Surgery Museum Makes You Grateful for Any Modern Healthcare Whatsoever

Anybody who finds this stuff interesting should also check out the Hunterian Collection ( http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/history/collections.html ) at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. In addition to the famous collection of anatomical preparations and specimens, the RCS museum features a fabulous collection of historic surgical instruments and artifacts, including a cringe-inducing lithotomy exhibit.

Three cheers for for antisepsis, antibiotics, and anesthetic!

I don't know about you guys but just looking at these photos makes my blood run cold. Seeing old photos/paintings of surgery in progress is even worse.

I think we've still got a long way to go in the medical sciences, but I'm sure as hell glad that I was born at least this far into the process!

Watched a presentation on Civil War medicine and surgery and the most interesting aspect was how they did all kinds of things not knowing why they worked. They did use chemicals to sterilize, but had no idea about germs. They had various powders to put in wounds that did actually aid clotting or accelerate healing, but they didn't know why at the time.

The survival rate was surprisingly high. You were dead for sure if you caught one in the guts, but otherwise they could do a lot. They could even do some basic brain surgery and fix your skull with a plate.

Just to compare it - does anybody have a link to some _modern_ surgery tools?

Because, while cleaner, I don't think they would be less likely to let your blood run cold.

On the iron lungs and the salk vaccine there is an interesting "conspiracy" theory I've seen. Incidence of polio correlates extremely well to production volumes of DDT and various insecticides. It's a startling chart. Production went way down and then so did polio.

The exact mechanisms of the polio virus have allegedly never been all that well worked out. The efficacy of the salk vaccine might be a coincidence.