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Tag Archives: early medicines

Watch Out for Miasma!

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by Nancy Clark in Interesting Facts about Medical Practice 1880-1930, Uncategorized

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cholera, early medicines, epidemics, germ theory, malaria, miasma, miasma theory, old time doctors, Pasteur, Robert Koch, tuberculosis

Like “chirurgical,” the word “miasma” comes from an earlier time in medical history. It may sound more familiar, however, because one of its definitions is still in use today. If you want to say something about the dangerous influence of drugs, you could state, “My best friend got caught up in the miasma of drug addiction.” Or if you want to describe how someone managed to change his social status against all odds, you could say, “After many years of hard work and determination, he was finally free from the miasma of poverty.” So this word is still useful to describe “a dangerous, foreboding, or deathlike influence or atmosphere” (dictionary.com) or “an influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt” (merriam-webster.com).

But up until the end of the 19th century, miasma was also the name of a popular theory to explain the origin of diseases, especially those that erupted into epidemics: cholera, typhus, typhoid, and others that occurred with regularity, like malaria and tuberculosis. The miasma theory was based on observation, as were many other medical theories of the time. People living in squalid and crowded conditions and/or near swamps seemed
Miasmato be most prone to epidemics and other diseases. Therefore, it made sense that the cause of the diseases was the poisonous miasma (clouds of small particles) in the air coming from polluted water, rotten vegetation, animal carcasses, and human waste. In other words, bad environments generated bad air, which in turn triggered diseases.

The concept goes all the way back to ancient Greece and may still be found in some people’s belief that sleeping in fresh air is beneficial to one’s health. The miasma theory did, however, provide some benefits to 19th century citizens. In an effort to control the outbreak of epidemics, towns and cities drained swamps and marshes; sanitary reformers tackled the job of cleaning up the dirty, poorly built, and densely populated city neighborhoods that had sprung up during rapid industrialization and immigration. Their attempts to improve the air quality actually ended up accidentally destroying some of the real causes of the diseases.

The miasma theory, though obviously wrong, died a slow death. Even with the development of the germ theory of infection in the mid 1800s, some people clung to belief in what they could see and smell. It took the work of people like Louis Pasteur, who proved the existence of pathogenic organisms, and Robert Koch, who isolated the bacteria that cause cholera and tuberculosis, to pave the way  for general acceptance of the germ theory. Their pioneering work, and the work of many other dedicated scientists, led eventually to the containment of most of the killer diseases of earlier centuries.

 

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Dance with St. Vitus

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by Nancy Clark in Interesting Facts about Medical Practice 1880-1930, Uncategorized

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cod liver oil, early medicines, old time doctors, Rheumatic Fever, St. Vitus Dance, strep throat, streptococcal infection, sulpha, Sydenham's Chorea, the wonder drug

St Vitus DanceSt. Vitus Dance — what a strange name for a disease we now refer to as rheumatic fever! Those who suffer from the disease often make involuntary and irregular jerking movements as a result of muscle spasms. St. Vitus is the patron saint of dancers; thus the name.

Also known as Sydenham’s Chorea, the disease is a complication of untreated strep throat. Other symptoms include swollen and painful joints, a rash, and sometimes weakness and shortness of breath. The medical community of the 1800s also observed that St. Vitus Dance was accompanied by “irritability and depression, and with mental impairment.” Another reference book of the period suggested that such cases often ended in idiocy and many times insanity. It was most common in youth under 18. The only treatment at that time was complete bed rest and regular doses of iron and cod liver oil for four to six weeks.

What 19th century physicians didn’t know was that rheumatic fever could also leave behind damaged heart valves and eventual heart failure.

And that is probably what happened to Dr. Blaine’s youngest son, William Gillespie Blaine. At the age of 14, Will contracted St. Vitus Dance. With loving care from his mother and medications from his father, Will appeared to make a complete recovery within a couple of years. He went on to hold jobs on a lake steamer, a railroad, and at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. When World War I came along, he served almost two years on a hospital train in France and returned home to continue a productive life. But by the time he reached his early forties, he must have slowed down. And in 1932 at the age of 48, he collapsed and died on a couch in his brother’s house. The silent killer had finally caught up with him.

