quote:

---

Originally posted by Dave W.

It's called hemochromatosis, Half.

And where the heck is Trish, our for-real phlebotomist, when we need her?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by beskeptigal

Once in a while you take some blood out of COPDers as well. A few of them get too many red cells trying to get more O2 but it makes the blood too thick and strains the heart.

---

quote:

---

Written records have documented that maggots have been used since antiquity as a safe and effective wound treatment. There are reports of the successful use of maggots for wound healing by Mayan Indians and aboriginal tribes in Australia. There also have been reports of the use of maggot treatment in the Renaissance times. During warfare, many military physicians observed that soldiers whose wounds had become colonized with maggots experienced significantly less morbidity and mortality than soldiers whose wounds had not become colonized. These physicians included Napoleon's surgeon general, Baron Dominique Larrey, who reported during France's Egyptian campaign in Syria, 1829, that certain species of fly destroyed only dead tissue and had a positive effect on wound healing.

Dr. Joseph Jones, a ranking Confederate medical officer during the American Civil War, is quoted as follows, "I have frequently seen neglected wounds ... filled with maggots ... as far as my experience extends, these worms only destroy dead tissues, and do not injure specifically the well parts." The first therapeutic use of maggots is credited to a second Confederate medical officer Dr. J.F. Zacharias, who reported during the American Civil War that, "Maggots ... in a single day would clean a wound much better than any agents we had at our command ... I am sure I saved many lives by their use. " He recorded a high survival rate in patients he treated with maggots.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by filthy

Hypnotism.

quote:

---

Hypnotism is one of the weirdest and most controversial notions in the history of the mind. Even defining it is tricky. Basically, hypnotism is the art of placing another person into a trance state. What happens next depends largely on whether you're at a Las Vegas show, in a therapist's office or a prisoner of a Orwellian police state.

Hypnotism was more or less discovered by a guy named Franz Anton Mesmer, who invented something he called animal magnetism. Mesmer had a natural talent for putting people and animals into trances, which he mistakenly attributed to magnetic waves. His technique became known, predictably, as mesmerism.

---

Count me among those who think that Hypnotism is a large crock except among those who are figurtivly lobotomized already.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by filthy:
Here's one that works very damned well, that no one wants to hear about:

<Maggots!>

---