Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Laudable Pus

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

This week on Sawbones, it's the truly embarrassing story of why we spent several centuries thinking it was important for us to make wounds as pus-filled as possible. There's no nice way of saying it f...olks: This is a gross one. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Sal Bones, America to a Miss Guy at the Medicine, I'm
Starting point is 00:01:07 your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Now, Sid, you share your episode titles with me before we begin, so I have some idea what we're talking about. That's right. I got to be honest, this one, the Jamie Ants have been trouble making heads or tails of. Well, we haven't had what I would consider a really,
Starting point is 00:01:27 a really gross one in a while, right? Yeah. Do you like the gross ones? Yeah, and if you don't, this one has pus right there in the title. Yeah, there's some pus. Well, I mean, some a lot. Like that's right there in the titles. It's a lot about that.
Starting point is 00:01:46 Truth and advertising here. Just to get out ahead of it, that is what I'm gonna be. It's not a cute, not a cute nickname, or talk something less gross. No, periodulent material or pus. I'm not sure, you know what, I'm taking my own temperature to see how I feel. I don't actually get to buy weak on sobons.
Starting point is 00:02:05 I just kind of have to grip my teeth and bear it. We have a really dug down deep into infections of the skin before. Is that a pun? No. Were you being punny there? Well, because I could be superficial infections as well. Here she goes.
Starting point is 00:02:22 And as you may imagine, we've been getting infections in our skin as long as we have you know had skin. So since I mean at least since dinosaur times easy. Well there weren't humans. So agree to disagree. No that's no science show. Okay how do we know what color they were? Dinosaurs. Gotcha. Are you asking me what color? I don't just. Your honor. The case is close. We know what color dinosaurs were.
Starting point is 00:02:54 So we saw some of them. We did. We don't. Your honor. If it pleases the court, dinosaurs are green. And we know that because we saw. No, we don't. I'm sure that there are good science guesses that could be made about that But that's not science. We did see them. Yeah, Sydney. I prefer science fact And the fact is we know what color dinosaurs are because we saw them and wrote it down I remember it sometimes in class in science classes
Starting point is 00:03:22 They would ask do we have a hypothesis as to the answer? So like a guess based on information, something like a, you know, that would make sense based on known facts. And then if nobody had a hypothesis, they would say does anybody have a swag? What's a swag? It was a scientific, wild, I can't say that word on the podcast,
Starting point is 00:03:46 but, but starts with a guess. And that's the next step. That's the next step. Well, there's the thing that I do, which is one step below that. You just do make stuff up and I have to stop you because we're trying to spread the truth. So we got skin, speaking of spreading stuff,
Starting point is 00:04:03 we got skin and we get infections in it. Yes, because it is our, it's our first line of defense, right? It's the thing that gets hit first by the bugs because it's out there, out there on the front lines of our bodies, the skin. And I wanna talk about, specifically, in case you're curious, this episode is gonna address the concept
Starting point is 00:04:26 in medical history of laudable pus. See, heads are tails, no idea, laudable, like good, impressive pus. Like, applaudable. A applaudable pus. Except laudable. Got it. I like laudable, it always makes me think of people,
Starting point is 00:04:42 like, you know, when you clasp your hands together and go like, great for me, great. Like, you know, when you clasp your hands together and go like right for me, like shake them above your head. He's a jelly. Good pass. Exactly. So let's go over a couple different terms for skin infection and then get into what is laudable plus. Why did we ever think plus was laudable? And how did we get to a point where we maybe knew a little bit better?
Starting point is 00:05:07 So first of all, you may have heard the term cellulitis. Yes. It's an infection of the skin. It usually involves, it can start superficially like on the top and move deeper into the lower layers of the dermis and into the fat. There's also a similar infection called a erosipolis, which just depends on what layers of skin. Okay. And these are usually infections where there isn't necessarily pus. There might be, but most of the time it's more like hot, red, warm, swollen, tender, you know, infection looking.
Starting point is 00:05:43 Yes, right. On the other hand, there's an abscess. And an abscess is going to be full of pus by definition. It's a collection of pus. It's either in the dermis or the subcutaneous tissue to the dermis, but it is a, it's like, I usually describe it to patients. It's like a little water balloon full of pus.