Three years later the “wonder drug,” sulpha, was introduced to the medical community, and the incidence of rheumatic fever and other streptococcal infections decreased dramatically. Sulpha — and later penicillin and other antibiotics — completely changed the landscape of medicine. From that time on, doctors could do more than just treat the symptoms of a disease. They had the power to cure it.

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Morphine Addiction

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Nancy Clark in Interesting Facts about Medical Practice 1880-1930

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addiction, biography, cocaine, Dr. Blaine, early medicines, morphine, old time doctors

Hypodermic needle

Dr. Blaine sighed. He stared at the needle he was about to stab into his own body. How many times was this today? Was there no end?

It had started out innocently enough. Like most doctors in the late 19th century, he prescribed morphine routinely to many of his patients to alleviate the pain of conditions he could not cure. Unlike cocaine, morphine was pure and predictable and had no gastric side effects. Since he had easy accesss to the drug, he also used it on himself for pain relief, for a way to relax after a long, stressful day of house calls, record-keeping, and little sleep. Then came a virulent attack of malaria, which he couldn’t seem to shake. Relief from the pounding headaches and muscle aches came only from higher and higher doses of morphine. And he finally had to admit that he was addicted. This from a man who had sworn to himself as a young medical student that he would never come under the power of the “intoxicating drink” like so many of his fellow students had. How ironic that he had finally succumbed to a more insidious addiction!

I never knew my great-grandfather, Harry Gordon Blaine. He died 11 years before I was born, but he was the stuff of legends in our family. Growing up, I heard many tales of his exploits as a country doctor in rural Ohio and marveled at the human skeleton and the box of surgical instruments he left behind. There were also whispers and knowing glances among the adults about an addiction to morphine but never any solid proof until I started doing research for his biography and found a copy of the divorce decree from 1896. His wife clearly stated that her reasons for the divorce were failing to provide the essentials for his family and “habitual drunkenness from the use of morphine.”

Thankfully, there is a happy ending to his story. After many tries, Dr. Blaine was successful in overcoming his addiction and remarried, founded a hospital in Willard, Ohio, and continued to practice medicine until his death in 1930 at the age of 72. I’m still working on his life story, which I hope to publish sometime in the next few years under the title A Grave Occupation: The Story of an Old Time Doctor. Watch for more tidbits in this blog!

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Cocaine: the Miracle Medicine

06 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by Nancy Clark in Interesting Facts about Medical Practice 1880-1930

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Tags

cocaine, early medicines, old time doctors

Cocaine a legitimate medicine? Impossible!

Don’t be so hasty. In the nineteenth century, medical doctors had a limited arsenal of medications to relieve pain and suffering. So when cocaine was refined into a usable form in 1860, it quickly became a miracle drug, used to treat everything from depression to hay fever, and much in between. Pregnant women suffering from nausea and vomiting were advised to take a small dose every three hours during the day. It was used topically or intravenously to relieve the pain of surgeries on the eye, nose, and mouth. In their enthusiasm, doctors at first ignored or were ignorant of cocaine’s darker side.

With no legal boundaries, the new drug spread inevitably to the underworld of crime and prostitution and even into the homes of ordinary citizens under the guise of patent medicines like Crown Catarrh Powder or early soft drinks, which included forerunners of Coca-Cola. By the time its addictive powers were finally recognized, cocaine had claimed a number of victims, including some medical professionals who had injected themselves.

By the end of the century, states began to pass laws restricting the sale of cocaine only to those with a doctor’s prescription. And the federal Harrison Narcotic Act of 1915 put further restrictions on this dangerous drug in its transport over state lines.

Similar problems had already surfaced with the use of morphine as a pain reliever. Stay tuned for more about that one!

(If you want more detail about early cocaine use, consult this source: Courtwright, David T. “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Cocaine in the United States,” in Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology, pp. 206-228. Ed. Jordan Goodman, Paul E. Lovejoy and Andrew Sherratt. New York: Routledge, 1995.

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