burninglights:

hellolovelyscientist:

burninglights:

my internal monologue when Ancient Egypt is mentioned: [don’t talk about imhotep and the first codified diagnostic manual. the fact you know so much about it is deeply weird and nobody cares about medicine that much]

That sounds fascinating and I want to know. Please.

@karmaphone @hellolovelyscientist @lamiabelladonna

I have been enabled, and By Jove I Will Deliver.

The year is 1862, and antiquities dealer (and forger) and self-made Egyptologist Edwin Smith steals a papyrus from an antiquities seller in Luxor. I could go on a whole separate rant about European colonialists treating culturally significant artifacts like grab ‘n go bags and have done so here.

Anyway, Edwin’s pilfered scroll gets translated in 1930, and it turns out have been a transcript from about the 17th century BCE of a papyrus written by a man named Imhotep, a vizier in the court of King Djozer who practiced neurosurgery, and made forays into astronomy and architecture too.

Now, Imhotep was wicked smart. As in “when the Greeks met him they incorporated him into the pantheon as a magician of Ascelpius because they couldn’t figure out how he had such a comprehensive understanding of the human body and treating it’s ills” smart. His scroll was a record of treatment of 48 cases, ranging from fractures of the hand to open abscessed wounds to trauma injuries to the skull. Side note: a lot of medicine during this period was considered to be the work of occult phenomena, and so a lot of treatments involved charms to ward off malignant spirits and incantations to aid in curing them.

What’s remarkable about the Edwin scroll is that it is the first recorded account of medicine without the attachment of spiritual or occult phenomena as the root cause or a means of treatment; it’s a purely scientific endeavour, complete with an anatomical glossary, diagnosis, summary, method of treatment and prognosis for each injury and illness.

It’s the first evidence-based, scientific diagnostic manual.

The most significant case is Case 45, concerning a patient with “bulging masses — they may be compared to the unripe hemat fruit which is cool, and hard to the touch” in the breast. These masses are malignant tumours, the manifestation of breast cancer, and provide us with the first ever recorded case of cancer.

Imhotep knew that a tumour that has hot to the touch was a sign of infection (the inflammatory immune response produces tumor (swelling), rubor (redness), dolor (pain), and significantly to this calor, or heat). Infected abscesses could be treated with draining and a topical poultice. In the section for therapy for Case 45, though, there’s one single, haunting line:

“There is none.”

In 2500BCE, well before germ theory, aseptic technique, chemotherapy and antibiotics, a surgeon picked up a scroll of fresh papyrus and provided us with the first ever codified, scientific diagnostic manual for injury and illness, and the first written record of the emperor of all maladies that we call cancer.

That’s pretty fucking dope.

(If the cancer aspect is something you’re interested in, I highly recommend The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It’s a record of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer from the days of Imhotep to the present day, and it’s a fascinating read)

rebuildingme-epistleblog:

jacqueleeblebs:

radicalveganwitch:

vaervaf:

victoriassecretpolice:

witwitch:

we probably lost a lot of medical knowledge during the witch hunts because of how many mid wives were persecuted, and how men took over the field of medicine. I bet a few hundred years ago a mid wife might actually have some kind of knowledge about conditions that affect women exclusively which we still haven’t bothered to research in our modern society.

ok now I’m fucking mad

how many got killed cuz of witch hunts seems like youd have to kill a lot

“It is estimated that at least 1, 000 were executed in England, and the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish were even fiercer in their purges. It is hard to arrive at a figure for the whole of the Continent and the British Isles, but the most responsible estimate would seem to be 9 million. It may well, some authorities contend, have been more. Nine million seems almost moderate when one realizes that The Blessed Reichhelm of Schongan at the end of the 13th century computed the number of the Devil-driven to be 1,758,064,176. A conservative, Jean Weir, physician to the Duke of Cleves, estimated the number to be only 7,409,127. The ratio of women to men executed has been variously estimated at 20 to 1 and 100 to 1. Witchcraft was a woman’s crime.

