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A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

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Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#31

Post by krisoft »

lofatdairy wrote: post #7
pessimizer wrote: post #2

This is a bit unfair, all doctors were fucking terrible before the late 19th century, and lowered the lifespan of everyone they touched. They also seemed to prescribe mercury for everything. The only rational use for a doctor back then was if you needed emergency surgery because you were going to die very soon. It was a situation that they could only make better. The problem, I guess, is that the confidence and autho…

I won't disagree that medicine has come a long way but I'm going to say that this is a giant disservice to some very great doctors in history. My favorite example is John Bradmore, who saved the life of King Henry V after he was shot in the fucking head with an arrow. Not only was John Bradmore a surgeon, he was also something of metalworker (and in fact, was arrested for making counterfeit coins; he had to be pulled…

But that story with the arrow sounds exactly like the “you needed emergency surgery because you were going to die very soon”. So I don’t see how what you wrote is in disagrement with what GP wrote.

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#32

Post by josefx »

Aidevah wrote: post #26
Tepix wrote: post #18

Nice piece. The guy's name is Georg Friedrich Händel, not Handel. Even if you don't have that letter on your keyboard, you can still find ways to enter it: https://www.confidentgerman.com/how-to-write-umlaut-a-u-o-s-...

Handel became a subject of Britain in 1727 by an act of parliament[1]. The text of the act itself[2] clearly referred to him as "George Frederic Handel" with no umlauts. Considering he spent the rest of his life in Britain as a naturalised British citizen there's little reason on insisting to use the umlaut for his name. [1] https://archives.parliament.uk/collections/getrecord/GB61_HL... [2] https://digitalarchive.pa…

> clearly referred to him as "George Frederic Handel"

That doesn't fit either of the spellings of Frideric used in the linked text.

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#33

Post by eru »

pessimizer wrote: post #2

This is a bit unfair, all doctors were fucking terrible before the late 19th century, and lowered the lifespan of everyone they touched. They also seemed to prescribe mercury for everything. The only rational use for a doctor back then was if you needed emergency surgery because you were going to die very soon. It was a situation that they could only make better. The problem, I guess, is that the confidence and autho…

> The only rational use for a doctor back then was if you needed emergency surgery because you were going to die very soon. It was a situation that they could only make better.

Didn't you go for a barber for these kinds of problems anyway? Or later on, to a surgeon, who was very much not a doctor.

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#34

Post by eru »

rob74 wrote: post #29
lqet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an image of the tool: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EyiqN6UXMAAZbrM?format=jpg&name=... I must admit it's pretty clever.

Not only that, but crucially (quote from Wikipedia): "Over a period of several days, John Bradmore, the royal physician, treated the wound with honey to act as an antiseptic, crafted a tool to screw into the embedded arrowhead (bodkin point) and thus extract it without doing further damage, and flushed the wound with alcohol." Despite the clever tool, if the wound had gotten infected, the then-prince would have proba…

> So the knowledge of what to use to disinfect wounds already existed, but apparently wasn't undisputed until much later...

Not sure he had the right theory, though? He might have used honey 'by accident'?

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#35

Post by eru »

rob74 wrote: post #25
Asooka wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just spell it Haendel. Though I've found that's a losing battle with the English world.

Then you have an ambiguity between names where the Umlaut is replaced with "ae"/"oe"/"ue" (Haendel) and names that are actually written with "ae"/"oe"/"ue" (Goethe)...

Yes, but nonetheless that's the official rule for German.

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#36

Post by beeforpork »

rob74 wrote: post #25
Asooka wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just spell it Haendel. Though I've found that's a losing battle with the English world.

Then you have an ambiguity between names where the Umlaut is replaced with "ae"/"oe"/"ue" (Haendel) and names that are actually written with "ae"/"oe"/"ue" (Goethe)...

There is nothing ambiguous about it, because it's the same pronunciation. It's a convention of how this particular name is spelled.

But does German have ambiguities here? Yes, it does. In the instrument 'Oboe', the 'oe' is pronounced as two syllables: long 'o' plus schwa. It cannot be written with 'ö'. It should better be written 'Obohe' (my controversial proposal). And dialectally/regionally, 'oe' may be long 'o' instead of the 'ö' sound, like in the city of 'Soest', which could be written 'Sohst', but then people from that city would complain (about tradition, maybe).

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#37

Post by _0ffh »

eru wrote: post #34
rob74 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but crucially (quote from Wikipedia): "Over a period of several days, John Bradmore, the royal physician, treated the wound with honey to act as an antiseptic, crafted a tool to screw into the embedded arrowhead (bodkin point) and thus extract it without doing further damage, and flushed the wound with alcohol." Despite the clever tool, if the wound had gotten infected, the then-prince would have proba…

> So the knowledge of what to use to disinfect wounds already existed, but apparently wasn't undisputed until much later... Not sure he had the right theory, though? He might have used honey 'by accident'?

Even if the theory was probably still lacking, a solid empirical basis would still be infinitely preferable to none at all.

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#38

Post by jcl »

pessimizer wrote: post #2

This is a bit unfair, all doctors were fucking terrible before the late 19th century, and lowered the lifespan of everyone they touched. They also seemed to prescribe mercury for everything. The only rational use for a doctor back then was if you needed emergency surgery because you were going to die very soon. It was a situation that they could only make better. The problem, I guess, is that the confidence and autho…

I was impressed by the story of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who, in 1848, accidentally had a gunpowder tamping iron blasted through his head. A doctor was somehow able to treat the wound, such that he was able to make a near-complete recovery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#39

Post by john-aj »

saghm wrote: post #9
reidjs wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard this repeatedly, is there any proof doctors used to be useless? Why didn’t they work other jobs? Were they simply con artists?

From the wikipedia[1] article on the assassination of Garfield in 1881: > Most historians and medical experts now believe that Garfield probably would have survived his wound had the doctors been more capable.[66][67] However, most American doctors of the day did not believe in anti-sepsis measures or the need for cleanliness to prevent infection.[68] Several inserted their unwashed fingers into the wound to probe fo…

That only speaks for the 1800s, though. There were a lot of incorrect beliefs among scientists during that time that weren't commonplace before; race biology comes to mind.

Soap has been around for a long time, and thousand-year-old religions have rules about cleaning oneself. My impression was that doctors actually stopped believing in disinfection during the rise of modern science, as they began see these beliefs as unscientific superstitions. I don't currently have a source for this, though.

Re: A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

#40

Post by pwagland »

Beldin wrote: post #23
__alexs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to be truly in disagreement with OP, you're just using being more charitable in your description and interpretation of events.

A doctor whose patient lives on 19 years after removing an arrow from his head does not sound terrible at all, yet that doctor preceded gp's cutoff date by centuries. I'd say that's sufficiently clear disagreement.

Not really, Op says: > The only rational use for a doctor back then was if you needed emergency surgery because you were going to die very soon. It was a situation that they could only make better.

Having an arrow in your head qualifies as needing emergency surgery, and it was a situation that they certainly made better.

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