Horses and Zebras

The history of medicine, it's human costs, and how it all comes back around

[amedicalhistory]

https://feelgoodnews.co/u-s-authorizes-first-mrna-flu-vaccine-from-moderna/

[byjove]

My great great grandfather’s first wife (who was also my great great grandmother’s younger sister because my great great grandfather married his deceased wife’s widowed sister after her death, yes, my great grandmother had older siblings who were simultaneously her half-siblings and first cousins, my family tree is a bizarre wreath and this is the tip of the iceberg) contracted scarlet fever as a child and it caused rheumatic heart disease which is where the inflammation triggered by the strep infection causes chronic damage to the heart and makes the heart valve malfunction and grow more narrow over time. In her final pregnancy, she contracted measles (or possibly rubella/German measles, this occurred in rural Appalachia in the 1910s so the medical care was spotty) and it caused her to go into labor prematurely. Pregnancy already puts extreme stress on the body and the combination of viral disease, a chronic heart condition and preterm labor caused her heart to fail right after she gave birth to her stillborn daughter.

Her death and the death of her baby would have been totally preventable in the modern day. Strep throat is still a common childhood illness but it can be easily treated with antibiotics and it rarely progresses into scarlet fever and rarely causes rheumatic heart disease with proper treatment. Measles and rubella are both prevented by the MMR vaccine, which is safe and effective. Proper prenatal screening would have detected her heart weakening and been able to monitor and treat her and her baby accordingly. Modern medicine would have been capable of monitoring fetal heartbeat during labor and they could have performed a c-section when the baby showed signs of distress, saving the life of her child and preventing this poor woman from going through hours of agonizing labor that ultimately killed them both.

Her death was due to damage caused by a common and treatable childhood illness, caused by a vaccine preventable illness and a lack of obstetrical monitoring and emergency intervention. And people want to give their children homeopathic bullshit instead of taking them to the doctor and receiving actual appropriate treatment for common childhood illnesses. People do not want to vaccinate their children because they forget these viruses are a bigger threat than the small risk of vaccine reactions OR they truly believe vaccines cause autism and would prefer to have a dead child instead of an autistic child. People want to forgo any prenatal treatment and have wild pregnancies and free births with no medical supervision because ‘our bodies are made to do this’.

And I get it, I get it. I do understand why there is a lack of trust in the medical system, I understand the extensive failures of obstetrical care and why pregnant people may be afraid to entrust these people with their lives. The answer to your stress and fear and desire to do what is best for your child and yourself is not to shun modern medicine but to fight like hell to make it better.

Because we can’t go back. Because we shouldn’t go back. Because my great great grandmother’s sister’s death was 100% natural and unmedicated. She did not deserve that. Her baby did not deserve that. No one should die like that in the modern world where it can be prevented. Healthcare should be free and accessible and patient focused. Public health and preventative measures like vaccinations should not be matters of political debate.

[nemfrog]

"The distribution of facial nerves."

Authorized Physiology Series, No. 3. The Outlines of Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. 1889.

Internet Archive

[nemfrog]

The body revealed. La nouvelle médication naturelle traduit de l'allemand. 1899.

Internet Archive

[byjove]

we found the best one first

[byjove]

this + then finding cannabis in tombs from the Chalcolithic

[byjove]

Tuberculosis sanitariums were such a tragic part of American history. People were sent there to die but they were, in a way, vital tools in public health. Tuberculosis isn’t as infectious as viruses like influenza but it is spread through droplets in the air and prolonged close quarters contact is most likely to spread the disease. It was thought of as a family disease because other members of a household would often be infected while living in close proximity to and caring for an ailing loved one. That was actually one of the selling points for tuberculosis sanitariums, “Come here and we’ll cure you, remaining at home could kill your loved ones.” some tuberculosis hospitals and sanitariums had off-site houses for the loved ones of patients so they could be close to the patient and visit them often without breathing the same air 24/7.

[byjove]

And the disease path of tuberculosis is so variable, some sanitarium patients would recover enough to go home, some would remain sick and inpatient for months and months and some would succumb to the disease days after arriving.

[ralfmaximus]

At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1. The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

There are good things happening in the world.

[meret118]

You can read about it here without a paywall.

Households exposed to COVID-19 now have an oral drug specifically cleared to prevent infection after contact with a sick person. The FDA listed Xocova, the brand name for ensitrelvir, as a 2026 novel drug approval for post-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 following contact with an infected individual. The decision fills a gap that has persisted since the pandemic’s early years: until now, no oral antiviral carried an FDA-approved indication for prevention rather than treatment.

[americachavez]

harry potter fandom experiencing such a revival in the last 5 or so years to the point where 5 out of the top 10 ships on ao3 this year are hp AFTER that woman started fully funding hate campaigns with her royalties is so bleak. fandom isn’t an indicator of morality but what are we doing here man.