    Men were, not surprisingly, most often the bewitched. Subject to women’s evil designs, they were terrified victims. Those men who were convicted of witchcraft were often family of convicted women witches, or were in positions of civil power, or had political ambitions which conflicted with those of the Church, a monarch, or a local dignitary. Men were protected from becoming witches not only by virtue of superior intellect and faith, but because Jesus Christ, phallic divinity, died “to preserve the male sex from so great a crime: since He was willing to be born and to die for us, therefore He has granted to men this privilege. ” Christ died literally for men and left women to fend with the Devil themselves.” (pg 129-130) Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin 

“The witches used drugs like belladonna and aconite, organic amphetamines, and hallucinogenics. They also pioneered the development of analgesics. They performed abortions, provided all medical help for births, were consulted in cases of impotence which they treated with herbs and hypnotism, and were the first practitioners of euthanasia. Since the Church enforced the curse of Eve by refusing to permit any alleviation of the pain of childbirth, it was left to the witches to lessen pain and mortality as best they could. It was especially as midwives that these learned women offended the Church, for, as Sprenger and Kramer wrote, “No one does more harm to the Catholic Faith than mid wives. ” The Catholic objection to abortion centered specifically on the biblical curse which made childbearing a painful punishment —it did not have to do with the “right to life” of the unborn fetus. It was also said that midwives were able to remove labor pains from the woman and transfer those pains to her husband—clearly in violation of divine injunction and intention both.” (pg 139-140) Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin 

“The magic of the witches was an imposing catalogue of medical skills concerning reproductive and psychological processes, a sophisticated knowledge of telepathy, auto- and hetero-suggestion, hypnotism, and mood-controlling drugs. Women knew the medicinal nature of herbs and developed formulae for using them. The women who were faithful to the pagan cults developed the science of organic medicine, using vegetation, before there was any notion of the profession of medicine. Paracelsus, the most famous physician of the Middle Ages, claimed that everything he knew he had learned from “the good women.” (pg 140)  Woman Hating, Andrea Dworkin

****************get the PDF here *********************

Bolded sections are by me. Honestly I don’t think I need to explain much. We lost some of the most important women in the world, who were the pioneers of medicine for a “curse of eve”.  Basically saying if you relieve another woman’s pain we’re going to call you a witch and kill you “in the name of god” because having a child is punishment upon women and relieving their pain is illegal because this book written by men told me so.

Also check out the part where men can’t be witches because jesus and his “phallic divinity” “preserve the male sex”. 

Ever heard of the Voynich manuscript? Big, huge, herbal / medical / astronomical lexicon from the 1400s, depicting lots of naked women clearly performing rituals that serve medical functions, lots of them pretty clearly related to childbirth.

You know, this book that is written in a language that nobody has been able to read for 600 years, but nobody, and I mean NO MAN has ever even thought about the simple reality of WOMEN having written it. 

I found one blog post by a woman about how this text is very clearly written by women, and the knowledge within it has been completely annihilated or co-opted by men who now don’t even consider the possibility that a woman, or multiple women, could have written something like this.

Seriously, look it up. Naked women. Fat, short, in baths, all of it. And the entire academic world is absolutely convinced this must have been written by a man. In the wikipedia article, only male linguists and historians are mentioned, because only they matter. And every single one of their theories is laughingly phallocentric and simply wrong.  

They go so far as say that aliens wrote it before they consider that women actually had herbal and medicinal knowledge and passed that knowledge on, in secret, written in languages only they knew, so that no priest or holy man or inquisitor could read it and kill them. 

Open your eyes. This has been going on for hundreds of years. Women had to hide in the shadows, had to invent languages, just to avoid being killed by men for trying to help themselves and other women. This is reality.

It wouldn’t be the first time women have had to invent their own language because of the rights men withheld from us. 

slarmstrong:

rainbowsalmontits:

Sit back and relax, folks. We’re gonna have a discussion about doctor’s visits, thin privilege, making assumptions about your patients, and why patients feel the urge to punch a doctor in the face.

Let me start this by giving the facts that are none of anyone’s business but will probably influence the reading of the post. I’m 28, biologically female (though I identify genderqueer/trans*), and I take my partner S.L. Armstrong to all of her doctor’s appointments. This includes general medicine, gynecology, dermatology, psychology, podiatry, Ear/Nose/Throat, and as of today, endocrinology. I’ve been her health advocate for quite a while now, having a degree and background in kinesiological sciences and nutrition (especially when linked to exercise science).

That said, today’s first-time appointment with a doctor we’ll call Dr. F really made me angry. I’ll try to break it down for you and not get too terribly long-winded, but never before have I seen a doctor so dismissive, judgemental, inconsistent, contradictory, and ineffective.

