Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 131

2,500

According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, each year 1,000 people go to hospital after accidents involving Christmas trees

A further 1,000 are hurt by trimmings or in the process of putting up decorations

350 are injured by Christmas lights.

Acute myocardial infarction

Despite the myth that the ill often “hold on” to life during celebrations such as Christmas and birthdays, statistics show that more people die abruptly of a heart attack on Christmas day than on any other day of the year. [Reference]

Turkey Masturbator

Most turkeys in factory-farm environments don’t live past three months, but for those that do, their plumpness makes it dangerous for them to have sex.

So people are employed to act as a middle-man between the stags and the hens.

Horace Wells

In 1844 the dentist Horace Wells demonstrated the first anaesthetic with nitrous oxide in Boston, Massachusetts.

The gas was not delivered for long enough or an insufficient dose was administered and the patient, undergoing a tooth extraction, shouted out in pain, Wells was booed out of the operating room with cries of: “Humbug, Humbug” . Wells was unfairly discredited by the medical establishment and never recovered from the humiliation.

Wells gave up dentistry and became a travelling salesman.

In January 1848, Wells self-experimented with chloroform for a period of four weeks. He became increasingly deranged. One day, delirious, Wells rushed out into the street and threw sulphuric acid over the clothing of two prostitutes. He was committed to New York’s infamous Tombs Prison. As his mind cleared he realised the horror of what he had done. Wells requested the Guards to escort him to his house to pick up his shaving kit. He subsequently slit his femoral artery after inhaling an analgesic dose of chloroform to blot out the pain

Distal renal tubular acidosis (type I).

From a review of pediatrics texts from 1830 to 1850, a recommended treatment plan would have included (1) general measures such as country air and exercise, and fish oils such as cod and halibut (vitamin D), and (2) specific treatments of tonics (containing combinations of belladonna, opium, sodium bicarbonate, sodium citrate, and potassium chloride) emphasizing alkalis, and splinting and bracing the limbs.

Such treatments with vitamin D and alkalinization with sodium bicarbonate and sodium citrate suggest the plausible speculation that Tiny Tim had renal tubular acidosis (type I), a disorder that is characterized by growth failure and, if left untreated, complicated by osteomalacia with pathologic fractures, hypokalemic muscle weakness and periodic paralysis, nephrocalcinosis leading to renal failure, and death.

• Lewis DW. What was wrong with Tiny Tim? Am J Dis Child. 1992 Dec;146(12):1403-7.