The excruciating final hours of George Washington (2014)
pbs.org
pbs.org
or
Dr. Craik ordered another bleeding. This time, 32 ounces were removed
i wonder how much lifespan this measures did take off of him, in this particular instance maybe hours, days, or even some weeks (of course it could have also been the primary cause of death). but all this bollocks throughout a lifespan could well be measured in whole lost years.
of course, i have no idea if this is true or not, it may also be that this kind of measures, if a body is just healthy enough, have no impact at all in the long run.
https://www.amazon.com/Never-Caught-Washingtons-Relentless-P...
Washington had hundreds of slaves, yet he sent his family and political allies repeatedly against the single escapee, Ona Judge in Portsmouth, NH. The governor of New Hampshire surely regretted his involvement of his daughter. That was quite a story.
It bothers me about him. I think of the three-fifths compromise (which most people around me are astonished to grasp), and the lives of the founders make me cringe.
Last month I went from felling ok to "I need a repeat prescription" to shaking and running a temperature with massive drop on blood pressure.
The next day I went to hospital started in the ordinary renal ward then to the serious cases renal then to critical care unit with 4 tubes in me.
I also got read the riot act about not calling 911 immediately
Glad for modern medicine. For all the troublesome aspects of distribution and administration, it is better than nothing, and better now than it was hundereds of years ago.
The alternative to antibiotics in a lot of these cases is death.
Not sure anyone would look at that “unkindly”.
He then went bankrupt. He claims that was why.
Whether or not it is, in his specific case, this is a coordination problem. Using antibiotics this way has to be outlawed, because any farmer who unilaterally chooses not to use it is leaving money on the table. In an efficient market, that leads to bankruptcy.
It's entirely likely that we use too many antibiotics, but antibiotics have also saved all of us from unbelievable levels of pain and suffering.
I had an ear infection once, and the pain was unbearable. I went to the doctor, who quipped, "if we leave it alone, eventually it'll just burst the eardrum and drain out." And then she prescribed me some antibiotics. And that's not even the worst situation that calls for antibiotics. It's not like my life was in danger.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4493566/#!po=5....
> but it's one of the few things we know that kind of works
Chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer is one of many pseudo-scientific medical practices commonly used by conventional medical practitioners.
Edit: link to NY Times article on Warburg: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-a...
I have. Chemo is horrible. It really wrecks a person. But you know who looks even worse? Someone who died of untreated cancer.
Look, I get it; cancer is no fun. But when the cure is worse than the disease, it doesn't make sense any more.
Except if you profit from disease and suffering, I guess.
We can’t really expect doctors to do things that aren’t really very possible (yes dna sequencing is somewhat possible today but the results aren’t necessarily very useful and far too little is known about the interaction of different genes with each other and medicine for it to be useful)
One example of many:
https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1073
It's not that the principle of peer review is wrong, it's just very hard to apply it fairly and objectively when money - huge sums of money - are involved.
What do you do if you think you have a medical problem? Where do you go for help? Obviously there are mistakes made and some unnecessary or counterproductive treatments are given in some cases. We’re talking about a massive endeavour involving millions of practitioners across the world. But claiming that in general this activity is not beneficial seems a big claim to make based on a single article on an issue with seemingly specific scope.
That's not what the linked article claims. The linked article claims that there are specific procedures that do not help in specific situations, yet these procedures continue to be done in those situations.
This is totally compatible with the claim that medical care improves outcomes on average.
If you want to justify the claim, "future generations will look at modern medical procedure X and remark at how primitive and pointless X is," you don't need to show that all medical procedures are bunk.
Indeed, in Washington's time, not all medical procedures were bunk. Doctors helped people, sometimes. If doctors in Washinton's time never helped people, the average person would notice that, and stop calling for a doctor. Were some of those procedures harmful to patients? Sure, but not obviously so.
The article I posted is the tip of the iceberg. A commonly recommended, unnecessary procedure, which kills or seriously injures one in fifty is a horrible scandal. Hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from errors in hospitals, a risk one avoids by staying home, is an awful scandal. Drugs prescribed long term to improve mental health issues based on short trials, now suspected to make them worse and induce dependence, are a terrifying prospect. Diabetes treatment protocols now absolutely known to kill people, in use for decades and probably still in use in plenty of cases. Suppression of dissent. Suppression of competition. Corrupt and motivated research.
I'm not saying don't go to the doctor. You should for a lot of things. I certainly do. I'm not saying doctors don't help - for a new issue I know nothing about, I'd generally expect them to be able to. But it is certainly true that if you exercise blind faith in the system, it is perfectly capable of cheerfully killing you. The best advice I have, and it is not very good advice, is to read absolutely everything. Review the basic science yourself for and serious condition you are dealing with, commit to no serious and life changing treatments without plenty of research and multiple opinions, DON'T TRUST THE STANDARD RECOMMENDATIONS TO BE SOLUD WITHOUT REVIEWING THE BASIC SCIENCE, and avoid unnecessary hospital trips and medication as much as possible. It is easy to scoff at the doctors of Washington's day - look at all the unnecessary and harmful crap they did! At least things are better now! Well... yes, a lot of things are better now, but we still do plenty of unnecessary and harmful crap.