My experience with the health professions has led me to have high hopes and what I feel are reasonable expectations. I know offices get funding from big pharmacology companies, thus them having advertising materials for a number of drugs posted on every available surface, whether they support the drug itself or not. I get it. Funding keeps you open, and having to buy into that in order to stay in business and (hopefully) continue helping people is part of the whole game. It’s a shitty game, but I at least get that certain issues are unavoidable in the system we’re working with. But having a shitty system doesn’t excuse incompetence, nor does it excuse doctors and their supporting staff from treating their patients the way we were treated.

1. Beginning of the Work Day — Still Late
   
   With an appointment at 8:40am, we were quite early in the work day and came early, settling into our chairs in the waiting area at 8:20 because I drive in traffic like a fucking boss. S. had done all of her paperwork ahead of time and printed her recent bloodwork because she’s done this song and dance before. The waiting room was relatively full for being so early in the morning. The reception staff took over ten minutes between taking my partner’s license and insurance cards and giving them back. We waited until 9:00am to actually get called back. Twenty minutes late when the clinic has been open less than an hour? This did not instill us with confidence.
   
   
2. Are You Dead?
   
   The intake technician took S.’s weight and height (440 lbs. and 5’6”, and though I think BMI is complete bullshit, since it doesn’t measure health at all or account for body composition, I know people will bitch if I don’t at least fully disclose… —> BMI: 71.0 —> ‘morbidly obese’). No surprises there. S. has actually lost over 90 pounds in the last 16 months, but the tech doesn’t need to know info like that. Next was blood pressure, and let me just say that those automatic blood pressure machines do absolutely dick when it comes to measuring larger people. At home, S.’s blood pressure, which we measure by wrist machine (and I can and have taken manually) is consistently around 110/70 to 120/85 when she’s resting, perfectly normal despite her weight. The machine read 177/107. The fuck? That would be STAGE 2 HYPERTENSION, which she does not have. Of course, the tech wouldn’t bother taking BP manually, so she just put the wild numbers down in the chart and moved on. Pulse was 113 by her measurement, which would normally be tachycardia in adults, but she obviously wouldn’t have known that would be a bad thing if someone had shouted they were dying at her. I told her the normal rates and that we take her BP regularly, but I was ignored. But, I digress.
   
   
3. How Do You Spell That?
   
   She proceeded to go through S.’s long list of medications, which wouldn’t normally be a problem, but she had to literally check fucking Google for every single medication because she couldn’t spell any of them despite the fact S. had hand-written them VERY clearly in her paperwork to reference easily. As such, what would normally be a five-minute intake took the damn tech 15 minutes to complete. We were walked in a big circle to the other side of the clinic and shoved in a room right as the previous client was walking out. We had to wait for her to reset the paper barrier on the table, and she said we could sit wherever we’d like. (Hmm… chair with uncomfortable arm rests that jut into S.’s hips vs. exam table where she’ll have to sit soon anyway. Tough choice.)
   
   
4. Play The Jeopardy Theme Already
   
   Can I just note briefly that we were left waiting another ten minutes before the doctor actually walked in? I won’t keep you waiting like he did.
   
   
5. Hold On, Let Me Have A Convo With My Computer…
   
   Dr. F finally arrives! Please note now that we only spoke with him for about 10 minutes, but oh boy did those 10 minutes leave an impression!
   
   The entire time we were talking to him, he had the mic for his voice recognition software in his hand, and even when he was talking to S. he faced the computer most of the time and was supposedly listening to her ‘interview’ answers while also speaking over her into the software to put notes into the computer. There were several instances where it was very clear he wasn’t listening. S. could have said, “Oh yeah, and I sacrifice neighborhood children and bathe in their blood to honor the almighty weight gods”, and Dr. F would have probably said, “Good. Good. Now…”
   
   
6. “Tell Me About that Weight Gain”
   
   We move into the meat of the matter quite quickly (it was a very quick visit, after all, and there were plenty of patients still in that waiting room needing to be seen, dontcha know). S. has PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), hypothyroidism, and diabetes (Type 2, only had it for 2 years, A1C is at 6.0, blood sugars stable through diet and activity). When he touched on her current weight, he literally said, “So, tell me about that weight gain”. Uh… because sometime in the past she wasn’t this huge whale you see before you? The tone of his voice was rather uninterested, and it honestly took me and S. a few seconds to even realize what he was actually asking after was her weight progression over time, or when her weight had tipped over average levels or whatnot. Once we caught on, S. told him she gained a large amount of weight between the ages of 12 and 13, but when her mother took her to the doctor, he concluded that she was just eating too much.
   
