is a rather important date in the great annals of health history. On this date in 1485, initial rumors about a strange illness known as “sweating sickness” or “sudor Angelicus,” began to circulate in England.

In the summer of 1485, a rapidly fatal infectious fever struck England. A newe Kynde of sickness came through the whole region, which was so sore, so peynfull, and sharp, that the lyke was never harde of to any mannes rememberance before that tyme.(Don’t you love to read good old-fashioned English??)

English sweating sickness, was characterized by high fever, delirium and high mortality. Patients first suffered from headache, nausea and fever, then broke out within 24 hours into a smelly sweat, labored heartbeat and breathing. Four additional epidemics were reported in the summers of 1508, 1517, 1528, and 1551, after which the disease abruptly disappeared. Chroniclers at the time noted that healthy young males were most often afflicted.

The first outbreak occurred at the end of the Wars of the Roses, which has led some to believe that it may have been brought to England from France, by the French mercenaries which Henry VII used to gain the English throne. The mercenaries seemed to have been immune to the disease. Another interesting fact is that the disease, unless most others at that time, appears to have been more virulent among the rich than the poor. That may be why is was so well documented and outbreaks carefully recorded.

So what exactly is the English sweating disease? Good question, and one that hasn’t yet been figured out. Medical historians have distinguished this epidemic from diseases such as the plague, malaria, and typhus, and have suggested that it may have been a severe form of influenza, food poisoning, an arbovirus, or an enterovirus. Others have speculated whether it was encephalitis, an outbreak of relapsing fever (carried by ticks and lice), or a relative newcomer to the roster–hantavirus (which is carried by rodents).

Only two physicians of the time period provided recorded eyewitness accounts of the outbreaks in England. They were Thomas Forestier and John Caius. Dr. Caius of Gonville Hall, Cambridge, who was president of the Royal College of Physicians, eventually devoted an entire book to the 1551 epidemic, which is the first monograph in English to deal exclusively with one disease. It includes the following vivid description (again, with their delightfully difficult spelling):

First by peine in the backe, or shoulder, peine in the extreme parts, as arme, or legge, with a flusshing, or wind as it semeth to certaine of the patientes, fleing the same. Secondly by the grief in the liver and nigh stomach. Thirdly, by peine in the head, and madness of the same. Fourthly by a passion of the hart . . . it lasteth but one natural day

In modern language, Caius described what many contemporary physicians see as a typical viral prodrome of myalgia and headache, progressing to abdominal pain, vomiting, increasing headache, and delirium. That is then followed by cardiac palpitation, rapid heart rate, and worsening tachypnea with chest pain, prostration, possible paralysis with increasing breathlessness, and ultimately death — sometimes within 12 to 24 hours of the onset of symptoms.

The other physician, Forestier, emphasized “the panting of the breath” and the “difficulty of breathing,” in his writings, suggesting that the lungs were intricately involved in this disease. If it really was a viral pulmonary disease, then its clinical and epidemiologic features seem most closely to resemble those of the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which was first recognized in the southwestern United States in May 1993.

But of course, this is all speculation. Unless someone digs up the graves of known victims of the sweating sickness, and does some fancy molecular testing, we will never really know what deadly little germs were responsible for this mystery illness–which vanished nearly as suddenly as it first appeared.

I found this interesting bit of trivia a few months ago, and now seems as good a time as any to post it. There are several interesting facts pertaining to health, such as the education of physicians and that a few of the leading causes of death 100 years ago still haven’t moved off of the list.

What a Difference “A Century Makes”

“THE YEAR 1904″

Where we were a century ago. This ought to boggle your mind.

The year is 1904 , one hundred years ago…

what a difference a century makes..

Here are the U. S. statistics for 1904 ….

The average life expectancy in the US was 47.

Only 14% of the homes in the US had a BATHTUB.

Only 8% of the homes had a TELEPHONE.

A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.

There were only 8,000 CARS in the US and only 144 miles of paved ROADS.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

Alabama,

Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily

populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California

was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the US was $0.22/hour.

