/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4882421]

Hi everybody! I made this thread a month or so ago but I figured I'd see if the answers would be different this time around.

Without having benefited from modern medicine, would you still be alive? Basically what I'm asking is if you've had any experiences that would normally have killed you, thanks to our good friend natural selection? I'll go first. We've basically outsmarted Mother Nature in some pretty basic ways, at this point in our development. These are all things that would have either killed me or severely crippled me beyond functioning if not for modern medicine, thus weeding out my detrimental traits from the gene pool:


- Vaccines of course (stepped on nails and such)

- Broke my clavicle once, was set by a doctor. Couldn't use right arm for a month.

- Had testicular torsion, where the balls swivel around in the sac. Debilitatingly painful. Would have left me sterile and probably would have become gangrenous if not treated with corrective surgery

- Had epididymitis which also could have left me to be eaten by wolves while crying in a ball, if not for medication and an ER visit

- Bruised ribs and face half torn open from bike accident. Would have gotten all kinds of infections and died

- I wear glasses, and had a lazy eye when I was a kid. Had to do eye exercises to correct it. Probably wouldn't be too helpful during the hunt

- Have had several root canals and cavities corrected. If they hadn't, I doubt I'd survive long without being able to eat without excruciating pain

- Arthritis in my spine and hips. I see a therapist and take ibuprofen for it if that counts.

How about you? What has happened to you that would have killed or seriously maimed any other animal, but for the grace of modern medicine?

[Anonymous No.4882435]

>>4882421
I dunno. I haven't really had all that much happen to me.

I do have asthma though, but I suspect that my asthma has a lot to do with being born into a family that smokes a ridiculous amount of cigarettes every day, completely ignorant of second hand smoke. My childhood memories consist of rooms filled with smoke. I also grew up in Los Angeles, the City of Smoke.

I don't think I would have had these lung problems if I was born during the stone age.

[Anonymous No.4882442]

I've had several colds in my life. Odds are one of them would have turned into tuberculosis and killed me. I've also had a infection in my gum and had to take antibiotics for it. So That could have killed me.

[Anonymous No.4882449]

>>4882435
Heh true. I probably wouldn't have spinal arthritis if it wasn't for television so there we are.

[Anonymous No.4882451]

Impairingly bad eyesight requiring very strong glasses.

Fractured left arm as a child, probably wouldn't have ruined me so long as I let it heal properly.

Had extremely severe case of stomach flu nearly kill me by dehydration (any water I drank was vomited back up for two and a half days), necessitated saline IV.

Other than that I'd be gold, but that last one would literally have been my death.

[Anonymous No.4882466]

Have Type 1 Diabetes, would have died as a child if not for the discovery of insulin. A bike helmet has probably saved my life more than once too.

[Anonymous No.4882469]

>>4882451
Yeah. That's the kind of thing poets would die early from.

[Anonymous No.4882497]

Well it's hard to imagine if, had I not been vaccinated, would I get that illness. So I can't answer you on that one. Would I have gotten infections from specific things? Maybe. I would have more than likely gotten tetnus by now.
I had one simple operation when a stick scratched my eye. However, no doctors worked on it. I took the bark out with a tweezer myself, when I went to the hospital they just put an eyepatch on it.

Really, the only things which affect me such that they need to be medicated are mental health, including narcolepsy and bipolar. Those certainly wouldn't kill me, though

[Anonymous No.4882513]

>>4882497
>unmedicated bipolar
>certainly wouldn't kill me
not so sure about that

[Anonymous No.4882521]

>>4882513
Well, it's bipolar II. Which means I go from mild catatonic depression (laying in bed all day) to very happy, giggling, and just being a bit weird every once in a while and thinking I can do anything. Not much out of the standard norms.

[Anonymous No.4882631]

--Chickenpox/measles when I was little
--Strep throat
--Several cavities and a root canal done
--Severe migraine that left me hospitalized
--Testicular torsion but ended up fixing itself

That's about it. If I was born in the 19th century or earlier, I might have been in some trouble, but nothing too bad.

[None !!qdvBtKFtNy6 No.4882657]

>Without having benefited from modern medicine, would you still be alive?

It is impossible to answer this question with certainty. You have not even defined "modern medicine".

I shall hereby define "modern medicine" as medical technologies which emerged after 1975, an arbitrary date.

>Vaccines

Vaccines have been in use for thousands of years. The WHO smallpox eradication campaign began in 1966 and smallpox was eradicated by 1977.

>Broke my clavicle once, was set by a doctor. Couldn't use right arm for a month.

Surgery and bone-setting has been around for thousands of years.