> Patient: Kidney... dialysis.
> McCoy: Dialysis?! What is this? The Dark Ages? Here! You swallow that and if you have any more problems, just call me!
Not that the lack of diagnosis procedure really matters : the diagnosis is usually carried out by completely unqualified personnel. (specifically preschool teachers make the diagnosis, and the odds that these children ever see a real psychologist is 50% at best)
It's called "child services".
http://sciencenordic.com/half-all-foster-kids-norway-have-me...
(I mean any cursory study of the child services system in Norway will quickly yield the insight that the real problem is racism in child services itself, and not ADD/ADHD or any other mental disorders, but we're supposed to believe that the people involved are at least acting in good faith for some reason. Even if they're raging racists having children of immigrants abducted, apparently)
Mental health care ... has the same problem (whilst I'm sure the details are different in the US, please do remember: getting any kind of help at all, for any reason, from state health care, legally speaking is a totally unacceptable risk. You just cannot control what happens and you have no recourse. Stay away, and immediately respond VERY strongly on any whiff of attention to your kids). In Norway any competent lawyer should advise you that you can NEVER give your real name to any psychiatrist. It is a totally unacceptable risk.
(Decades ? Yes, decades: from 2-3-4 years old up to 25 years old. Imprison ? Yep, imprison)
You may just need a new dentist.
How did your dentist found room in your mouth to jam in some implants?
That sort of thing is pretty medieval even if you sugarcoat your modern day version of wooden dentures with CAD software and CNC milling machines.
I understand where you’re trying to go with your comment. It’s simply not the case that we’re being given bottles of gin while the dentist pulls out a hammer and chisel.
I just went in and had part of my tooth replaced because part of it crushed (I have very bad teeth). I felt zero pain. My heart rate remained under 60 the whole time. It was quick and easy.
Good Dentists are not mad scientists out to destroy you for financial gain.
So, drilling cavities and pulling out teeth. Those are the standard treatments that were performed in medieval times. Where exactly do you see any ground to disagree with this fact?
Steve Jobs cancer for example was possibly a result of his mostly fruit diet and when he got cancer instead of a traditional treatment he doubled down on the fruit quackery and other new age bullshit. He died.
Fruit heavy diets are very hard on the pancreas.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/...
"The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more."
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-...
This is part of the scorched earth tactics that resulted in not only the death of millions of natives but the almost extinction of the American Bison, an importance source of food and clothing for many tribes.
A true general would not need to conduct a war of attrition with scorched-earth tactics against tribes in the bronze age.
Not only Natives had inferior weaponry, they also were not familiar with writing, mapmaking and did not having navigation tools like the compass... limiting any form of military planning.
Washington had a wide spectrum of options and he chose to be immoral.
But he did, and because he did we can say that not only he acted in an immoral way, but set a precedent and a bad example for others to follow.
For the more common example of slavery of Africans in the United States, the argument that “they can’t be judged by current standards” doesn’t hold water, since many prominent people at that time wrote obviously ludicrous attempts to justify their actions, which means they clearly had the moral intuition that their actions required justification. Not to mention the fact that there were prominent abolitionists at the time.
Clearly there was nothing unique about “that time” that made it impossible to decide whether slavery was good or bad. I’m generally very skeptical of the idea that historical people deserve a pass for major moral issues (particularly ones that clearly involve direct violence against humans).
There is far worse if you dig further into the history of george washington and his father/grandfather in regards to the native americans.
> This is part of the scorched earth tactics that resulted in not only the death of millions of natives but the almost extinction of the American Bison, an importance source of food and clothing for many tribes.
"Kill Every Buffalo You Can! Every Buffalo Dead Is an Indian Gone"
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-buf...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg
It is no secret that the architects of nazi germany admired the genocide of the native americans and modeled themselves after the US. And yet, we are in such denial about our role in the death of natives. ( It was "smallpox" ).
"termed a "war of extermination" by Governor Peter Burnett who declared warfare would not cease with Native Americans "until the Indian race becomes extinct""
Nazi Germany borrowed tactics from American ethnic cleansing initiatives, but simultaneously they entertained the idea of having Native Americans as allies in the event of an American invasion.
The German film "Der Kaiser von Kalifornien" portrayed Native Americans in a positive light.
You make a good point but you're also wrong.
The way the colonies (and later United States) treated the natives was absolutely deplorable and immoral. The US (from the founding fathers until very recent times) is as guilty as you say.
HOWEVER... it cannot be denied that the accidental spread of European diseases wiped out over 50% of all natives before the era of colonization even began. Even today if contact is made with isolated peoples great care must be taken and medical services kept on stand-by. A disease ravaging the isolated group is a very, very real possibility.
It also means if humanity does every colonize another planet (even in our own solar system), if the flow of people ever stops we may not be able to re-establish it due to disease risk.
In the Americas, the only animal that responds to that description are llamas, guinea pigs, capybaras, etc. None of them found in North America.
Diplomacy with one group would not always extend to other groups, and in some cases diplomacy was conducted with the wrong individual, especially when tribes were matriarchal.
These situations made settlers confused and make them wrongly think that diplomacy was futile, as you seem to wrongly suggest.