Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A doctor who treated Bach and Handel with disastrous results

tedgioia.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–76 of 76 posts

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

#71

Post by avgDev »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #61

I keep wondering what will be written about out current state on medicine a couple of centuries later

Probably in a negative light.

Many doctors now believe if they cannot test for something, it doesn't exist. This has been changing with long covid.

Western medicine is in a weird place. It is based on science but sometimes it takes a very long time for science and information to trickle down to doctors....like decades. Then, there are pharma reps who sway doctors with new treatments, with questionable research.

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

#72

Post by bumby »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #66
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…

There's certainly other examples of inventions preceding understanding. Pasteurization was invented many times, Louis Pasteur was the last inventor, and the only one who understood germ theory. Citrus rations to prevent scurvy predate the discovery of vitamins. I want to say I've heard of wounds being treated with honey in translations of Greek myths, but I couldn't swear to that.

I've heard of wound remedies written in Old English (the type that even English speakers need a translation for) that were shown to work remarkably well as an antiseptic.

This might be the right reference: https://scitechdaily.com/medieval-medicine-remedy-found-in-9...

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

#73

Post by pflanze »

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…

Wikipedia[1] has some more details and slight corrections:

- Henry V was operated on 16 years old (1403), but became king only 10 years later (1413) (your wording isn't incorrect, just incomplete)

- He ruled for only 9 years, until 1422 (his death). He did live for 19 years after the surgery though, that's correct.

- The arrow/arrowhead seems to have missed the brain[2]. (You didn't say it hit it, and I don't know how much of a difference that makes.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_V_of_England [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bradmore

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

#74

Post by AzzieElbab »

avgDev wrote: post #71
AzzieElbab wrote: post #61

I keep wondering what will be written about out current state on medicine a couple of centuries later

Probably in a negative light. Many doctors now believe if they cannot test for something, it doesn't exist. This has been changing with long covid. Western medicine is in a weird place. It is based on science but sometimes it takes a very long time for science and information to trickle down to doctors....like decades. Then, there are pharma reps who sway doctors with new treatments, with questionable research.

Looking at my original post, clearly modern medicine didn’t do much for my dyslexia:)

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

#75

Post by Tepix »

atombender wrote: post #47
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-...

No, it's perfectly acceptable, even preferable, to refer to him as Handel. The reason is he changed his name when he became a British citizen. He chose the anglicized version, George Frideric Handel. Note the spelling of his first and middle names, too. It was Handel himself who chose to change his name, and he used it in letters and other communications, including his signature, and the inscription on his grave's mo…

Interesting, i didn't know that. Thanks.

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

#76

Post by sriku »

ptha wrote: post #70
sriku wrote: post #67

I was amused that the article claimed that loss of eyesight would end an era of music when Beethoven's loss of hearing certainly didn't end his compositional ability.

You're probably already aware, there is evidence that Beethoven was not completely deaf. According to a leading Beethoven expert, the composer still had hearing in his left ear until shortly before his death in 1827. “Not only was Beethoven not completely deaf at the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in May 1824, he could hear, although increasingly faintly, for at least two years afterwards, probably through the last p…

Sure yeah. The first part of my comment isn't dependent on Beethoven's full loss of hearing though --- loss of eyesight ending an era of music still sounds a rather hilarious statement to me :)
Post reply on HN