April 18, 2008

MORNING NOT BEST WORK TIME (Jul, 1934)

Filed under: Medical — @ 11:45 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1934
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I couldn’t agree more.

MORNING NOT BEST WORK TIME
Contrary to long established belief, the ability of most persons to work more swiftly and accurately on rising from a night’s sleep is not as great as it may be at other times. This was one of the many surprising facts discovered during a new series of sleep tests conducted by Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago. In his experiments he used the electrical recording instruments shown above. With them, he charted the effects upon sleepers of alcohol and drugs.

April 8, 2008

Bed Helps Blood Circulate (Mar, 1937)

Filed under: Medical — @ 8:40 pm
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Mar, 1937
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Bed Helps Blood Circulate
OFFERING almost immediate relief to heart victims a new motor-driven bed, which rocks the patient in teeter board fashion, has been developed for hospital use. It is the belief of leading medical practitioners that the rocking effect of the “Vasocillator,” as the bed is called, will bring persons suffering from a heart attack through the crisis substaining them until the heart is once more able to function normally.

April 5, 2008

Mobile Plastic Eye (Jan, 1947)

Mobile Plastic Eye that moves in coordination with the wearer’s good eye is held at left by Fritz Jordan who developed it in association with Dr. A. D. Ruedemann, chief eye surgeon of the Cleveland Clinic. Mobility is obtained by sewing the eye muscles to a mesh of tantalum metal covering the back of the plastic eye.

Food or Poison? (Nov, 1936)

Filed under: Medical — @ 8:34 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1936
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Apparently soy milk was already on the market in 1936. From the bottom of the third page: “A milk substitute made from soy beans which can be digested by patients who are upset by ordinary milk is now on the market…

Food or Poison?

Physicians Must Turn Detectives To Find the Causes of Ailments Produced by Eating, Breathing, Or Touching Common Substances By Frederic Damrau, M. D.

NOT long ago, a man arrived at the famous Mayo Clinic, at Rochester, Minn. This was his curious story: Every morning at eleven o’clock, no matter whether he was in a business conference or driving his car, he dropped asleep!

Dr. Walter Alvarez, of the clinic, followed clew after clew. Finally, he traced the ailment back to the man’s breakfast, to his cup of coffee, and even to the cream in his morning beverage. When the patient eliminated cream from his coffee, the trouble disappeared!

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April 3, 2008

Life-Saving, A One-Man Operation (Sep, 1936)

Filed under: Medical — @ 9:33 pm
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1936
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Life-Saving, A One-Man Operation

AMONG the many exhibits on display recently at the Salon Nautique, Paris, was the latest in life-saving apparatus.

Where formerly it required the aid of two men to complete the job of artificial respiration, the new apparatus needs only one man to resuscitate the water victim. The operator straps the bellows beneath the unconscious man’s chest, lays him face downward, adjusts the head-rest to align the windpipe, then rocks the handle of the respirator.

March 18, 2008

Loud-Speaker Wrecks Sleep in Study of Slumber Habits (Jun, 1936)

Filed under: Medical — @ 10:01 pm
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1936
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Loud-Speaker Wrecks Sleep in Study of Slumber Habits

Sleep-wrecking is done scientifically with foghorns and loud-speakers at the University of Chicago, where a study of sleeping habits is in progress. At various stages of slumber, the foghorn starts a din and the reaction of the sleeping student is noted. Wakened, he jots down a few notes and then goes back to sleep. The study has demonstrated that sleep is deepest during the first ten minutes, and quite deep during the first hour or two of the night. There is more movement in the last half of the night, and it is easier to waken the subject immediately after a change in position than ten minutes later. To record movements during sleep, apparatus was installed by which every motion shifted weights and pulleys and wrote the record on a graph.

March 17, 2008

New Hospital on Wheels (May, 1938)

In 1938 New York had roughly seven million people and the FDNY had ONE ambulance. Wow.

New Hospital on Wheels

By John E. Lodge

BRINGS FIRST AID TO MEN WHO FIGHT NEW YORK’S FIRES FIVE-ALARM FIRE! Thirty-five engines and trucks racing through the streets before dawn. Three hundred crack smoke eaters battling a block-square conflagration. That was the scene, a few weeks ago, when 3,000,000 feet of lumber in a big Brooklyn, N.Y., yard turned into billowing clouds of smoke and darting streamers of flame.

