sandr020

WW1 hospitals were tough, partially because the conditions in which the medical staff had to tend to the terrible injuries were too crowded and poorly equipped. But necessity was the mother of invention; the wounds inflicted on millions of soldiers drove the search for new medical tech­niqu­es. Technological innovations had a massive impact on survival rates. The Thomas splint, for example, secured a broken leg. In 1914, 80% of all soldiers with a broken femur died. By 1916, 80% of such soldiers survived. The British Army began the routine use of blood transfusion in treating wounded soldiers, where blood was transferred directly from one person to another. That was until a US Army Dr Captain Robertson realised the need to stockpile blood; he established the first blood bank on the Western Front in 1917, using sodium citrate to prevent coagulation. Blood was kept on ice for up to 28 days and then transported to casualty clearing stat­ions for use in life-saving surgery. But professi...

The main founder of the Surrealist movement and writer of the Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924 was André Breton (1896-1966). According to Breton in 1924, the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud  (1856-1939) “very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible that this consider­able portion of psychic act­ivity”. Also Breton credited Freud’s ideas with discovering “a current of opinion that was finally forming and that the imagin­ation is perhaps on the point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights”. So André Breton and Max Ernst were very knowledgeable about Freud's beliefs. They saw that Surrealism was the most popular modern art form because it was a special, dogmatic and theoretical art that revealed human emotional truths. The theory it illustrated, i.e Freud's, was true as well. Freud's conception of the unconscious and the importance of dreams en­c­ouraged painters, sculptors and writers to pay attention to thei...

Born in Nymphenburg Castle Munich , Ludwig (1845-1886) was a mem­ber of the Wittelsbach dynasty. He became King Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1864 at 18 when his father died, but alas for the Bavarians, Ludwig had no interest in politics. He became a lonely, isolated man, with no wife and no friends. His diaries suggested this devout Roman Cathol­ic king struggled with his sexual orientation during his adult life. He was either straight, gay, bisexual or celib­ate, worry­ingly eccentric and he built expensive mountain castles. Wagner trained Ludwig's brother  Prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis in his opera Loh­engrin, per­formed for the king's 20th birth­day in Aug 1865 in Hohenschwangau. The opera was well staged with Prince Paul dressed as the hero Lohengrin in silver armour, drawn over the lake by an artificial swan. The King sat alone, enraptured with the music. King Ludwig was possessed by the idea of a holy kingdom by the Grace of God.  Yet he had only two passions in life: cas...

Leon Black, Chairman and chief executive of Apollo Global Man­agement, was apparently inspired in his love of art by his mother and his aunt, Manhattan art deal­er Grace Borgenicht Brandt. Leon’s purchase of Norwegian Edvard Munch ’s (1863-1944) painting called The Scream reached a record for an auctioned piece of art when it was sold at Soth­eby's New York in May 2012 for a world record $120 million. This ex­press­ion­ist piece was one of four vers­ions of The Scream created between 1893 and 1910, three of which are held in Oslo museums in Norway. The four known versions were 1] 1893 tempera paint on cardboard; 2] 1893 crayon on cardboard; e] 1895 pastel on cardboard that billionaire Leon Black bought at auction; and 4] tempera paint on hard cardboard, c1910. Edvard Munch’s 1895 version of The Scream of Nature Wikimedia Impressive, even though I know nothing about Scandinavian art and even less about meteorology.  But it was the sky and not the price that has been a bone of cont...

Albert Coates (1895-1977) was born in Ballarat in Central Victoria, oldest of seven children of strong Methodists Arthur and Clara Coates. Alth­ough money was short, Arthur and Clara raised their family valuing educ­at­ion. Albert had a thirst for literature and know­ledge, but his formal educ­ation ended at 11. At first he worked in a butcher's shop on Saturdays only, then he worked 6 days a week. At 14 was indentured to a Ballarat bookbinder, which gave the lad the chance to read widely and study at night. Encouraged by night-school at Ballarat, Coates passed the junior public examination with distinct­ions in French and German in 1913. But Coates wanted a career in medicine. He qual­ified for Melbourne University but as he could not afford to take his place on financial grounds, he moved to Wang­aratta. There he worked in the Postal Department and studied in his spare time. World War One and after By 1914 Coates was able start a university medical course, however WW1 interven...

In Nov 2016, Animal Medicines Australia released its Pet Ownership in Australia Report, providing insight into the state of pet ownership in this country.  At 62%, Australia continues to have one of the highest household rates of pet ownership in the world with 5.7 million of Australia’s 9.2 million households home to a pet. Dogs remain the most popular type of pet. Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital  in its report agreed that pets are an integral part of  our lives as Australians - some 80% of Australians have an animal companion at some time in their life. Sometimes pet relationships are ranked higher than certain kinds of human relationships for comfort, esteem, support and confidence, with benefits in areas of child development, family harmony and health. For a more detailed examination, let us go over to  Mat Coulton  of  Wileypup , with thanks for his text, photos and links. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the health benefits dogs offer...

