Nope, not clicking on that link.
I read, in a book on the Reformation, that people burned at the stake suffered less than we would intuitively think, because the flames burned away the skin and the nerve endings too.
Not the ideal form of anaesthesia…
Wouldn’t they at least pass out from smoke inhalation anyway? In The Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco claimed the cause of death at stake burnings was an exploding heart. It would swell up from I think he said the heat.
I have a better idea. I’ll continue dispensing information until such time as I’ve been proven wrong. In this case I have. But based on what I thought I knew about 3rd degree burns, I was in a perfectly fine position to dispense medical advice.
I hate to quote him, but this illustrates perfectly the concept of “unknown unknowns”, as Donald Rumsfeld puts it. I didn’t know that I didn’t know enough about 3rd degree burns. What I did know was what I believed was correct. Given that, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t dispense advice.
Believing you’re right and actually being right are two different things. Are you a doctor? If not, you have no more reason to dispense medical advice than I do. And I’m the last person I would trust to make a diagnosis.
That’s the trouble with going on the internet for advice. You take the bad along with the good.
Holy shit.
Do the bacteria that would infect an untreated 3rd-degree burn wound and cause potentially life-threatening sepsis, know this?
Anti-vaxxers believe vaccines cause autism. And they believe they’re correct. So by your logic “there’s no reason why they shouldn’t dispense vaccination advice,” since they believe they’re right.
Modern survivors of full body immolation describe the pain as the worst thing imaginable. Heck, I cry like a baby when I burn my finger on the stove.
The condemned would sometimes bribe executioners to use green wood, which produced more smoke and (hopefully) would kill them via the much less excrutiating method of smoke inhalation.
You don’t need specialized knowledege to know that third degree burns are serious and require medical attention. I didn’t think it was possible not to know this.
I would guess that the “less” pain might not be very meaningful, in that if, say, your body considers 100 “pain units” to be “agonizing,” then this may mean a “reduction” of pain from 700 pain units to 400 pain units - in other words, still far above the “agony” level.
I wouldn’t take medical advice from someone who can’t deduce the correct gender of a poster named “Allison”.
It’s not too terrible but YMMV. 
How many of the people above are doctors? I know there’s a few on the SD, but I didn’t know I was wrong, so therefore the advice I gave was 100% accurate based on my information at the time. All that guy needed to say was that it was inaccurate, no need to take shots at the ability of other people to give out advice.
Does it matter? They are not the one giving advice
No. Anti-vaxxers refused to acknowledge evidence of how wrong they are. For me, its as simple as not knowing that all 3rd degree burns are open wounds. I know they are the most serious of burns, I know they generally are deadly if untreated, but in this case there exists an extra variable where common knowledge did not readily apply. 3rd degree burns should hurt a lot. That the OP said it didn’t made this an unusual situation.
I would never say to someone who has 3rd degree burns all of their body “I’m sure its nothing, don’t see a doctor”. But if someone walks out of a burning building and he’s not hurt at all, that would be new information that must be processed against the common knowledge of burns. In this case, “seeing a doctor” might take a backseat to “Holy shit, you might be Superman!”
In the case of anti-vaxxers, they readily have information available to them that proves them wrong that they refuse to believe. A couple of posts in this topic was all I needed to acknowledge I was wrong. I simply disagree that at the time, I was in a position to know that.
They should usually hurt too, right? That is also common knowledge. That the OP said it didn’t hurt meant this was not your typical burn. And remember, I posted before others came in to say it could deaden the nerves, which I hadn’t taken into account. My posts after that was merely asking for explanation to help me understand the nature of the burn
Good grief! Not knowing you’re wrong doesn’t make you any less wrong. It doesn’t even make you 0.01% accurate. If you said the sky was green and you honestly believed it, that still wouldn’t mean you were right at the time.
No, it doesn’t make me less wrong, but it makes the statement sincere and not out of purposeful stupidity or malice. I was perfectly fine admitting I’m wrong up until Post #13 by fachverwirrt who infers that only medical personnel should be dispensing medical advice. That was a stupid statement, one born of some kind of entitlement to knowledge like he’s the gatekeeper. As I explained, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so it was impossible for me to make the statement with prior knowledge that I was wrong and not make it in the first place.
Its pretty telling that on this ignorance fighting board, I’m being excoriated for admitting ignorance, when all he could have said was “3rd degree burns may not hurt because so and so, therefore a doctor’s visit should still be prudent”.
But sure, call me willfully stupid. You know who else is? The OP, because he asked for advice. The OP did not know that his injury may be a 3rd degree burn, and did not know that such an injury may not be painful.
This isn’t about what I or anyone may know about burns. I admitted I didn’t know they didn’t necessarily have to hurt. That bit of extra information made the burn unusual, so I suggested an unusual solution. That someone later came in with the correct answer doesn’t mean I was some crazy guy telling people to get hurt on purpose, I simply didn’t know burns didn’t have to hurt. If anything, the OP and I are one of today’s 10000.
If you are not a medical professional, the following are acceptable responses:
- I don’t know.
- You should probably talk to a medical professional
- Nothing
At the top of the list of things you shouldn’t say:
- Don’t go to the doctor.
Because, you see, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And unlike opinions on, say, classic movies from the 1930s, being wrong about medical things can actually hurt people.
No. If it is a seemingly small thing that is not causing immediate danger, it is perfectly acceptable to speculate on treatment.
Someone saying, “I have a splinter, how do I get it out?” doesn’t mean none of us can answer until a doctor gets here, which was your implication. That I was wrong is on me, but that you were mockingly implying that no one who could be wrong should even bother to answer is all on you. For seemingly small issues, I’m as qualified as any doper to reply. The key thing here is:
- The OP thinks he was burned
- It doesn’t hurt
- There is no seeming danger
I, and you, are 100% qualified to reply and I will stand by that
I’m glad someone else commented on this. Funny stuff.
I had third degree burns on my hand once. They required daily visits to a doctor for debriding and a special cream to put on them, before wrapping them to prevent infection. Nasty and eventually quite painful.