So, whenever I talk about the past, there’s one thing I always keep in mind: it may be
cool to travel back in time and visit some of these eras, but it would absolutely suck
to live in the past.
Possibly the area where this is most glaringly true is with medicine.
Medical care may have advanced a lot by 1919, but there was still… a lot to work on, to
say the least.
Of course, this is all pretty obvious, after all, organ transplants wouldn’t be a thing
done successfully until a kidney transplant in 1954, several vaccines hadn’t been invented,
including the vaccines for measles and polio, and we didn’t even realize diseases like
AIDS were even a thing.
Oh, and we were going through a massive pandemic, known as the Spanish flu.
The Spanish flu was an outbreak of the H1N1 virus that had happened, apparently on Earth,
which infected 500 million people, and killed anywhere between 50 and 100 million, about
3-5% of the world’s population at the time.
Interestingly though, the flu didn’t originate in Spain, and it only killed around 260,000
Spaniards.
The reason it was dubbed “the Spanish flu” was because the Spanish press was more free
to report on these kinds of stories, as opposed to the press in the other countries of Europe,
as over there, there was a war going on (which Spain was neutral in).
World War the-one-without-the-Nazis actually saw a huge advancement in medical technology
that some would argue is unparalleled by any other four-year period in history.
I mean, it makes sense, medical technology was improving during a time when there was
suddenly a lot of disease and injury and death, kind of like how you probably only truly take
care of your body when you’re sick or injured.
Totally not judging you by the way, everyone does it.
However, it still wasn’t all that luxurious during the war, especially in places like
the Eastern Front, which kept moving around every day, meaning setting up semi-permanent
infirmaries was nearly impossible.
Due to this, as well as the squalid conditions in the trenches, disease started to rival
the combat itself in troop death rates.
Despite all this, there were some advancements that came about because of the war, like in
blood transfusions.
Today, blood transfusion is a common and relatively safe procedure performed all the time in hospitals,
and people donate their own blood for this purpose all the time, making them way better
people than me.
However, the practice had kind of been around since as far back as the 1660s, just not really
all that commonly used, especially with the fact that it wasn’t fully discovered and
taken seriously that humans have different types of blood until 1901.
The first successful blood transfusion was performed in 1907, however the blood had to
be donated from the donor to the donee directly, because blood left on its own generally tends
to coagulate, which is kind of a problem in an unpredictable warzone.
It was then discovered that you could just put in some anticoagulant into the mix and
refrigerate it, and it will be ready to go by the time it reaches the battlefield.
Just remember to put it in the microwave for a bit first.
The first civilian blood bank would later be established in Chicago in 1937 by a certain
Bernard Fantus, who would use a 2% solution of sodium citrate to preserve refrigerated
blood for up to 10 days.
Morphine use was also pioneered throughout the war.
In fact, as you may or may not have heard from that one episode of Adam Ruins Everything,
our over-the-counter drugs of choice were… a bit different back then.
Heroin was a common over-the-counter drug during these times, developed as a supposedly
non-addictive replacement for morphine as a painkiller and cough medication.
However, it turned out that it actually was kind of addictive, and in 1924, the US Congress
reclassified it as a Schedule I substance, banning its production and sale in, or import
to the United States.
So, so much for that.
The war also saw some… more natural remedies.
Now, not the natural herbal remedies that your weird aunt established a business on,
trying to convince everyone not to trust big pharma and come back to nature.
No, none of that stuff, just stuff like peat moss, which grew throughout Britain, absorbs
fluids, is lightweight, and has antiseptic properties, making it an ideal way to take
care of battle injuries.
Oh, and they also used maggots.
Yep, maggots.
I mean, they only eat dead tissue, and excrete urea, which is also an antiseptic.
Maggots were actually used to treat potentially infected wounds until antibiotics like penicillin
were invented and put into wider use, phasing out the use of maggots to treat wounds.
Unless you’re someone who’s allergic to penicillin, sorry mom!
However, to prevent against bacterial and viral infections in the first place, the best
way to do so is with a vaccine.
Vaccines did exist 100 years ago (well before that, in fact), but the real advancements
came in the 1920s, with doctors releasing vaccines for diphtheria, whooping cough, tuberculosis
and tetanus, with the vaccines for yellow fever and typhus coming in the 30’s, and
the first flu shots in 1945.
On top of that, the first use of insulin to treat diabetes happened in 1922 — and it
was a GAME CHANGER.
But another sugar-lowering drug called metformin started getting picked up a few decades later.
Metformin is a super popular drug that’s used in diabetes treatment today alongside
insulin, but I’d argue that metformin has made an underrated impact on how we treat
diabetes.
I actually made a video about it, in tangent with this video, so be sure to head over to
my channel to find out more!
Okay, thank you, Patrick from the channel Corporis.
So yeah, the war we had just had may have contributed a lot to medicine and health care,
but we still had a long way to go.
In fact, the life expectancy in 1919 in the US was 53.5 years for men, and 56 years for
women, whereas now it’s 79.3 (when measured for both sexes), which actually places the
US at 31st place.
1st place actually now goes to Japan at 83.7.
So, perhaps this will go to show you that, while the past might be an interesting place
to visit, you probably wouldn’t want to live there.
Thank you for watching, please be sure to give this video a like if you liked it, and
be sure to shout “like” if you want someone to punch you in the face.
Also, be sure to check out Patrick’s video on his channel, Corporis, and be sure to subscribe
to KhAnubis to learn something new every Sunday.
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okay bye!