Dark Banquet (34 page)
Authors: Bill Schutt
*43
This was a type of baking powder, also known as baker's ammonia or ammonium carbonate.
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*44
Cantharides is a preparation made from the dried, crushed bodies of blister beetles (family Meloidae). Applied externally, cantharides is a natural irritant and raises serum-filled blisters, once thought to draw sickness out of the patient's body. Also known as Spanish fly, these smashed beetle bits have been touted as an aphrodisiac since the time of ancient Rome. In reality, ingesting even small amounts of this material can cause vomiting, abdominal pain, kidney failure, and death.
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*45
This mixture of antimony and potassium tartrate was commonly used to induce vomiting.
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*46
During this procedure, a small midline incision was made in the throat at a level just below the larynx. Next, a half-inch-long horizontal incision was made in the trachea at the level of the third tracheal ring. Following this, a small, hollow cannula was inserted into the severed airway and secured in place by ribbons, which were tied around the neck. This arrangement allowed the patient to breathe, even in the presence of an obstructed larynx. Once the patient had recovered, the cannula was removed and the wounds from the tracheotomy were sutured closed.
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*47
The ban on consuming blood appears elsewhere in the Bible, such as Leviticus 7:26â27:
“Moreover, you shall eat no blood whatever, whether of fowl or of animal, in any of your dwellings. Whoever eats any blood, that person shall be cut off from his people.”
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*48
We know now, of course, that in many instances it is the presence or absence of pathogens (i.e., disease-causing organisms) in the blood and elsewhere that determine one's health.
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*49
Commodus was portrayed by actor Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott's film
Gladiator.
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â 50
One function of the liver was thought to be the conversion of tiny particles of food into blood.
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*51
Black bile was supposedly produced by the spleen and was thought to be responsible, among other things, for the dark coloration of bodily substances, like blood and feces. Differing levels of black bile were also used to explain why some people had darker skin than others.
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â 52
In 1462, a bloodletting calendar was the second medical text to be mass-produced using Johann Gutenberg's revolutionary printing press. This was some eight years after the first Gutenberg Bible.
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â¡53
Less well known is the fact that the Arab physician Ibn al-Nafis (1213â1288) had described much of this dual-circuit pump four hundred years earlier.
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*54
Besides connective and nervous tissue, there are two additional tissue types: epithelial tissue, which covers surfaces and lines hollow structures, and muscle tissue, unique for its ability to store chemical energy, then convert it into the energy of motion as the tissue contracts in size.
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â 55
The flexibility of cartilage, another type of connective tissue, comes from a gel-like matrix, which is basically bone matrix containing bendable protein fibers instead of calcium and mineral salts. Tendons and ligaments, which connect muscle to bone and bone to bone, respectively, are also structures composed of connective tissue, and they get their strength from the tough, wirelike fibers found embedded within their matrices.
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*56
Like other pressure measurements (e.g., barometric pressure), blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury, so that a systolic pressure of 110 represents a force applied to the blood vessels' inner walls equivalent to one that could raise a thin column of mercury 110 millimeters in height (were that column of mercury sitting at sea level in a U-shaped glass tube).
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*57
Oxygen (which is actually carried around inside red blood cells) and nutrients diffusing in this manner are said to be following a concentration gradient, moving from areas where they're in a higher concentration (the blood) to areas where they're less concentrated (e.g., oxygen-and nutrient-starved tissues and cells).
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*58
Like vertebrate blood, hemolymph does carry nutrients, hormones, and metabolic waste. It also functions in clotting and the immune response.
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*59
Hemoglobin's high affinity for carbon monoxide, coupled with the fact that the gas is odorless, are two major reasons why several carbon monoxide detectors are
an absolute must
for every home. In fact, if you're reading this and
don't
have a CO detector, put this book down and go buy one (or order it online). It's
that
important.
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*60
Blood can be separated into its three major components by spinning it in a centrifuge. A band of erythrocytes (making up 44 percent of the blood volume) will settle to the bottom of a centrifuge tube, with a thin band (1 percent) of leukocytes and blood platelets (known as the buffy coat) sitting above that. The yellow-colored plasma rests on top, making up the greatest portion (55 percent) of the blood volume. By measuring the hematocrit, the proportion of the spun blood composed of red blood cells, doctors can test for conditions like anemia (a decrease in red blood cells) or polycythemia (an increase in red blood cells). For those of you who may be wondering, the blood is prevented from clotting during this procedure by spinning it in heparinized tubes.
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*61
For documentary footage of a large, alien macrophage, I recommend watching the 1958 film
The Blob
(starring Steve McQueen). By doing so, you can get a pretty good idea of how phagocytosis works.
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*62
This is pretty much why you don't catch the same strain of flu twice and also why you need a new flu shot every year: new viral strains evolve new surface proteins (antigens) that go unrecognized by memory cells or circulating antibodies.
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*63
Back then, people ascribed to the concept of vitalism, in which all creatures possessed an inner force responsible for their specific traits (like bravery in lions or a lust for gold in those working in the insurance industry).
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*64
Mauroy's dark-colored urine probably resulted from the chemically altered hemoglobin, released by transfused red blood cells blasted apart by the man's immune system. Perhaps owing more to luck than anything else, Mauroy began to recover and Denis reported that on the very first day his patient was able to go to confession, he began urinating normally.
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*65
Strangely, blood was not the liquid of choice during other early attempts at transfusion. According to the American Red Cross, ale, wine, and milk were used. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, physicians injected patients with milk to treat cholera, believing that the “white corpuscles of milk” would convert into the red corpuscles of blood. This wasn't as strange an idea as it might sound, since there are many similarities between the two liquids.