In 1628, Dr William Harvey  was an English physician who published a book in which he described the circulation of blood in humans. Researchers commenced experim­ents involving the intraven­ous injection of various substances into an­imals, which progressed into blood transfusions between animals. Richard Lower , a member of the Oxford Experiment­al Group, showed that transfusion could be used in cases of severe blood loss by exsanguinating a dog and transfusing it with blood from another. Dr Jean-Baptiste Denys (1643–1704) was personal physician to King Louis XIV and was noted for having performed the first fully docum­ented human blood transfus­ion. In 1667 he administered tran­sfus­ions of calf's blood to a man who died during the trans­f­usion. Denys was charged with murder and although he was acquitted, the practice of blood transfusion was deemed a crim­in­al act by the French parl­iament in 1670. The Royal Society expressed uncertainty about blood transfusion and the n...

Giacomo Lorandi wrote of the pro-inoculation career of Theodore Tronchin in France and the anti-Tronchin response, to be followed by the anti-vaccination movement in Britain and the USA. Swiss physician Théodore Tronchin's (1709–1781) clinic att­racted patients from everywhere and his reputation, esp­ecially for ground-breaking research on the prevention of smallpox through inoculation, grew. The Duke of Orleans, Louis-Philippe I (1725-85), summoned him to Paris to treat his children. His success in saving the children sparked interest in inoculation among the Parisian ar­istocracy and his rise to fame meant inocul­ation became wide­spread. Tronchin’s work involved a tiny amounts of the smallpox virus taken from the pustule of a person afflicted with the dis­ease; it was injected into the superficial layers of the skin to induce immunity. Tronchin was a major advocate of a healthy lifestyle and phys­ical well being. He devoted time to the sick, listening to their symptoms; he sug...

In 1861 Herman Webster Mudgett was born to a respected New Hamp­sh­ire family. In childhood he was fascinated with skeletons and soon became obsessed with death. Mudgett changed his name to H.H Holmes and studied medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School . While a student, Holmes stole cadavers from the labor­at­ory, disfig­ured them and then planted the bodies as if they were killed in accidents. His passion for death had started early in life but his criminal skills began in med­ical school; it was only then he collected on fake insurance policies. Holmes was a very good medical student. In 1884 he passed his exams easily and in 1885 he moved to Chicago where he worked at a pharmacy as Dr Henry Holmes. When the owner of the business passed away, Holmes convinced the wid­ow to sell him the shop in 1887. Holmes hired the Conner family from Iowa to work in the shop and keep the books, and the widow was never seen again! Holmes married a few times, often to more than one woma...

The Judgement of Death Act 1823 saw the number of crimes punishable by death in Britain drop. And since medical and anatomical schools were only leg­al­ly allowed to dissect the cad­av­ers of those who had been condemned to death by a court, this led to an ext­reme short­age of available bodies for students. Inevitably medical schools paid some criminals to find more bodies via grave-robbing. Relatives were known to guard the recently dug graves of their dearly departed and watch-towers were installed in cemeteries. The fresher the body, the more money it was worth, thus it didn’t take long before grave-robbing graduated to anatomy murder, done for monetary reward. The most in­fam­ous were in Edinburgh in 1827–8 whose university was noted for top quality medical sciences. Irishmen William Burke (1792-1829) and William Hare (1804-?) both came from Ulster and moved to Edinburgh to work on the Union Canal. The pair met and became close friends when Burke moved with his mistress Hel...

When I met my Czech born boyfriend (now husband) in 1969, I thought I better read some Kafka, listen to Dvořák and Janáček, and eat palač­inkas. It all worked well, except for the Kafka. Now the German sch­olar Reiner Stach 's excellen  Biog­raphy of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) filled in a lot of gaps. Stach spent 20+ years working on Kafka’s life, transl­ated into English. The biography started with Kafka’s childhood in the dying days of the Hapsburg empire in 1883: family life in the Prague flat, schooling, law studies at university and career as an insurance clerk. Alas young Franz’s relationship with his over­bearing father was horrible. Hermann Kafka was a stocky, ambitious and succ­essful merchant, while his only son was tall, thin and fragile. So they were physically, emotion­ally and intellectually opposed. Biography of Franz Kafka: Vol. 1 The Early Years, Vol. 2 The Decisive Years and Vol. 3 The Years of Insight Kafka knew himself well. He wrote “The way I am, I am as the out...