March 21 – 25, 2016
It’s Outmoded Diseases Week at LWON, those diseases that we once read about but we never hear about anyone getting anymore. (Not that we don’t still worry about them during late-night WebMD searches.)
On Monday, Ann kicked things off with neurasthenia, which “occurs in intellectuals with refined nervous systems and in masters of men and captains of industry under great nervous strain and in women whose naturally sensitive nervous systems are burdened with the necessity of reproduction and overwhelmed by education.” One of the suggested treatments is to take a rugged or calm vacation–which doesn’t work, except when it does.
Then Cassie covers spermatorrhea, the excessive loss of semen, a diagnosis that may have terrified the young men of Victorian England.
But women are not immune to outmoded diseases. Jenny gives us an entertaining history of female hysteria, including an illustration of “the purifying douche of all purifying douches”.
Guest Jennie Dusheck brings us pleurisy. This one’s not quite so outmoded as we would hope, because Jennie got it.
And on Friday, Craig recounts the story of a scientist who was studying ancient dire wolves with osteomyelitis, a bone infection. “She called me during her research to say that she was starting to feel the pain of the specimens she was studying. . . Animals had suffered long ago, and she could sense it. She dreamed she looked down and instead of seeing her feet, she saw paws treading the earth.
Then she got the disease.”
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Image from Wellcome Library, London via Wikimedia.