> Julia
>
> > Some of the higher cancer rates we're seeing now have to do with people
> > surviving stuff that would have killed them a mere century ago. (At
> > least, I think that's what my mother's parents were saying, and both of
> > *them* were doctors, one of them in cancer research.) Cancer starts to
> > get you because you survived long enough to have it develop.
> >
Charlie:
> I was talking to my dad about this recently. He reckons that another thing
> is that when he was young, cancer wasn't talked about, it was
> always (still
> is often) referred to as a "wasting disease" or a "long illness".
> People with
> TB and cancer wound up in the same sanatorium in his town.
>
For a peak at medical knowledge in the late 19th century, check out the
Household Cyclopedia website at http://members.nbci.com/mspong/
Someone has scanned this book, which I also have in the original 19th
century paper version, and the medical section makes fascinating if
sometimes upsetting reading. Sometimes very funny, until you realise that
people actually had some of these remedies applied.
As a techwriter, I admire the way instructions to amputate a finger or toe
take up only one paragraph. And don't forget to loosen the victim's cravat
when trying to revive them from drowning!
An Ambulance driver brother in law tells me that the diagnoses in the
Cyclopedia is generally pretty accurate. The remedies, though, are still
basically medieval. Leeches and bleeding are applied to almost everything,
as is laudanum. The wearing of flannel next to the skin seems to be a common
cure, too, as well as the banishment of impure thought. And all-meat diets
are frequently prescribed.
> So, as well as the fact that people are living longer, we also have a big
> change in knoledge and public perception.
>
> Charlie
> Who knows they had leukaemia in the late 1800's, I saw it on
> Little House On
> The Prairie... ;o)
>
I was initially surprised at how many of the diseases were included. There
are quite a few cancers listed, invariably listing the need to take oneself
immediately to a surgeon.
Brett Coster
Technical writer
at IFE-Tebel Australia
Ph: 0417 036 310