[brucesterling]

Meanwhile, in the free-market USA of 1887

[recreationaldivorce]

sex testing isn't making people discover that they're intersex, it's making people intersex. if someone's sex characteristics are imperceptibly different to what sex defines they should have, it wouldn't have placed them in a different social category until both the technology and the drive to test were there. ppl just don't really believe that sex categories are also socially constructed and fluid. things like hormone levels naturally wildly range between people before it gets to a point where someone looks noticeably "different" for their sex—a cafab person with testosterone levels deemed high today would not have been intersex 200 years ago unless they displayed noticeably masculinised features, because nobody would have known anyone's testosterone levels and therefore can't use that as a basis for treating someone differently!

[fitnessadvicethatfitsinyourlife]

I do not promote weight loss mentalities because I believe that if weight loss is going to occur in a healthy way, it's going to occur as a side effect of adopting appropriate fitness habits

Not as the goal, because adopting fitness habits does not always result in weight loss.

And it's the habits, like building muscle, improving flexibility & mobility, increasing nutrient intake & hydration, and getting quality rest & sleep that actually matter.

If you're successfully doing those things your health is quantitatively improving, no matter what your weight is doing. But if the metric your most concerned with is just loosing weight, you may actually be getting less healthy not more.

Because weight loss can occur for many reasons, and most of them are not healthy.

[worgengel]

eye surgery studies

[sergle]

are you guys hearing about this dude working to developing a vaccine for cats that he's hoping would like. theoretically double their lifespans?

[sergle]

turns out i wasn't making that up, his name is Dr. Toru Miyazaki! he also wrote a book called "The Day Cats Live To Be Thirty", so cats are kind of his thing.

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

Could the macrophage-derived protein AIM save cats from kidney disease?

As they age, almost all cats develop kidney disease, from which they eventually die. Just as in humans, kidney disease i

Cat Kidney Disease Cure Nears Reality: Dr. Toru Miyazaki’s AIM Therapy

Dr. Toru Miyazaki’s AIM injection for cat kidney disease enters trials in 2025, aiming for a 2027 release. Greycoat Research supports the sc

[moki-dokie]

whoa wait i actually read the articles and it's so much cooler than just that!!

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

man just think, not only could our kitties start living longer, healthier lives, but just maybe dialysis will become as rare and obsolete as the iron lung is for people. what a badass Dr. Toru is!

[fluxxdog]

"But I don't want to turn people into dinosaurs. I wanna cure kittie kidneys!"

[rorleuaisen]

Update: So they have done clinical trials and have submitted it for approval as of april 2026. They are expecting it to be available late 2026/early 2027

AIM Kidney Drug for Cats: 2026 Approval Update — How It Works, Efficacy & Expected Cost | Carelogy

The AIM protein drug for feline chronic kidney disease has been submitted for approval in Japan (April 2026). We break down clinical trial d

As for the study itself, the 360 day follow up on stage 3 kidney failure kitties showed that the control had a survival rate of about 20%, while the test group had a survival rate of 80%

New 2026 study: AIM protein boosts cat kidney disease survival from 20% to 80%. Discover how this scientific breakthrough is changing the fu

[boudicca]

how many modern hildegards von bingen have we lost since the advent of sumatriptan

[boudicca]

getting people hildypilled i love to see it

[ringthembells]

in addition to getting hildypilled everyone who agrees with this should watch the documentary crazywise which is about how pathologizing psychosis is actually a very odd cultural phenomenon and many cultures have important places in their society for people who hear voices and have visions. and how that pathologization might actually make psychosis symptoms worse.

[vultures-nest]

im studying histology and i just like the little guys that work so hard to keep our organisms up and running

[whetstonefires]

easy to miss that one of the reasons maternal mortality is diminished so extremely by modern medicine is that modern medicine makes it so much more possible to identify the pregnancies that will die and take you with them, or are otherwise unacceptably high risk. and then discontinue those ones safely, before it's too late.

thought about this because it's so frustrating when people argue that 'dying in childbirth' is a historical sort of event that doesn't happen nowadays (false) and therefore is irrelevant to the legal status of abortion, since it's not a real danger.

except it super is, and i think a lot of people haven't noticed that this argument in addition to simply being incorrect is basically the same as when people say we don't need vaccines for deadly diseases because no one gets those now anyway.

like yeah one reason for that is we vaccinate everybody ffs.

[libraflyter]

Note: after the end of Roe v Wade in the US, the maternal mortality rate (and the infant mortality rate) are showing clear increases in the states with the strictest anti-abortion laws.

Forcing people to carry high risk or non viable pregnancies to term kills.

[theonion]

In a surprise attack of astonishing brutality, oral cavity sources confirmed Thursday that the Listerine inside a local mouth was leaving 0.1% of germs alive in order to spread a message of terror throughout the microbial community. “The mouthwash killed my entire colony and then told me to bear witness to the horrors I saw today,” said a rod-shaped Porphyromonas gingivalis, adding that its cell wall was nearly dissolved when suddenly the 20 milliliters of antiseptic liquid retreated, leaving the bacterium with severe but nonfatal injuries. 

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