Starting point is 00:06:04 Whoa, okay. In your, in your tissues. Got it. usually describe it to patients as like a little water balloon full of pus. In your tissues. Got it. It's down in there. Loving it. And you could either have like one water balloon, which we could call like a fur runcle. So that means it has one opening.
Starting point is 00:06:18 It's usually a good way to think about it. It has one sinus tract or opening to the surface up to like the air. You know, that's where the pus comes out. Sometimes I was a kid watching Disney afternoon. I would pretend that blue the bear was my fur uncle. You know, it's just so kind and it went on some of the amazing adventures. You know, it could have been me and Kit Cloud Kicker just hanging up there with my fur uncle, blue the bear. Who is your car, buncle? You could have been me and Kit Cloud Cooker just hanging up there with my for Uncle Ballu, the Baeho.
Starting point is 00:06:45 Who is your car bunkel? What? My uncle pasta. What? My uncle pasta Doug is my car bunkel. Cause he would always bring pasta for the whole family to enjoy. It's a stretch there.
Starting point is 00:07:04 A car bunkel is the same idea, except there are multiple openings. You can Google these if you are so inclined to look at pictures so that you know what we're talking about, the difference between a fur and a coat and a car bunkel. I wouldn't. But the basic idea is that instead of-
Starting point is 00:07:16 Face book will be like, Hey, I heard you like this nasty, nasty stuff. Do you want to buy a scarf? What's this on it? A whole show. Dr. Pimple Popper. Whole show about this kind of thing. People love this stuff.
Starting point is 00:07:27 I'm just saying it's out there. Anyway, so a carb uncle would, like I said, have multiple little white heads on it that could drain pus. Like a bunch of separate for uncles coalesced together to form sort of like a bunch of grapes. Come on. I'm just saying this is what they are.
Starting point is 00:07:47 You need to understand where we're coming from. They both result from the same. I've already finished my fajitas by the way. All of this results from the same thing. Bacteria gets in where it shouldn't be. And a lot of times people will, a lot of patients will tell me like, I didn't have a cut.
Starting point is 00:08:04 I don't understand how this could have happened. Like, I don't, there was no damage to my skin. I didn't have an accident. I didn't cut myself and the thing scratched me. How did this happen? And that's the thing about bacteria is they're really small. So it doesn't take... Microscopic, some might say.
Starting point is 00:08:20 Everyone should say, it doesn't take a large opening for them to get through it just the tiniest little cracked Skin or inflamed hair follicle anything and a bacteria can Slip down in there and you know set up shop and the thing is like we're covered in bacteria And that's fine. We should be it's no problem But you there's bacteria you'll want to keep on the outside and bacteria that's good on the inside and never the twain shall meet. Except they do, the twain are meeting all the time. Yes, constantly that is the human condition. So you get a crack in your skin, some staff or strap that's on your skin that should be out there, gets in there, it starts growing and it goes forth and multiplies and has a lot of little staff or strap babies.
Starting point is 00:09:06 I don't know. And then you get an infection. And that's how it happens. The most often, that's how it happens. Now when we look back to the ancient world, the biggest, there are a lot of differences as to how we would have treated these kinds of things. First of all, it should be noted, we didn't know they were infections, obviously. When we go back to ancient history,
Starting point is 00:09:29 we did not know that bacteria were causing these, right? We had no idea. We didn't know about germs yet. The germ theory of disease was many, many years from developing. So we, and there were people who, from time to time, would postulate that there was a contagion, some sort of invader that caused these things, but we didn't know that. And so the biggest difference when we had these skin infections in the ancient world
Starting point is 00:09:55 is that pus was seen as a step in the healing process. So it wasn't just like now, we would think that the infection, the the pus itself, the infection is the problem. Whereas in the ancient world, you, I don't know, it's working. Yes, pus, pus will happen. It is part of, it is a step in the process. So both, Hippocrates and Galen wrote about how you know a wound is going to produce what they described is like a thick white pus, not necessarily particularly
Starting point is 00:10:38 foul smelling, but definitely like lots and lots of thick white pus and that is part of the healing process. So when you would get a wound of some sort or if there was like an abscess or something, you would want to clean it, get rid of any obviously dead tissue. That was always part of the process. If part of the tissue looked dead and ragged and something that you couldn't recover, you got rid of it.