   To Dr. F’s credit, he did say that the doctor took the easy answer there rather than looking more fully at what was going on with S. hormonally at the time. He said a couple things about the various endocrine glands (very much in passing, and probably very hard for most to follow if they don’t have backgrounds in anatomy/physiology like I do), and then S. continued telling him about her weight, mental, and dietary issues throughout her early marriage and the years she and her husband were trying to have children.
   
   
7. Gastric Bypass is Better than Psychology & Nutrition!
   
   Quick aside here to say that I am very active and vocal during doctor’s visits. S. is the timid type, and even if she’s very upset by something a doctor says, she’ll often let it all slip and not assert herself. I often do it for her when I feel something needs to be said. Dr. F took the rest of her basic history regarding her weight, and the instant she was done, he was asking about bariatric surgery options. What had she considered? What had her doctors suggested? Would she consider having surgery? And hey, he knows a doctor he would recommend for it! Imagine that! Because you wouldn’t want just anyone doing that kind of procedure because you care about your health and well-being, right?
   
   What I wanted to say: “Do you get a referral fee, or do you just send people to go under the knife without reason because it brings you joy to see one less fat person bogging up the works for those of us with thin privilege? Because by focusing solely on her weight, you’re saying it’s the cause of all her health problems. She’s already lost 90 pounds in 16 months, but that just isn’t enough progress for you? What the fuck?”
   
   What I actually said: “She’s considered just about every kind of surgery out there, but we’ve determined surgery would make her symptoms worse instead of better because surgery wouldn’t solve any of her problems. If anything she restricts too much as it is, skipping meals when she sees her weight fluctuate at all on the scale. She’s in therapy to help with that because she displays all the signs of an anorexic. Surgery to decrease the food she’s eating doesn’t help because she’s not overeating to begin with.”
   
   I may as well have sprouted two more heads and started barking at him like Cerberus. He completely dismissed what I said, saying S. didn’t have anorexia and that anorexia wasn’t about eating habits. I told him I knew exactly what anorexia was and that I know all the diagnosis information because I know the DSM-V criteria and despite her being overweight, all the symptoms of restriction, dysphoria, and lower self worth are there. She has Atypical Anorexia Nervosa, which is listed under the section ENDOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified). (For an accurate definition of anorexia nervosa, see the Mayo Clinic page.)
   
   When I actually challenged Dr. F on this, he rambled a bit about psychology and nutrition maybe making her feel better but not being of much help. He then asked me my relation to S.—because how dare I actually question his authority!—and that led to another hilariously inappropriate moment.
    
8. Lesbians Can Have Babies?! Whaaaatt?
   
   I told Dr. F that I was S.’s partner. This made him turn in his chair (away from the computer! Success!) and literally say, “But… we were talking about children before?”
   
   Yes, Doctor Fucknuts, S. tried for children. Her womb didn’t magically disappear the instant you perceived us as a lesbian couple, which we’re not. Good job at assuming in the same breath that she was your typical heterosexual woman, and then that she’s a lesbian with an outspoken lover.
   
   We have a non-traditional relationship, one that doesn’t include physical sexual intimacy. It’s still a very personal and fulfilling relationship, and we consider ourselves involved, despite her marriage to her husband.
   
   The fact here is, it doesn’t matter what my relation or involvement is with S. What matters is I’m the one who’s there with her at the appointment, and I obviously care (thus me being an active participant in the appointment). Dr. F got all flustered and laughed and waved it off with, “You’re making it all complicated on me!”
   
   It’s not complicated. She was trying to have children and was diagnosed with PCOS. She has a husband, and I’m her partner. Regardless of my role, I’m speaking for her, and should be respected when I’m paying you for your time and services. I’m not sorry that our relationship can’t be put in your quaint little categories, and I’m not sorry we made you uncomfortable.
   
   
9. Integrated Healthcare Whaaaaat?!
   
   In the end, Dr. F decided to side-step whatever I was trying to bring up and just explained it all away with, “Well, I’m here to just look at what her glands are doing, nothing else.” So… you’ve never been part of an individual’s integrated health care? You don’t need to consider what those glands are doing to the rest of her body? Isn’t that the whole point? Glands all on their own might malfunction, but that malfunction will have very different effects on various people because their bodies are all different. You can’t just treat a person based on a single test result without looking at the rest of their system to see what the most appropriate course of action is. You can’t just say, “Well, you’re fat, so get surgery.” like the problem is the fat and surgery will fix the problem with no consequences or complications.
   
