There’s a famous National Lampoon cartoon from the old days that told this story.
Entertaining thread. I’m glad others decided to ignore this and go on to discuss an interesting bit of folklore.
Our mandatory sex lecture in Vietnam included a lanky black medic dude who told us that if we didn’t wear a raincoat we would end up dripping like a faucet and never allowed to go home until it cleared up. Oh, and he said the cure for syph was multiple shots in the right side of the left nut with* a square needle* and 50 ccs (hold up giant syringe here for emphasis) of penicillin each time.
Luckily, I never learned if he was right.
Trust me. If there were a disease like the OP suggests, I would know about it. There’s not.
But I see the OP ended up being Banned. Perhaps he discovered too much? And had to be hushed up? Hmm?
There is no prop wash silly, these are jet engines…
Now go up to the bridge and get me the keys for this F-4 so we can move it.
As soon as I can get the 100 feet of flightline that Petty Officer Smith wanted…
If a zombie’s dick turned black and fell off, would that even raise any eyebrows?
This bit of folklore may have its origin in an actual incident involving the adulteration of Jamaican ginger extract (“Jake”). Jake was marketed as a patent medicine in order to get around Prohibition-era restrictions on alcoholic beverages. Several batches were amended with the plasticizer TCP. TCP causes nerve damage, especially in the spinal cord, and many (estimates range from 30,000 to 50,000) Jake users suffered from some degree of paralysis or neuropathy.
The formaldehyde rumors keep popping up to this day. Thailand’s Singha beer has long been rumored to contain it, and Boon Rawd Brewery, the maker, keeps coming out to deny it. It really doesn’t contain any, but the way it usually goes is some dork drinks 30 bottles, gets sick, then figures it must be true! :smack:
I’m a vet and I remember this tale being told, along with the one about poison/glass in the Cokes the kids sold on the side of the road. Hey, it kept me out of the skivvy houses, which I believe was the purpose of the rumor.
paperbackwriter: Hard to believe, but the Petty Officer I worked for in Vietnam had one of the newbies looking for a skyhook for two weeks before somebody clued him in. He scoured every warehouse on the base and nobody told him he was on a fool’s errand.
I’ve heard the same formaldehyde rumors applied to a number of Russian beers, too, so it seems to be a widespread rumor.
Here’s an article about formaldehyde in Chinese beer.
And if you dig further, you can find the People’s Daily Online article which states:
Here’s a source that mentions the Chinese report but seems dubious about whether it applies to non-Chinese beers.
And this one is interesting: Top 10 Beer Myths. (The formaldehyde myth is #8.)
Beat you to it!
Well so you did. I blame being addled on the formaldehyde in the local beer.
The zombies got to him. You have been warned.
When I first started reading your post, I thought you were saying that were a veterinarian, and I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the connection…
Why yes, there were many cat doctors in Vietnam, because there were so many cathouses, you see.
We vets are often confused with soldiers.
That’s a joke, son. As an ex-soldier who was drafted against his will, I resented being called a soldier then and still cringe being called a vet, which implies, to some, a pro-war stance.
. . . and the five gallon bucket of relative bearing grease. Move it sailor!