Useless Facts on Treatments, Diseases and Health
In ancient China doctors were paid when their patients were kept well, not when they were wick. Believing that it was the doctor's job to prevent disease, Chinese doctors often paid te patient if the patient lost his health. Further, if a patient died, a special lantern was hung outside the doctor's house. At each death another lantern was added. Too many of these lanterns were certain to ensure a slow trade.
In 1374 at Aix-la-Chapelle during the siege of the Black Death, a thousand men, women, and children lost all control, joined hands, and danced in the streets, shrieking and maiming each other until they all died of wounds or fatigue.
According to the American Society for the Study of Headaches 80 percent of migraine sufferers are women.
The Black Plague destroyed half the population of Europe in the fourteenth century.
The mortality rate for infectious diseases is lowest between the ages of five and fifteen. After twenty-five the body is much more susceptible to disease.
There is a disease called ichthyosis that turns the skin scaly like a fish.
Humans are susceptible to a disease called the “laughing sickness.” People stricken with this disease literally laugh themselves to death. The disease is known in only one place in the world, among the Kuru tribe of New Guinea.
Twenty minutes before the pain of a migraine headache begins, many sufferers experience a phenomenon called the aura. During this time the sufferer may see intense colors, flashing lights, even monsters and apparitions. Lewis Carroll, a migraine victim most of his life, is supposed to have taken some of his characters for Alice in Wonderland from the apparitions he saw before attacks.
According to the National Health Foundation, after suffering a cold one should wait at least six days before kissing someone.
Dr. John Cohausen wrote a book in 1743 “proving” that one could live to be 115 years old by inhaling the breath of little girls. In his book, Hermippus Redivivus, Dr. Cohausen gave the following prescription: take 1 pound of gum olibani, 2 ounces of styrae, myrrh, and several other herbs, mix burn and inhale while at the same time imbibing the exhalations of the nearest little girl.
The primary source of physical discomfort among Americans is back pain.
Wyoming has fewer than 1,000 cases of cancer each year. New York State has the highest incidence, with more than 70,000 cancer victims each year.
Statistics indicate that girls who have intercourse early in life, particularly before the age of sixteen, are twice as likely to develop cancer of the cervix as those who do not begin having intercourse until they are in their twenties.
According to the American Heart Association, although people on a low-saturated-fat diet have a 20 percent lower death rate from heart disease than people on a normal diet, they have a 30 percent higher death rate from cancer.
According to scientists from Harvard, Western Reserve, and New Mexico universities, the death rate from coronary heart disease is 28 percent lower among males who live above 7,000 feet than it is among those who live at altitudes between 3,000 and 4,000 feet.
More than half a million Americans died during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
The jaws of African fire ants are used as sutures for wounds in Kenya, Uganda, and parts of South Africa. After an operation is performed, an ant is allowed to bite into the two flaps of skin along the line of the incision. The ant's body is then twisted off, leaving the head with its mandibles locked into the skin like a stitch. A number of these miniature “stitches” are placed along a wound. During the healing process, they closely resemble modern surgical stitching.
Pirates believed that piercing the ears and wearing an earring improved eyesight. This idea, scoffed at for centuries, has been reevaluated in light of acupuncture theory. The point on the lobe where the ear was pierced corresponds to the auricular acupuncture point controlling the eyes.
Women who work have fewer heart problems than men who work. Women in general have remarkably fewer heart attacks than men.
One out of every four Americans will get cancer. Cancer causes one death in the United States every 90 seconds.
The average waiting time in a doctor's office, the American Medical Association reports, is twenty minutes. If the doctor is a family physician, the average waiting time can be as long as half an hour. Waiting time for a psychiatrists, however, is usually less than five minutes.