The average US worker made between $200-$400/year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000/year,

a dentist $2,500/year, a veterinarian between $1,500-$4,000/year,

and a mechanical engineer about $5,000/year.

More than 95% of all BIRTHS in the US took place at HOME.

90% of all US physicians had NO COLLEGE education. Instead, they

attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press

and by the government as “substandard.”

Sugar cost $0.04/pound. Eggs were $0.14/dozen. Coffee cost $0.15/pound.

Most women only washed their HAIR once a month and used BORAX or EGG

YOLKS for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting POOR people from entering the country

for any reason.

The five leading causes of death in the US were: 1. Pneumonia

&influenza 2. Tuberculosis 3. Diarrhea 4. Heart disease 5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii

And Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented.

There were no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

One in ten US adults couldn’t read or write.

Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from HIGH SCHOOL.

Coca Cola contained cocaine.

Marijuana, heroin and morphine were all available over the counter at

corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, “Heroin clears the

complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the

bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”

18% of households in the US had at least one full-time SERVANT or

domestic.

There were only about 230 reported MURDERS in the entire US.

This info comes from LibertyPost.org

A day behind as usual, but this is a moment in the annals of medical history which should not go unnoticed. On July 25, 1978, the first baby conceived from an in vitro fertilization technique was born in England. The birth of Louise Joy Brown certainly changed the way we looked at conception and birth, and opened a Pandora’s box of ethics and arguments.

When does life begin? The age old question that even Moses didn’t seem to have an answer for. Does life begin at conception? At implantation in the womb? And most importantly in the debate over embryonic stem cells, does it begin in a petri dish?

I’m sure Louise had no idea about the fervor that her birth would cause. But any way you look at it, in vitro was a rather monumental accomplishment. It is just too bad that in their zeal to find a way to overcome infertility, the docs and scientists who pioneered this method never seemed to give second thought to thought to dealing with the ethics and potential problems that could arise. Like, what do we do with the half a million embryos chilling out in petri dishes–some who have been in deep freeze for over a decade?

Anyway, happy birthday Louise.

Okay, I’m a day behind in health history. But no bother, here’s the big highlight for July 14, which incidentally, is also Bastille Day. What kind of Francophone am I, that I didn’t mention it? A stressed out one, I think, with too much to do and not enough time to get it done.

But on July 14, 1883, the first issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association appeared in print. I love reading the articles in old medical journals–absolutely fascinating. And I’m sure, a hundred years from now, people will be reading about our so-called state of the art discoveries and theories and wonder, “What were these idiots thinking?”

Anyway, the journal was published with Nathan S. Davis, M.D., a major proponent for medical education and the driving force behind the creation of the American Medical Association 36 years earlier, as the editor. The first issue was only 32 pages long (probably not a lot of advertising). Today, there are about 90 pages of editorial content, and it is published weekly.

A trim, maybe a shave. That’s what barbers do, right? You know, the guys who cut hair for $2 a shot before it became trendy to spend $200 on a haircut.

But back in the good old days, a barber was more a jack of all trades. A bloody jack. In the 16th century, barbers did the majority of surgery including bloodletting, pulling of teeth, treating bone fractures and external ulcers. I guess they figured that if someone could cut hair and shave a beard, then they could cut and shave other parts of the body. King Henry VIII of England, better known as the guy who liked to behead his wives, was a patient of one of the barber-surgeons, Thomas Vicary. I guess he was so thrilled with his treatment (maybe he had blood drained from his brain?), that he allowed Vicary to talk him into making barbers officially surgeons.

So on this date in , 1540, old King Henry established the United Barber-Surgeon Company and decreed that two hanged criminals a year would be given to the organization for learning anatomy. I suppose that handing over fresh corpses was better than digging up graves for bodies. The group’s symbol, the familiar red and white barber’s pole, signified bandaging and bleeding. And here I always thought it resembled a candy cane. Well, live and learn.

I lost track of the dates–I really thought that today was the 24th. Not good for a writer who has deadlines. I really need to look at my calendar more often, which is hanging right behind me on the wall.

