Posts from — November 2009

Carolyn Endersby tipped me off to an information website about the H1N1 influenza pandemic. It is a free site open to the public.

ebrary®, a leading provider of digital content products and technologies, today announced that it has created a publicly available research center featuring a highly interactive, searchable database of documents pertaining to the H1N1 influenza pandemic. See http://h1n1.ebrary.com/home.action.

My thanks to Carolyn for referencing the site. I hope the information proves helpful to you all.

We’ve all read about or watched news on TV about the H1N1 pandemic spreading around the world. While researching my family tree I came across an article about Scourges of the 19^th Century.

In 1869 a family immigrated from Ireland to New York City. Joseph and Bridget had three young children: Mary, age 4; Jane, age 3 and baby Agnes, an infant who died at five months of age. The cause of death was marasmus, a form of malnutrition, caused or made worse by contaminated milk.

Back in the 1800s contaminated milk was not unusual. Cows were fed distillery waste—called swill—which was widely distributed. “Swill milk” was neither healthy nor safe for the cow or the baby. Conditions for handling of milk back then were anything but sanitary. Containers for the milk were often reused by customers and milkmen without cleaning. The milk was carted around uncovered through filthy city streets. The milk was often watered down providing inadequate nutrition. Before pasteurization became mandatory bovine tuberculosis could be transmitted to humans through milk.

Infant mortality was high in the latter half of the 19^th century. Twenty percent of infants never reached their first birthday. In 1900 eighteen percent of children died before age five of pneumonia, gastroenteritis, diphtheria and malnutrition.

Modern medicine had not yet developed. Most diseases were not understood. Doctors made housecalls to the wealthy, but not the poor. Hospitals became places the sick went to die.

Patent medicines called “soothing syrups” contained morphine, heroin, opium or laudanum and quieted the crying of the babies at the cost of their addiction. Treatment of symptoms, but not the cause.

The 19^th century endured epidemics of typhoid, typhus, smallpox, influenza and bubonic plague along with others. Lack of means of prevention allowed cholera and yellow fever.

Cholera arrived in the United States as steamship travel and immigration increased. Cholera was thought to have been caused by God to punish sinners and target people who were considered morally reprehensible. Yet, in fact cholera is a bacterial disease spread through contaminated water. Half those stricken died within hours.

Yellow fever is a virus carried by mosquitoes. Coming from the Carribean it killed over 8,000 people in New Orleans in 1853. It spread up along the Mississippi River killed 20,000 people. Half the population of Memphis left the city costing it $15 million and leaving it bankrupt.

In1855 the yellow fever epidemic in Norfolk, Virginia resulted in other towns trying to prevent residents of Norfolk from entering their towns.

When the bubonic plague hit San Francisco in March 1900 the residents of Chinatown denied it for years as did business leaders and California’s governor, while people died.

Epidemics cause parentless children giving rise to an increase in orphanages. Deaths in childbirth usually resulted from postpartum infections leading to sepsis—blood poisoning.

In 1843 Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested the deaths following childbirth in maternity wards were the result of doctors failing to disinfect their hands and clothing. However, Dr. Charles Meigs of Philadelphia dismissed Holmes’ criticism. Meigs argued that doctors were gentlemen and the hands of gentlemen are clean.

These public health crises were the product of germs, but recognition of that fact took time for the public to accept. German scientist Robert Koch identified the microbe that caused tuberculosis in 1882. Convinced by Koch’s findings Dr. Hermann Biggs of New York in 1889 that tuberculosis was preventable wrote that tuberculosis could be prevented by disinfection, disposal of sputum, reporting of all pulmonary cases and educating the public. Biggs’ report met with resistance.

Governmental health agencies began to spring up creating divisions of pathology, bacteriology, and disinfection and imposing a quarantine. Crews were disbursed to scrub and clean public areas, disinfect water pipes and campaigns to educate the public on prevention and treatment.

This somewhat brief historical view of healthcare in the past caused me think about the current health care reform effort and the vehement resistance to it. Do we really want freedom from quality healthcare?  Do we really want to return to life of the 19^th century? I don’t personally feel like the government is taking away my freedom. Some apparently do.

A man who claimed he was sleepwalking when he had sex with a woman while she slept next to her husband has been found guilty of rape.

Paul Anthony Blattman, 42, of Parafield Gardens told the District Court in Adelaide he had no memory of having sex with the woman he met earlier that day.

The jury heard Blattman had been drinking and fell asleep in his car, waking next morning with no recollection of events.

The prosecutor argued the sleepwalking defence was “inherently unlikely” and “almost scientifically impossible”.

The jury unanimously found Blattman guilty. [ABC News]

Grave of Brian Welker in the foreground.

Brian Welker only lived two years of his life. It was a life of misery. He first came to the attention of the police when his mother clinched his little hand in her teeth and shook him furiously like a dog shaking a rabbit. Brian was crying and screaming in pain. They were in full view in a parking lot outside a grocery store. A passerby called the police.

The county Child Protective Service agency removed Brian from his mother’s custody and placed him in the home of his biological father, Gary, age 27, and his wife, 33 year-old Lillian.

The CPS placement proved to be fatal to Brian. His short life was filled with abuse, physical and mental. Unloved, unwanted he endured continued abuse from his mother. The rejection continued, unabated in his father’s care. Lillian resented Brian’s presence. He was constantly scolded and punished for his crying and whimpering.

A young girl, a cousin of Brian, came to visit one weekend. She described witnessing the treatment of Brian by Gary and Lillian. Lillian dumped a bowl of cold spaghetti over Brian’s head at the dinner table when he refused to eat it and would not stop crying. Gary punched him in his stomach. He was picked up by his ears, tossed up into the ceiling banging his head then falling six feet to the floor. Spanked and then made to stand for hours in a corner of a room for hours lasting into the late night. Brian, defenseless, stood there, alone, whimpering facing the corner of the room. The young girl never saw Brian again; she told her parents who, in turn, notified police.

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