With yet another hat tip to our friend JK, who has been tirelessly throwing odds and ends over the fence, here is an item that falls squarely in the “odds” category (though I suppose it involves “ends” as well).
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9 Comments
Being the curious sort (now I didn’t actually know this would be posted) and being the son of a physician (deceased – he, not me) I didn’t have anyone to turn to, so.
Might anyone have any sort of clue as to just how perhaps came this particular, “Eureka moment?”
Oh, man… that’s old shit!
Not to be the turd in the punchbowl, but I have to wonder why the heck they’re recycling this news.
Kevin
party pooper
Yikes! Scooped!
I had no idea. Sorry, Kevin.
The worst part is that I probably saw that when you wrote it, and forgot.
Kevin,
It was news to me when I saw it floating on the surface this morning. I read your post, followed the link but I remain baffled. How did the “lightbulb moment” come to pass?
JK,
Good question. People have been sticking things up their bums for millennia, so perhaps it was high time for something like this to occur. It may be that it wasn’t so much a “light bulb moment” as a dumb mistake that turned out to have fortunate consequences.
SURGEON: Dammit! Can anyone tell me why that irrigation tube is in this patient’s anus? And why it’s hooked up to a pumping mechanism containing someone else’s feces?
[long silence in the OR as everyone guiltily shuffles their feet]
OR TECH #1: I guess it… it just happened, sir.
SURGEON (shrugging): Well, no matter… let’s turn the pump on and see what transpires. This patient’s signed a stack of consent forms, anyway.
[minutes later]
OR TECH #1: Woo-hoo! The patient’s C. difficile levels are plummeting!
OR TECH #2: But wasn’t this patient in for cardiac bypass surgery?
SURGEON (jubilant): Who cares? His ass is clean as a whistle! And we’ve just invented a new procedure! Time to party!
[cue Ewok celebration music from "Return of the Jedi"; OR personnel strip naked and dance around the patient, twirling torches, firing off deer rifles, and smearing raspberry jelly on themselves... fade to black]
At least…that’s how I imagine it happened.
Kevin
Well yes. I can see how this may’ve occurred. I recently read where… nevermind.
I rather expect it was one of those “unforeseen fortuitous discoveries.”
People have been “medicating” themselves with the excretions of plants and animals (yes, that includes other humans) for a long, long time. That some of these things could actually be useful therapies should not come as a surprise. Imagine extracting pus from Smith’s festering sore and rubbing it into a small cut or abrasion on Jones’ skin. Damned if it didn’t prevent serious infection!
Well you know Bob, now that you mention it, my ex-wife began giving me shit in copious quantities in 1997. By mid ’98 I was cured of what ailed me. And the problem hasn’t returned.
So I suppose there’s some truth to what I occasionally hear, “Hey, this shit works!”
Personally, I think that it was more one of those “Urea!-I-have-found-it!” moments.
Jeffery Hodges
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