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â 66
Landsteiner won the Nobel Prize for his work in 1930.
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*67
In his book
Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce,
Douglas Starr hypothesized that early transfusion recipient Antoine Mauroy actually suffered from an advanced stage of syphilis (which is caused by the bacterium
Traponema pallidum
). Starr suggested that Mauroy's early positive results might have occurred after a transfusion-induced fever killed off the heat-sensitive pathogens for a while.
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*68
In this technique, a glass cup was inverted over a flame, heating the air within. The cup was then placed flush against the patient's skin, and when the air within it cooled, a vacuum formed, which was believed to draw out toxins from the body.
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*69
Mechanoreceptors are specialized sensory structures that are stimulated by physical contact (just like chemoreceptors are stimulated by chemicals).
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*70
To put the diversity of the Hirudinea and its 650 members into perspective, there are roughly five thousand species in the class Mammalia and about thirty thousand species of bony fishes in the class Osteichthyes. Whenever we vertebrate biologists get too pumped up over the vast number of animals we have to study, it's often sobering to check out the invertebrate class Insecta. This group wins the Animal Diversity Contest hands-down, with estimates of well over one million living species, including
over three hundred thousand species of beetles
!
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*71
One Trinidadian genus
(Lumbricobdella)
has reverted to the burrowing lifestyle of its ancestors. Not surprisingly, this leech has lost its caudal sucker and moves through the soft ground much as an earthworm does.
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*72
Those readers interested in learning more about leeches (a lot more, actually) should consult Roy T. Sawyer's 1986 three-volume magnum opus
Leech Biology and Behavior.
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*73
According to American Museum of Natural History leech expert Mark Siddall, the leeches being cultivated today at places like Leeches USA aren't really
Hirudo medicinalis
but
Hirudo verbana
(a species that isn't protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species or approved for use as a medical instrument by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration). Just as important, it appears that wild leeches, from across Europe, comprise three separate species, creating at least the potential for three times as many anticlotting compounds. Rudy Rosenberg said that if the new classification is accepted he will petition to extend its approval to
Hirudo verbana.
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*74
Like many freshwater leeches,
Hirudo
is most active in cold water (around 42â45°F, or 5â7°C). Presumably, this is when their aquatic prey are sluggish or inactive and therefore easily attacked. Many leech species become stressed out in warm water, probably owing to a decrease in dissolved oxygen. In some freshwater species that prey on fish, a rapid increase in water temperature coincides with a detachment from their prey, whereupon the leeches reproduce and die.
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*75
Whalebone
is the layman's term for baleen, which isn't bone at all. Baleen is composed of the waterproof protein keratin and grows in plates in the mouths of filter-feeding whales (like the blue whale,
Balaenoptera musculus
). Biochemically identical to hair, baleen tends to curl or frizz in humid air, while straightening out in dry air. This property may or may not explain why Merryweather used it in his contraptionâsince the definitive function of this substance remains uncertain from the somewhat vague descriptions.
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â 76
This behavior is similar to that reported in a study of juvenile blacktipped sharks
(Carcharhinus limbatus),
schools of which were reported to respond to barometric pressure changes associated with approaching tropical storms by moving to deeper water. Darrin Lunde, of the American Museum of Natural History, suggested that the vertical migration of Merryweather's leeches might be explained by the fact that aquatic leeches move out of the water and onto land only when conditions are humid and wetâas they generally are after significant drops in barometric pressure.
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*77
Byron was long rumored to have been the true author of
The Vampyre,
a work credited to his former friend, the physician John Polidori. Evidently, Byron came up with the tale during the laudanum-fueled summer of 1816 as he and his friends (including Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) spun tales of horror during their stay at Lake Geneva. After Byron discarded the idea, Polidori expanded it into a short story whose leading character, the aristocratic Lord Ruthven, would become an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula.
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â 78
Stalin had recently initiated a purge of physicians (including his own) after claiming that they were part of a sinister Jewish plot to destroy the Russian people. The traitorous doctors, Stalin claimed, were murdering Russian statesmen. According to rumors, mass deportation of Jews to Siberia was to begin on March 5, 1953.
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*79
I wondered if any such contrivances had prevented the “wedding night” leeches described by Brantôme from bailing out when attacked by what must have seemed like a blind but energetic relative.
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*80
Leech teeth are more accurately referred to as denticles since they don't share an evolutionary origin with vertebrate teeth.
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â 81
This necessitates a dorsally located anus.
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*82
In a 1994 study, Norwegians Anders Baerheim and Hogne Sandvik proved that medicinal leeches took twice as long to bite after they had been briefly submerged in Guinness stout (187 seconds to 92 seconds for the water control). According to the authors, “After exposure to beer some of the leeches changed behaviour, swaying their forebodies, losing grip, or falling on their backs.” Presumably after the leeches sobered up, they were used to test an old wives' tale that a little soured cream applied to the skin would encourage leeches to feed more readily. The results of their study did not support the claim. Finally, Baerheim and Sandvik applied the leeches to arms that had been smeared with garlic. The researchers reported that the leeches “started to wriggle and crawl without assuming the sucking position” and “did not manage to coordinate the process” of biting. The experiment was halted after two leeches dropped dead within two and a half hours of exposure to the garlic-swabbed limb. Lest the reader question the seriousness and scientific relevance of this study, the authors, in their acknowledgments, thanked a local brewery “for supplying sufficient amounts of their precious liquid to satisfy the needs of all participants of the study.” They also thanked the leeches for their enthusiasm, assuring readers that the worms were “by all accounts grateful to Hogne Sandvik for supplying his own precious liquid.”
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