Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 65

[ecosophia]

As we proceed through the second year of these open posts, it's pretty clear that the official narrative is cracking as the toll of deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccines rises steadily and the vaccines themselves demonstrate their total uselesness at preventing Covid infection or transmission. It's still important to keep watch over the mis-, mal- and nonfeasance of our self-proclaimed health gruppenfuehrers, and the disastrous results of the Covid mania, but I think it's also time to begin thinking about what might be possible as the existing medical industry reels under the impact of its own self-inflicted injuries. 

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religious, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.    

Comments

A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Hello all, just re-posting this as it was very late in the week's cycle on the other thread.

Hello, on the topic of sustainable medicine for the future, please can anyone in the JMG commentariat help me with this?

I am looking to find out what a family doctor would have had in the way of a home laboratory setup in a village surgery in the first half of the twentieth century. From historical fiction and the resources I already have (home nursing manual and pharmacopeia from the era) it seems there might have been say a surgery attached to a family home of the doctor, and there might also be a practice nurse and a midwife who lived in the village and shared the practice, and the health care team might do some lab tests in the surgery. In a town there might also be a pharmacist/chemist's shop which would prepare and supply the medicines needed, and in rural areas that dispensing would be done directly from the surgery.

So, some electricity, probably: battery torches, lamps and so on at least for inspection and procedures.

A gas or stove top autoclave for sterilizing equipment.

A light microscope, glass slides, and typical staining materials.

Probably a bunsen burner, running from a gas bottle, and test tubes and reagents for the tests.

What tests would this team be doing?

Full blood count I can think of, what else? I know proteinuria is important for detecting pre-eclampsia -- there's a bit about the tests here including that one based on heating is a valid test https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK705/ so that's another for my list, and it could be I will carve out my next slice of hobby time getting hold of that text (Clinical Methods: The History, Physical, and Laboratory Examinations) unless someone advises a better one.

What kind of stains would have been useful for village scale diagnostics?

Plus two replies already (Thank you. Great.):

Date: 2022-11-01 03:14 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
A string-and-paper centrifuge powered by hand.
Useful in non-electrified locales

http://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-016-0026


Date: 2022-11-01 03:32 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Interesting question.

Simply growing cultures of bacteria taken from a throat sample and the like should be doable and worthwhile.

I guess it might be doable to grow and harvest antibiotics like penicillin. Same goes for keeping phages around. Not sure there but probably very worthwhile if at all possible.

Detecting poisonous substances comes to mind. Heavy metals, radon, mushrooms, berries and all the things.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

In the novel Cranford, a bunch of old ladies with meager incomes have to sacrifice the last of their stores of candles and oil for lamps to allow a night-time emergency surgery to take place. So maybe a bicycle on a stand for recharging batteries, or powering a really bright bike lamp would be good to have on hand?

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for this.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

I’m afraid I can’t contribute anything useful, but I just want to say I’m very glad somebody’s doing this. I can picture circumstances where I’d be very grateful to have such services available. Also, it sounds like it might at be foundational to the alternative health care professions with which we need to displace the medical cartel’s death-dealing sickness hostage racket (thanks to Mr. Kunstler for that apt phrase).

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Look up the literature on insulin and diabetic urinalysis. Up until about 1972 the medical journals published very detailed, precise descriptions of small scale insulin manufacture. Sadly there probably isn't enough demand in a rural village to support someone to do all the finicky steps. But in a small city, combined with keto/low carb diets and basic urinalysis to help guide the dosing, you can get enough low tech insulin from 1 large animal pancreas to keep many type-1 diabetics alive. Of course it is fairly allergenic over time and not as flexible as today's insulins but many type-1 diabetics managed decades on the stuff. I think it is worthwhile at least printing out a few recipes and preserving them for posterity. The Survivor Library also has a bunch of titles about low tech medical stuff including things like construction instructions for low tech prosthetics and mobility aids that would probably come in handy. Also think about putting away some early books about industrial recipes for low tech manufacture of chemicals including lab chemicals. You probably can't do that AND be the town's doctor and pharmacist but maybe you interest someone else when supplies get short.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for this.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Can you keep silk worms for stitches? Or encourage some crafty person to keep silk worms so you can use the otherwise discarded innards for stitches if necessary. Kind of a pain but silk from silk worm innards is a much better option than stitching wounds with other types of thread. Alternatively, I guess maybe investigate large headed ant species as potential butterfly bandage replacements the way some African tribes do (get the ants to bite down on each side of the wound then twist the body off, the ant heads remain and hold the wound together).

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[athaia]

I really hope we won't decline to backyard surgery, because then I'd advise all the cat ladies out there to keep their cats indoors.

Catgut has its name for a reason.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

So glad you reposted your questions, op!I saw your original post and went off looking ( sadly, fruitlessly) for a clip I saw a long time ago...I couldn't find it, but by then we had cycled through to a new post.
The clip I was looking for to share with you was maybe around 2009-2011 (maybe), and I feel it was promoting a start up business, thus light on technical details, but still...
The meat of the matter was that they were using fungi, type unspecified, to produce customised antibiotics/antivirals. A swab of goo from the ill person was swiped over the budding/nascent mushroom and presto! About 24 hours later the fungi had manufactured an effective antagonist to whatever ailed the patient, specific to the strain, or if multiple infections, then effective against all! What a thing! So simple to manage at a local level, even without high technology!
Goatgirl

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[p_coyle]

this is not from the timeframe you mention, but it does kinda rhyme with the idea of using fungi to produce custom antibiotics.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/mushrooms-vs-superbugs/485513/

and in a comical twist of fate, it comes from the same rag that published ms. oster's recent amnesty plea.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

It would be useful to know all the common kinds of poisoning and have the appropriate antidotes on hand.

"The Modern Home Medical Adviser" edited by Morris Fishbein has a useful section on this from the 1930s, pp.40-49.

For more modern poisons, it could be helpful to get the advice of someone currently working for one of the American Association of Poison Control Centers. The tricky part will be finding someone with the time to help; most of the poison control centers are underfunded and overwhelmed. It's not a federally funded system. Most of the centers are housed by state university teaching hospitals, and they are chronically short staffed. Perhaps you could seek out someone who is recently retired. They are likely to be happy to help and could have valuable knowledge, especially if they trained as a nurse or doctor in the middle of the 20th century.

-Ms. Krieger

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Charcoal powder is a good thing to have on hand for this. It's largely what they'll give you in the ER, if you've swallowed a bunch of pills and you're not sure what they were. Possibly other things as well.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Probably working on the same principle as biochar: it absorbs lots of stuff!

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[methylethyl]

yep. Lots and lots of surface area.

It used to be a standard go-to treatment for loose bowels, as well. Important to drink it with lots and lots of water.

Re: A village surgery lab c 1920, 1930?

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for all the suggestions and contributions so far, this is so great getting all the different ideas and perspectives.