C-COMP News

Thanksgiving Day, November 1936. As was her custom, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States of America, had conjured up a sumptuous feast at her house in the New York suburb of Hyde Park. The traditional Thanksgiving turkey was surrounded by all sorts of delicious holiday treats. The table looked glorious. However, just that morning a serious problem had arisen. A phone call from Boston had informed Mrs. Roosevelt that her son, Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) Jr, had been taken to hospital. The problem had apparently started with a sinus infection. But then things started to go rapidly downhill. The streptococcal bacterium FDR Jr was infected with began to spread. He developed an abscess in his cheek which then moved to his throat, producing an extremely painful case of “strep throat”. FDR Jr’s temperature rose to very high levels, and he began to cough up blood. He was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital. His doctors became seriously worried. If the infection entered his blood, producing a general systemic infection known as sepsis, it was quite possible he would die. The situation was critical. With FDR Jr’s fiancé Ethel du Pont and his mother continuously at his bedside, the Harvard doctors pondered their next move. There really wasn’t a standard treatment for this kind of condition. Nevertheless, Dr. George Loring Tobey Jr, the otolaryngologist involved in the case had an idea. He would try a new experimental drug which he had previously tested on some of his most serious patients. The drug was called Prontosil Rubrum or Prontosil Red. True to its name it was a bright red dye that had been developed by a scientist at the IG Farben company in Germany as part of their program for developing drugs derived from dyes that could fight microbial infections. More…

Pain is always something to be overcome. There are many contexts for this. For the Amazonian Indians it may represent a passage to manhood. For a patient in hospital, it may be part of the pathway to recovery. Overcoming pain may even be recreational. Chili peppers are spicy but in excess may be really painful. The eating of such peppers can take on a competitive edge. Who can eat the hottest one? In the case of the Bullet Ant, we may wonder where exactly the pain comes from? The jaws of the ant, though fearsome to look at, are surely not sufficient to produce such an excruciating and lingering experience. Indeed, the jaws are not the point. It is the stinger at the other end of the ant that is the key. This contraption is capable of injecting the venom of the ant into its victim. But here again we might wonder exactly how large a volume of its venom a single ant might inject? Surely this is a tiny amount? How could so small a quantity be responsible for such a devastating result? More…

Female Hysteria and Healthcare: How Does the History of Female Hysteria Affect Women’s Healthcare Today? When I was in high school, I read a short story by Charlotte Perkins Stetson called “The Yellow Wallpaper”. In reading this story I felt camaraderie with the main character’s experiences. More…

"Once you get to the 16th century, there was Montaigne who wrote eloquently about the reasons why we should respect the intelligence and feelings of animals. Then in the 17th century there was Margaret Cavendish, the first women to write about these topics, followed by others in the 18th century. Suddenly, in the 19th century, there were a huge number of women involved in the animal rights movement; actually, I think it was mostly women! Why was this?" More…

“Why, we can hardly call it a complaint, Miss Ruthyn. I look upon it he has been poisoned-he has had, you understand me, an overdose of opium; you know he takes opium habitually; he takes it in laudanum, he takes it in water, and most dangerous of all, he takes it solid, in lozenges. More…

How do we know if something is alive? Probably the thing that would first strike us would be the presence or absence of some kind of coordinated movement. More…