>Had testicular torsion, where the balls swivel around in the sac. Debilitatingly painful. Would have left me sterile and probably would have become gangrenous if not treated with corrective surgery

Testicular torsion is treated with orchiopexy, in which the testis is anchored to the scrotal wall. The surgical procedure was initially developed as treatment for cryptorchidism, with the first successful orchiopexy performed in the 1870s by Annandale. The main technical improvements have been in how the testis is anchored to the scrotal wall. Anchoring mechanisms have ranged from using an external cage to fastening the testis to the fascia lata of the thigh or the contralateral testis for lengthening of the spermatic cord. The current method to attach the testis to the scrotal pouch was initially described the 1930s.[29] With testicular torsion, the testicles need only be secured in the correct orientation to the scrotal wall, as the spermatic cord does not need to be lengthened. In current practice, a bilateral scrotal orchiopexy is often recommended to treat the torsed testis and prevent torsion of the other testis.

[continued[

[None !!qdvBtKFtNy6 No.4882658]

[continued]
>Had epididymitis which also could have left me to be eaten by wolves while crying in a ball, if not for medication and an ER visit
In the acute form, antibiotics are used if an infection is suspected. The treatment of choice is often azithromycin and cefixime to cover both gonorrhoeae and chlamydia. Fluoroquinolones are no longer recommended due to widespread resistance of gonorrhoeae to this class.[5] Doxycycline may be used as an alternative to azithromycin.
Doxycycline was first approved in 1967.

>Bruised ribs and face half torn open from bike accident. Would have gotten all kinds of infections and died

You need to go into details to verify whether if modern medicine was necessary to save your life.
> I wear glasses, and had a lazy eye when I was a kid. Had to do eye exercises to correct it. Probably wouldn't be too helpful during the hunt
The first eyeglasses were made in Italy at about 1286, according to a sermon delivered on February 23, 1306 by the Dominican friar Giordano da Pisa (ca. 1255 - 1311)
>Have had several root canals and cavities corrected. If they hadn't, I doubt I'd survive long without being able to eat without excruciating pain
You need to go into more details. Was modern medicine required?
>Arthritis in my spine and hips. I see a therapist and take ibuprofen for it if that counts.
Ibuprofen was derived from propionic acid by the research arm of Boots Group during the 1960s.[45] It was discovered by Andrew RM Dunlop, with colleagues Stewart Adams, John Nicholson, Vonleigh Simmons, Jeff Wilson and Colin Burrows, and was patented in 1961.

[Anonymous No.4882689]

I broke my chin at age 4 (jumping backwards into a pool). I'd have probably died not from the trauma but from the infection.

had varicella, mumps and two cases of flu; all these could have developed into more serious complications.

broke one tooth; infection etc.

i am dyslexic so i'd have been learning disabled in some subjects.

my mother had intestinal problems when she was two years old, she barely made it; I wouldn't exist.


Just one thing, we aren't outsmarting nature, we are part of it, our intelligence is part of an evolutionary process and as such it exists as part of the context in which it developed. So far we're still standing, I'm curious about the future though, I wonder if over-population will produce something as dramatic as the behavioral sink described by John Calhoun or if some new virus appears.

[Anonymous No.4882708]

>>4882658
you seem a bit optimistic about access to healthcare in previous centuries

[Anonymous No.4883596]

When I say "modern medicine" I don't really mean exactly what we have today, I just mean anything we've created to help ourselves in the past few centuries or millennia. More asking that if you were in the wild with tribesman rather than living as a peasant in 1500 because even then you could probably collapse in front of a church and they'd take you in. Though half of the things said in this thread would have been fatal then too, but for instance my testicular torsion, for my case that needed surgery otherwise I would have been crippled. Balls would have died and fallen off, leaving me sterile, and the pain is just enough that I never went into shock for it, so I felt *everything.* Lasted for hours, I would have been picked off if any predator decided it wanted to eat the one that was crying and holding its crotch, huddled over. Doctors over the centuries may have come up with solutions to it, but that's far more modern than what I'm talking about. I mean if you were living with a band of nomadic tribesman 20,000 years ago hunting animals with spears and following the herds rather than staying put. Way before an external anchor for a testicle would have been invented. If that's any kind of definition of "modern", I guess, but I don't know. Clearly I'm not an anthropologist! Hope that helps.

[Anonymous No.4883611]

I've had two serious bone breaks. I might be crippled without modern medicine, possibly dead from complications/infection.

Also, no telling what would have happened to me without modern vaccines and sanitation.

[Anonymous No.4883671]

I was born with low blood oxygen. My face was blue and looked like darth vader without the mask. They put me in an incubator with high oxygen for a few hours and I was fine, but a few centuries ago I would have been the village idiot.

Other than that, some cavities. By now I'd have lost a quarter of my teeth, it wouldn't be killing me yet though.

[None !8.OBurn.zQ No.4883674]

I was gutted, intestines and stuff ... smashed through a table, like the genius i am.

[Anonymous No.4883685]

>>4883674
Yeah, death sentence. Very little chance of surviving the infection, even if you get stitched back up.

[None !8.OBurn.zQ No.4883693]

>>4883685
Hey, i was conscious for a pretty long time. Im not saying i could have walked it off, but i think i did alright considering i couldn't breathe if i tried to move.

[Anonymous No.4883702]

>>4883693
Sure, but I meant within the context of no-modern-medicine.

[None !8.OBurn.zQ No.4883707]

>>4883702
True, and thank god for pain killers.