Anyway, another tidbit in health history. The doom of the cigarette. A dark day for the tobacco industry, when the Federal Trade Commission announced on June 24, 1964, that cigarette cartons would carry a warning. It seems like another world. When I was growing up in beautiful Brooklyn, NY, our co-ops all had cigarette machines in the basement. And you’d always see kids down there buying cigarettes for either their parents or themselves. It really was no big deal. I don’t know if cigarette sales were restricted in stores, but it sure was easy enough to buy them from the local machines which were all over the place.

And every one on television smoked. And not only that, but they looked so cool when they did. I have been watching the old series “The Saint” with Roger Moore, which is out on DVD, and he is so handsome and so cool with his cigarette. I mean, I couldn’t imagine it if he didn’t smoke. The glass of booze, the cigarette, his calm demeanor–who cares what his lungs and liver look like.

Just to give a little background (no, not about Roger Moore)…the warning on cigarette cartons was the result of one of the U.S. government’s first forays into medical research following World War II. One of the most significant studies, undertaken in the early ’60s, was the Surgeon General’s report on the effects of smoking. Not a popular report, I may add, as it would have untold effect on tobacco growing states, cigarette companies, and on the public who adored their cigarettes and cigars. Not even Humphrey Bogart dying of throat (or mouth) cancer was a deterent.

But the study confirmed that smoking cigarettes increased a person’s risk of cancer. I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. If you’re inhaling hot smoke into your lungs, and hot smoke filled with a cornucopia of noxious chemicals, what do you expect? Everlasting health? Sparkling fresh breath and pearly white teeth? Gee, they don’t call it smoker’s cough for nothing. Although, lifelong cigar smoker George Burns did live until 100…

When the ruling on warning labels took effect in 1965, more than 42% of Americans were puffing away. That number has since dropped dramatically. I have to say, I was rather stunned by smokers when I first moved to Seattle. After living in California for so long, I had almost forgotten that cigarettes even existed. Seeing people smoking in restaurants and bars was like being transported into the Twilight Zone.

It was unheard of in 1948, to actually write a book about sex. I mean, these were the years leading up to the stifling 1950s, when Father knew best, and June and Ward Cleaver would swear on a stack of bibles that the stork delivered Wally and the Beaver.

Of course, everyone was having sex, but the puritanical U.S., Hollywood censors made sure that no one even assumed that unmarried couples did, uh, that. Or that even married couples did. Mom and Dad slept in twin beds, and sex was by osmosis. And it was almost a scandel when Lucille Ball was pregnant on “I Love Lucy.” Ricky and Lucy were a happily married couple, but yet, showing that she and Ricky actually had sex and produced a baby was quite another thing altogether.

So the study of sex, save for the musings of Sigmund Freud, was a wide open field of research and investigation–if one dared to dabble. Brave man that he was, Alfred Charles Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” or the “Kinsey Report” as it came to be known, was published in 1948. Kinsey was born on this date in 1894, and was a sociologist and student of human sexual behavior. His book certainly ruffled a lot of feathers and put many myths to rest (alas, twin beds were still de riguer on TV for another decade at least). He conducted extensive interviews with 18,500 subjects, and his work revealed that many so-called perversions were actually common practices. Like, like, like….

Needeless to say, his book probably set the Bible belt preachers into a tizzy of fiery sermons on hell and brimstone, just as it caused sighs of relief among millions of Americans across the land. He was both vilified and praised for his work. The book remains a classic to this day.

Depending on how you look at it, today marks either a grand new era in nursing, or the beginning of a rather demeaning era. The first “real” training program, and I emphasize the word “real” because it was the first one that was set up to incorporate both classroom and clinical training, for nurses began on this date in 1860.

An agreement was made with St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, and under the auspices of Florence Nightingale, 15 students students entered the first class of the hospital’s Nightingale Training School for Nurses. The Nightingale system emphasized strict discipline, camaraderie and devotion to nursing, which Nightingale considered a calling rather than a profession.