For hours, the firemen fought to keep the blaze from spreading. One man was carried out with a broken leg. Another was hurried from the scene with blood streaming from a gashed hand. Still others staggered about with eyes so inflamed they could hardly see. By the time the blaze was under control, twenty-one firemen were on the injured list. In aiding them, New York City’s new $10,000 fire ambulance—an amazingly complete, ninety-mile-an-hour hospital on wheels—played an important part. The big fire was its spectacular initiation into service.

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Can We See with Our Noses And Hear with Our Fingers? (Apr, 1923)

I would say no to the first and maybe to the second. However there is some dispute about Willetta Huggins’ abilities. Her claims were tested and at least partially validated by reputable scientists, of the day. However, Willetta fully recovered her hearing and vision a few years later and attributed the miraculous recovery to the healing power of Christian Science which lends a lot of credence to the idea that she never was blind or deaf.

At least that’s what it says in The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in the United States

Can We See with Our Noses And Hear with Our Fingers?

Amazing Feats of 17-Year-Old Blind and Deaf Girl, Who Smells Colors and Feels Sound, Convince Scientists that Unused Powers Lie Asleep in Our Senses

CAN we learn to see with our noses? Can we learn to hear with our finger tips? Can we develop eyes in the backs of our heads or wherever else we happen to need them?

The amazing case of Willetta Huggins, the 17-year-old blind and deaf girl of Janesville, Wis., makes these questions much less fantastic than they would have seemed a year ago. For Willetta can do some of these things.

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March 9, 2008

Sugar Will Give You Endurance (Aug, 1930)

Filed under: Medical — @ 3:03 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1930
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Sugar Will Give You Endurance

Colgate University tests offer startling proof of man’s dependence on sweet.

By JAMES W. BOOTH

IS OLD MAN PAR too much for your golf game? Are you too slow on the trigger when the traffic lights change from green to red?

If so, the chances are that you don’t eat enough sugar.

The man who makes a hole in four while his opponent takes five or six, does so because of a well-balanced coordination of mind and muscle. The driver who is never “bawled out” by a cop because he always stops the instant the red lights flash enjoys his immunity for the same reason.

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March 8, 2008

HOW ABOUT TOOTH BANKS? (Nov, 1947)

For some reason the idea of a tooth transplant creeps me out way more than a blood transfusion or even and organ transplant.

HOW ABOUT TOOTH BANKS?

Dental scientists are working on a new boon to mankind—the transplantation of live teeth.

BY LESTER DAVID

SQUINT for a moment into the crystal ball labeled “Dental Science’s Coming Attractions.” Here’s the image: Sorrowful-looking gent shuffles into dentist’s office, points miserably to aching molar, sits down and opens wi—ide.

Dentist gives him the needle, inserts forceps, yanks mightily. He throws away old tooth and goes to cabinet for new one. He selects nice, shiny molar from collection, plants it in patient’s mouth and sends him on his way.

About a month or so later, new tooth has established nerve, bone and blood vessel connections with jaw and happy patient has a live, serviceable chomper in his head to replace the one extracted.

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February 28, 2008

Pressure Sack Saves Divers’ Lives (May, 1934)

Filed under: Medical — @ 1:56 am
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1934
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Pressure Sack Saves Divers’ Lives

WHEN deep sea divers must be pulled up rapidly, without time to accustom themselves to the change in pressure, they become very sick. A German inventor has devised a pressure sack for this emergency. Divers are placed inside it as soon as they are pulled up, and kept under a gradually diminishing pressure for several hours. Iron chains surround the sack.

When there is not sufficient time to get a diver into the pressure sack, compressed air can be forced into his suit. Ropes are used to prevent suit from bursting.

February 16, 2008

FIRST PICTURES OF PASTEUR INSTITUTE (Aug, 1930)

Filed under: Medical — @ 12:05 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Aug, 1930
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FIRST PICTURES OF PASTEUR INSTITUTE

Each day 8,000 tubes of vaccine and 12,000 tubes of serum leave one of the greatest centers of preventive medicine in the world—the Pasteur Institute, in Paris. It was founded by national subscription nearly fifty years ago as a laboratory for the great French chemist, Louis Pasteur, father of bacteriology. Now it is carrying on the work of this pioneer in preventive inoculation against disease, who died in 1895. The striking photographs of its activities which Popular Science Monthly presents here are the first ever permitted for publication.

While internationally famous doctors seek new cures for diseases in its research laboratories, an up-to-date factory makes tried and proved serums and vaccines.

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