If 1000 people contract a certain bacterial infection, left untreated maybe 5 develop complications or death.
If all 1000 take antibiotics, let’s say 1 develops complications from the infection and none die, but 250 don’t kill the entire infection and it later develops into a worse case because the toughest of the bacteria flourished sans competition thanks to antibiotics.
Let’s say of that 250, two people get raging infections years later and/or develop other complications from bouts of antibiotic treatment. Maybe gastrointestinal problems, etc.
Maybe 2 people die. Maybe after years and years, and different runs of antibiotics and treatments, we don’t know who was affected and how by antibiotics.
A ton of effort and fallout was put forth to save the original five complications and death, but we can’t possibly track the overall affect over large groups and vast amounts of time.
Antibiotics? I will take them to save my life, a limb… and eye, but I would rather have a longer bout of an infection if I am not at high risk… reserving the meds for life and death.
Yes, the history of Western Europe and the Americas might have been significantly different had Henry VIII not had a jousting injury that never healed over the last 10 - 12 years of his life. He was already married to Anne Boleyn, but she miscarried that day and it was downhill from there. (Not to say she wouldn’t have miscarried anyway.) While he had always been a bit of tyrant, he was increasingly tyrannical and almost irrational during that last decade. The injury put an end to his athletic life (which he’d been known for), and the constant pain and the open wound which never closed could certainly be considered a factor in his temperament and increasing decrepitude. One reason he married Katherine Parr is because she was willing to play nursemaid, and he STILL almost whacked off her head as well.
If I ever have another tooth abscess and can’t get pain pills and antibitoics, I hope I die (quickly!). I’ve never experienced a worse pain in my life.
Honey was used as a topical antibiotic a long time ago.
Before the 1940s bacteriophages were looked into as an antibiotic, but I don’t know if anything came from it. Metals like silver were also used.
Otzi the iceman died 5,300 years ago but when they found his body, he had a collection of fungi, some of which were antibiotic. So people may have been using them even then.
Don’t forget you’re also getting antibiotics in food as well. For instance they will feed a cow antibiotics and it helps the cow grow. Now you kill the cow and eat it. It’s possible for you to pass some of the antibiotics into your system.
This does you no harm, except that it may also lead to antibiotic resistance.
In Chicago last year Children’s Memorial Hospital reported 8 cases of bacterial infection that couldn’t be treated and the children died. This is very sad and often hard for the parents to understand, we think bacteria = antibiotics, but that isn’t the case.
A good example is syphilis and gonorrhea, the same antibiotcs that in 1945 could easily clear up both diseases are now ineffective against them today. Of course we have new antibiotics that can easily treat both illness so that isn’t a worry, but it makes for an interesting point
But my kids have each had maybe 5 or 6 cases of eye infections, and this seems about consistent with other friends. How can it be possible that many of these cases would lead to blindness? That would be a huge number of blind people!
And what about yeast infections? It may not be bacterial, but most women get many of these during a lifetime, so they mostly heal if left alone?
Pretty much. Doctors can give you prescription stuff if they don’t clear up but usually they just do. Even if they don’t heal they wouldn’t be life threatening. They’d be (HELLA) uncomfortable but I don’t think there’s anything dangerous about a yeast infection.
Well, there are eye infections, and then there are eye infections. Conjunctivitis can be viral, bacterial, or caused by allergies or other irritation. Typically it will resolve on its own. My husband had a bout of keratitis that blew up overnight, and the doctor saw that damage was already occurring to the cornea. Some severe cases can scar the cornea, which will impair vision.
Yeast infections would be utterly miserable to live with (much less have sex with!) but you would live.
If it’s anything like toothaches I’ve had, they may well have been suicides.
Back in college, we were shown the skull of some human ancestor who had massive tooth decay well into the jaw, and we were told that it could have been what did him in.
Do you know how hot it needs to be to kill bacteria? I suspect it’s about the same temperature as you need to cook flesh. Meat has to be cooked to at least 160 F or 165 F to kill E Coli. Meduim-rare beef is 130-135 F.
I thought whether you were the richest person in the world or a pennyless peasant, that the “state of the art” treatment was pretty much the same. Keep the patient clean, warm, and comfortable, then wait for them to get better or die.
The treatment of choice for syphilis remains penicillin.
CDC estimates put the proportion of penicillin susceptible gonorrhea at about 90%. Penicillin is not the drug of choice (even outside of adapting resistance to medications, there may be other reasons other antibiotics are preferable), but its hardly accurate to refer to them as “ineffective.”
Depending on when you went to college, that probably was Turkana Boy, an example of Homo Erectus.
Applying heat is actually an accepted medical practice. Why do you get a fever when you have an infection? In part it’s your body’s defense system raising your temperature to try to kill the infectious agent.
The former part of your statement is factually incorrect in any reasonable reading and the later part is debatable.
As your own citations very clearly explain, the studies cited deal with applying heat prior to surgery to prevent hypothermia and maintain circulation to the tissues. It has absolutely nothing to do with treating existing wound infections with heat; doing so is a great way to cause a burn injury which would necessitate another operation to debride necrotic tissue. To put it another way, the goal of these studies was to demonstrate the value of maintaining circulation, not provide heat which is directly toxic to microorganisms. It’s like claiming the fact that the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN runs their heating system in the dead of winter so that their hospitals aren’t 10 below or provides blankets to their patients proves that heat is an effective way to deal with surgical site infections-nonsense.
The later part of your statement is (pardon the pun) a hotly debated subject. The concept of inducing hyperthermia above the body’s set-point will be beneficial for the treatment of an infection is well outside the realm of widely accepted clinical practices.
Which time period are you talking about? Before or after it was discovered that illnesses don’t get transmitted by the “evil eye”? When it was fashionable to be fat, or when it was fashionable to have consumption?