The good part is that Florence Nightingale’s school finally was going to actually give nurses more of an education than had ever been done in the past. Because of its strict discipline, it also was elevating the status of nurses, and making it “respectable.” On the downside, Nightingale’s school system set the tone of nursing for the next 100 years or so, for the worse. Men were excluded, and nursing quickly turned into “women’s work,” and all that goes with it–long hours, low pay, low status, no respect. Hospitals quickly caught wind of this new fangled idea, and began to open training schools, which served a dual purpose of staffing their hospitals with what was basically slave labor. When students completed their training, they were booted out to do private duty work, and a whole new crew of student nurses took their place.

Amazing as it may seem, except for a matron and a few instructors, hospitals remained largely staffed by students (who were usually given room and board and a piddly stipend for their troubles) until the 1930s in the U.S.

Anyway, it is an exciting date in nursing history, that the first real training school opened. It is equally sad that nursing training took the turn that it did.

One of the biggest medical mysteries of all times is the subject of today’s entry into the annals of health/medical history.

What did Alexander the Great die from? Was he poisoned? Did he die of natural causes?

On June 13, 323 BC (or BCE for the politically correct among us), Alexander the Great , at the tender age of 33, died. He wasn’t sick, and in fact, his death came after a huge celebration. But for some reason, after some heavy duty partying in Babylon (which by the way, is present day Iraq), he dropped dead. Just like that.

Trying to figure out the cause of death of a person who died 2300 years ago is no small feat, particularly if you haven’t even got a corpse to play with. It does seem to be a favorite pasttime to try to figure out the illnesses and ailments of historical figures, both real and fictional, and Alexander has come under intense scrutiny. Over the years, biographers and doctors have offered various theories, attributing his death to intentional poisoning (not unlikely for a conquerer), pancreatitis (too much alcohol), malaria (lots of mosquitos where he hung out) and, most recently, typhoid fever.

Unfortunately, there’s not even a scrap of DNA for doctors to inspect. Not even so much as a dried out bone or strand of hair. After Alexander died, his body was stolen when it was being sent back to Macedonia. It was embalmed, and displayed in a glass sarcophagus in Alexandria (Egypt) for over five centuries , and then it somehow vanished. To this day, the whereabouts of his corpse are unknown. So I suppose that unless his body turns up, or we uncover the true, unabridged diary written by Alexander’s private physician, this is just one medical mystery that will remain unsolved.

Belated health history…on June 1, which was yesterday (I didn’t realize it was even the end of the month, that’s how date and time challenged I am), in 1969, Canada prohibited all cigarette ads on radio and television. I really don’t remember when it happened in the U.S., although I do recall the Marlboro man riding into the sunset. I wasn’t quite sure what the commercial was about since I was pretty small, but I liked the theme music.

Anyway, not a good day for the tobacco industry. I’m sure that they had the black flags up yesterday at half-mast.

And now, for another entry in the annals of health history.

Have you ever wondered why the British are called “limeys?” I know, the thought has never occurred to you. Well, like it or not, I’ll tell you anyway. It’s because they love to suck on limes. Delicious, huh.

Actually, there’s more to the story than that. Once upon a time, a dreadful disease plagued a good chunk of the population–primarily those who didn’t have access to good nutrition, or who scorned fruits and veggies. Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C, and is relatively unknown these days in most parts of the world. But way back when, it was a problem, particularly among sailors and others who often had to go for long periods of time withot fresh food.

James Lind, a British surgeon, was the first to couple a dietary deficiency and a disease. He didn’t know what vitamin C was (this was way before Linus Pauling’s time), but he did notice that eating oranges, lemons, limes and other citrus fruits would cure people suffering with scurvy. The British navy’s directive to sailors in 1795 that they eat citrus fruit daily was largely a result of a breakthrough study that Lind conducte in 1747.

Aboard the H.M.S. Salisbury, Lind took control of the diets of 12 sailors who had developed scurvy. After giving them citrus fruits, symptoms of the disease vanished and they were good as new. All within a week’s time. Lind’s report, “A Treatise of the Scurvy,” was published six years later, on May 25, 1753.