   As a medical professional, your job is to look at the patient as a whole entity, someone infinitely complex, and try to unravel them enough to find the best treatment options out there for them. As a specialist, it means that, in an ideal situation, you work at least a little with the patient’s other healthcare professionals. You look at their recommendations and give your take on them, either agreeing or arguing. That’s integrative healthcare. That’s holistic healthcare. Treating the body and mind as a whole person rather than breaking it into little parts and pretending that those parts don’t interact. Boiling it down to “I’m an Endocrinologist; I don’t need to listen to you if you’re not talking about glands and hormones” does a disservice to your profession as much as it does a disservice to your patients.
   
   
10. Sorry, You’re Too Fat for Our Equipment
    
    The tests that Dr. F ordered included a thyroid ultrasound. Woot. I know what that is. I’ve actually used ultrasound equipment, so I know the drill, and I’ve been present for S. vaginal ultrasounds in addition to the more traditional ultrasounds used in sports medicine and chiropractic clinics (as a muscle tissue heating technique). But he was instantly afraid they couldn’t perform the ultrasound themselves because “the table won’t be able to handle your weight.” Uh… you mean the tables identical to the Ritter exam table she’s currently sitting on? The same one they can attach stirrups to for the vaginal ultrasounds? ‘Cause she’s never broken a damn exam table, and wasn’t doing it right then either. S.’s weight doesn’t magically change when she reclines. If the table can handle her sitting, it can handle her lying back so you can use the ultrasound head over her throat and collar.
    
    It was just another moment where Dr. F was way too focused on S.’s weight, and while he might be worried about his equipment (though unnecessarily, since the tables they have could obviously hold her weight easily), he certainly wasn’t worried about the way his comments were effecting her state of mind. As the appointment went on, S. became more and more withdrawn, since she was being called fat at every turn and not being listened to, and I became more and more angry because my input was dismissed and Dr. F wasn’t giving us any useful information. If he had been paying attention at all, our body language would have told him how he very close he was to us just walking out on him.
    
    
11. Congrats, You Just Contradicted Yourself
    
    One thing that really bothered me about the doctor was the way he kept contradicting himself. He was trying to say, “Oh, it’s not all about the weight.” but kept suggesting bariatric surgery to address her weight. He said anorexia wasn’t about the food being eaten but systematically disregarded the work psychologists and nutritionists are doing with S. to address that very disorder. He asked how S. was doing on her “very expensive medications” (i.e. Invokana and Bydureon, both used for treatment of Type 2 Diabetes) as if we couldn’t possibly have insurance helping to pay for them, and said he doesn’t like the drugs because of their cost… but sitting on the desk right beside him is the “How the Kidneys Help Regulate Blood Sugar!” advertising figurine from Invokana. He recommended surgery, and also scheduled tests to see if S.’s adrenal glands and thyroid are all right (which would sort of negate the need for bariatric surgery, yes?).
    
    He also, according to his paperwork, diagnosed S. with a Nontoxic Multi-nodular Goiter (aka her thyroid gland is enlarged), but he didn’t say a word about it during our appointment. We didn’t even know that was there until we got home and read over the paperwork given to us at check-out.

So! To bring this all to a close, I felt that Dr. F did very little to listen to and help treat S.’s problems. He was utterly dismissive whenever I gave my input, especially if it was to argue against something he had said from his thin-privileged point of view. His reactions were very judgmental, from S.’s weight to having a partner and also having tried to have children to disregarding other health professions’ contributions to S.’s ongoing healthcare. I was seething when I walked out that door, and I’ve been seething the last four hours as I typed all this out. S. deserved better than that bullshit. She deserves better than being stared at like she’s nothing more than a fat globule, and then being ignored while the doctor tinkers with his computer’s voice recognition software between telling her to get surgery to ‘fix the fat’.

The fat doesn’t need to be fixed. Her thyroid function, cyst-filled ovaries, and a possible pituitary issue do need to be fixed, and that was your job. You have failed to instill confidence that you have any intention of actually doing that job. After S.’s ultrasound and follow-up to go over said ultrasound results, we will not be coming back to give you more of our money. That would be enabling you to continue thinking your fat-phobic suggestions and incredibly poor bedside manner are acceptable. They are not and should never be acceptable. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

I a reblogging this in its entirety because it should be seen. This is what I face 99% of the time I deal with the medical establishment. It hurts to be boiled down to ‘fat’. I am more than my weight.

I have my first appt with my new doctor next Wednesday. If he is anything like this, I swear I will walk right out of there no matter how difficult it was to find a doctor who was actually taking patients.