A drawing from a book by the french physicien Paul Regnard, 1884.

be sure to do your daily training if you can !!! 💪💪💪

Funny how SCOTUS “originalists” ignore this history

Benjamin Franklin is revered in history for his fixation on inventing practical ways to make everyday life easier. He was a prolific inventor and author, and spent his life tinkering and writing to share his knowledge with the masses.

One of the more surprising areas Franklin wanted to demystify for the average American? At-home abortions.

Molly Farrell is an associate professor of English at the Ohio State University and studies early American literature. She authored a recent Slate article that suggests Franklin’s role in facilitating at-home abortions all started with a popular British math textbook.

Titled The Instructor and written by George Fisher, which Farrell said was a pseudonym, the textbook was a catch-all manual that included plenty of useful information for the average person. It had the alphabet, basic arithmetic, recipes, and farriery (which is hoof care for horses). At the time, books were very expensive, and a general manual like this one was a practical choice for many families.

Franklin saw the value of this book, and decided to create an updated version for residents of the U.S, telling readers his goal was to make the text “more immediately useful to Americans.” This included updating city names, adding Colonial history, and other minor tweaks.

But as Farrell describes, the most significant change in the book was swapping out a section that included a medical textbook from London, with a Virginia medical handbook from 1734 called Every Man His Own Doctor: The Poor Planter’s Physician.

This medical handbook provided home remedies for a variety of ailments, allowing people to handle their more minor illnesses at home, like a fever or gout. One entry, however, was “for the suppression of the courses”, which Farrell discovered meant a missed menstrual period.

“The book starts to prescribe basically all of the best-known herbal abortifacients and contraceptives that were circulating at the time,” Farrell said. “It's just sort of a greatest hits of what 18th-century herbalists would have given a woman who wanted to end a pregnancy early.”

“It's very explicit, very detailed, also very accurate for the time in terms of what was known ... for how to end a pregnancy pretty early on.”

Including this information in a widely circulated guide for everyday life bears a significance to today’s heated debate over access to abortion and contraception in the United States. In particular, the leaked Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade and states that “a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's histories and traditions.”

Farrell said the book was immensely popular, and she did not find any evidence of objections to the inclusion of the section.

“It didn't really bother anybody that a typical instructional manual could include material like this,”she said. “It just wasn't something to be remarked upon. It was just a part of everyday life.”

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House MD makes for a way more interesting Sherlock adaptation than any other because it truly explores the depths of the character’s potential as a rude, selfish sociopath by making him American

The American Tobacco Co, 1930

I drew my very successful doctor husband

Love him

When you’re burnt out from working 80 hours a week and on the edge of losing your damn mind from sleep deprivation but then someone gives you a small snack or you have time to sit down and drink a cup of water:

Today I had the chance to drink a whole cup of water between OR cases and I almost cried of happiness. When the highlight of your day is that you had the chance to pee once, something is wrong.

Residents like me work 80 hours a week (sometimes more) for what calculates out to be less than minimum wage because this is how residencies are structured and because we are the last line between patients and unsafe care. You didn’t hire enough nurses? Have the resident remove/place foleys and NG tubes. You didn’t hire enough transport staff? Have the resident transport patients. I can’t in good conscience let my patients have less than the standard of care, but it becomes unsustainable when you don’t have enough staff. To top this all off, my hospital CEO got a raise of millions of dollars this year, but my raise to next year doesn’t even keep up with inflation. People justify this treatment of residents by saying that oh well we will be rich when we’re attendings, as if having a higher salary in the future justifies this kind of exploitation. I know residents right now who are struggling to afford healthcare for their children, who struggle to find affordable housing within the area we are required to live because of home call. There is simply no justification for the amount of work we do compared with our pay (or the hours we work period).

Maybe this is just a long way of saying please be kind to residents in the hospital. We work really hard within a really broken system and care a lot about our patients.

dr.j.e.w

Day 13/100 productivity challenge.

Good morning!!

Last night I studied Respiratory Physiology for 2 hours and it was worth it. Although I was very sleepy and tired due to the long trip home, I made it.

Today I'm going to study Histology in the morning and then I plan to have fun in the city. In the evening I will try to study some Pathology for an hour or so.

Tips of the day ✨✍🏽🪄

For histology I use flashcards with blank spaces for the microscopic images. It has been useful to me and I have trained my photographic memory.

For Physiology, which is a difficult subject for me, I try to reason absolutely everything and memorize only names of processes and words, new terms.

Let me know in the comments below what works for your study sessions!

Have a blessed, happy and productive day! 🫂🧠

Me, drawing Hiori in a floor length skirt: "i-its historically accurate... I swear......"

Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian

Died: 287

Feast Day: September 26 (New), September 27 (Trad)

Patronage: Doctors, Physicians, Pharmacists, Surgeons, Barbers, Dentists

Saints Cosmas and Damian were twin brothers and skilled doctors born in Cilicia, Turkey.  The brothers gave their services for free and in the process attracted many souls to the then growing number of Christian converts through their daily work and pious life. They treated the poor and wealthy alike without payment, earning the title “The Silverless Ones.”  During the period of Christian persecution by Diocletian, they were arrested and tortured, enduring being hung on a cross, stoned and shot at with arrows. Refusing to relinquish their faith, they were finally beheaded. 

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

ok watching 'Resurrection of the Daleks' again and

that is to say, watching it again after @headcanonsandmore pointed out Tegan's obvious queer coding throughout the series but and and--

oh my goodness these two oh me heart :.I Could the presentation possible be more "we can't say it but we're signalling it so hard our signal caught fire and the fire is somehow burning in a way that signals even more signally"

thoughts on yabui

(he's my favorite)

Ask any physician or psychiatrist to explain the entire cause and effect of the diseases they diagnose and they won’t be able to. Medicine isn’t a science.