SH!T WENT DOWN: Historical Medical Advancements that Probably Saved Your Life

Feel free to sound off if one of these saved you

Two days ago, I made this post on Facebook:

On Saturday night I began to feel sick. Sunday, I was in terrible pain. Monday, I spent all day in the hospital, and I shit you not advanced medicine saved my life. If not for high-tech imagery, pharmaceuticals, and knowledgeable physicians, I'd be writhing in even worse pain and slowly dying over the next few days. Speaking as an historian, prior to the 20th century, when the doctor showed up, they often just made things worse. Any dipshit who eschews modern medicine for a "simpler time" can inhale a big bag of dog farts.

The post got several hundred comments, and a lot of them were people asking what the fuck happened. Sorry, but that’s my business. The reality is that it could have been any number of things, because we were born into fragile bodies on a hostile planet that wants to kill the shit out of us every goddamn day. A few days ago was my turn to die, except modern medicine saved me.

Well, I’d probably not be dead yet. Likely I had a couple more days of unbelievable suffering to endure before I finally kicked off on … maybe this Sunday? All the while I’d be screaming and begging someone to please just bash my fucking head in with a rock to end it. But because of science, tonight I’m going to an Iron Maiden concert. Probably gonna have to limit it to one beer though.

I will not ask the question “How many children do you know who have died?” because I bet there are readers who have some truly depressing answers to that query and I’m sorry for even mentioning it. I will say, however, that I can only think of one from my personal history. When I was in junior high a kid in my school who had a lifetime of heart troubles finally succumbed in eighth grade. Had it not been for modern medicine, he never would have lived near that long.

I only knew the one, but back in the bad old days, dead children were the norm. It was half.

Half.

A quarter of babies never saw their first birthday.

Half never made it to fifteen.

Holy fuck.

FYI the “old days” is merely prior to the twentieth century, so not all that long ago. Didn’t matter where you lived or how much money or power you had, once mom squeezed your big head out of an orifice of insufficient diameter to accomplish such a biological feat, you had a 50/50 chance of making it to your mid-teens. And making it that far was no guarantee of a long life. I’m a very healthy 55. Earlier on Saturday last I ran a half marathon in under two hours. Later than night, totally unconnected to my race, my body decided it was time for me to dirt nap, and had it been a hundred years ago, I would have.

Interestingly, in the old days the richer you were the more likely you were to die because if you got sick and had actual money the “doctor” showed up and sometimes killed you with their dumbfuckery, when if left alone you may have lived.

But then we began to get our medically scientific shit together, and am I ever grateful for that. Today, September 28, in fact, is the 95^thanniversary of Alexander Fleming testing his “mold juice” hypothesis being able to kill a wide range of bacteria and holy shit now we have antibiotics.

I’ve written a lot of pieces about scientific advancements that likely saved your ass. This is an incomplete list of some cool medicinal advancements throughout history that I’ve written about that might have saved your life, with links to read more:

Antibiotics
As I mentioned, today is a happy anniversary for that. Prior to the development of antibiotics people died from ingrown fucking toenails. You know how many historical figures I’ve written about who I ended the story with “assploded himself to death via dysentery” because antibiotics weren’t a thing? A whole lot. And you’ve heard of Mary Queen of Scots? Her first husband, who was the goddamn king of France, died at the age of sixteen from a fucking ear infection. Read more about the discovering of antibiotics in my post here.

Vaccines
Edward Jenner may not have invented the vaccine for smallpox, and the whole milkmaid story could be apocryphal, but he sure was a master of promotion. It took almost two centuries to get it done but smallpox, which is one of the most lethal diseases in history, is still the only human disease to ever have been fully eradicated. Read my story about it here.

I’ve also written about the first attenuated vaccine used to cure a boy of rabies by Louis Pasteur. Read that story here.

Got polio? Maybe thank Elvis for the fact that you don’t, because he used his star power to dramatically increase the uptake of the polio vaccine. Read that one here.    

And if you’re tempted to believe in anti-vaccine bullshit, read my piece about why the modern face of this pro-disease movement, Andrew Wakefield, belongs in prison.

Handwashing and Sanitation
In the mid nineteenth century doctors would go straight from doing an autopsy to delivering a baby and not wash their hands in between and then wonder why all these women were dying. Actually, I don’t think they gave much of a shit because when another doctor did research and said hey wash your damn hands, they fired him. Read my piece about that and also about the first antiseptic surgery.

You can also read my piece about Florence Nightingale and her efforts at improving hospital sanitation.

X-Rays
Kind of hard to treat you if they can’t see what’s wrong. Being able to see what’s going on inside the human body is mega important to deciding what to do to fix it, and as I mentioned, being able to look inside me is one of the things that saved my life this week. Read my piece on the discovery of X-Rays here.

Anesthesia
I’m not sure what the research says on how wanting to die because of the pain makes a difference to actually dying from a surgery, but getting operated on has got to be way easier when you’re tranquilized right the fuck out. Read my story about the first uses of chloroform and how it made getting operated on suck so very much less.

The APGAR Score
The fuck is an APGAR score? It was created by Dr. Virginia Apgar to quickly assess the health of a newborn to decide if they needed intervention to, you know, not die. Read my story about it here.

Abortion
Yes, abortion. It’s healthcare and it saves people’s lives. Fetuses are not people. Read my piece about Roe v. Wade and my other piece about The March for Women’s Lives.

Socialized Medicine
Okay I haven’t written a specific piece about this but it’s undeniable that people die because they can’t afford to see the doctor so what was a curable issue becomes a terminal one. As I mentioned, my body tried to kill me recently, but I live in Canada and the total cost for top notch life-saving medical care was fifteen bucks for parking. Get your shit together, America.

And please buy my sweary fucking history book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN so you can read all these stories and a whole bunch more.

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