Starting point is 00:11:02 And then after that, the focus was just on keeping it covered. So you would usually use some like greased wool or some sort of bandage with some sort of, that the grease was like a barrier. Yeah. You know, the borscht. Yeah. No, it really was. And then you would try to keep it dry. And then you would do other things to try to help you heal things that at the time like balancing your humors, right? We had the humoral system in medicine where you had to keep your four humors in balance. And so like as if you had a big wound and it was healing, then the next steps would be okay, we've packed that with some greasy wool.
Starting point is 00:11:37 Why don't you try to eat a really healthy diet and get plenty of sleep and exercise and stay away from hot foods and only drink these cool things and don't get too much blood. Make sure you're plenty of all that kind of not too much flim and whatever. But the idea was that even back then, no matter how clean you kept the wound, it was probably going to get infected, right? Because we didn't know what was, we didn't know. So you may as well see pus as a good sign.
Starting point is 00:12:11 I guess that's an optimistic way of looking. So it was going to happen kind of a abscess is half full, kind of ideal. And if you consider, hey, that was good. Wow. Scrumble right past it. Sorry. It's okay. Sorry, I was getting excited about the next part.
Starting point is 00:12:26 Sure, yeah, I mean, why wouldn't you be? I was good though. Would you say it was a lot of bull? That was better. However, this partially was probably because we understood pretty early on that the thing to do for an abscess was open it. And if anyone has ever had an abscess out there,
Starting point is 00:12:50 or what you might call a boil, they're very commonly like colloquially called boils, you know that opening them is the key. Antibiotics are great. Nowadays we have them, that's fantastic, but until you open them, they're not gonna heal. And we knew that from hypocrite's own. We knew that in ancient times.
Starting point is 00:13:07 So anytime you would have an abscess, obviously pus was gonna be part of the healing process. You had to see the pus because you gotta open it up, drain out all the pus, allow it to keep draining and that's the only way it's ever gonna heal. And hypocrite's had a saying, Ubi pus, ebi evacua meaning where there is pus
Starting point is 00:13:31 there evacuated. Oh, that's nice. I know. So could I have that on a t-shirt? I guess. Is the reason I'm doing this topic? We'll get on it. I need that. It's it's so critical. I think it applies to a lot of different things in life. No, just for abscesses and other skin infections. But my point is that where there is pus, you need to evacuate. It's so important. I'll keep that in mind. By looking at the t-shirt that we're going to make. Please get me this t-shirt. It's in Latin, people won't know. Okay.
Starting point is 00:14:07 Except those who are in the now, and they're going to think it's really cool. Really cool. There were other spends on the same basic concept if you look to different medical traditions, same ideas, but the Egyptians were big fans of honey as well, but they did the same things with the grease wool. They usually would dip it in wine too, and then let it heal, same kinds of ideas.
Starting point is 00:14:29 You see this in Indian Ayurvedic medicine. There was a lot of focus on keeping a wound clean. There was a lot of different, and we've gone through some of this, like different methods of suturing wounds, not so much on the pus. And that's interesting because we tend to think about, when we look at this concept of laudable pus that is really going to throw us back many centuries in medicine soon in this story, you can't blame it on these other medical traditions
Starting point is 00:15:00 because in Indian medicine, they that like this wasn't, that pus was not necessarily a great thing. It happened a lot. It was accepted that it happened a lot, but that wasn't something that was associated with the concept of healing. Same thing in like traditional Chinese medicine. There was a lot of focus on clean the wound, sutured up, and then kind of like the humoral system, get all your body systems in harmony. Puss may be a natural consequence of all of this, but just like let's get through it because it's like another challenge in the healing process. But what was really interesting is that Galen got really focused on pus, on the
Starting point is 00:15:45 importance of pus. And he wrote a lot about how intrinsic it was to the healing process. Now there's a lot of debate as to whether or not these writings have been misinterpreted or had been, I should say we know better now, but Galen probably didn't think that pus had to happen as much as it was accepted as an inevitable consequence, but his writings were interpreted as that it must occur. You have to have it or you won't get better or you won't get better that put if you don't see pus, then it's not moving in the right direction.
Starting point is 00:16:22 So like packing a wound with wool that was soaked in grease and wine and all this stuff is all well and good, but like you have to have the pus. And when we move forward into like, um, Avacena and some of the like Islamic medicine traditions that followed, they agreed with this way of thinking and thought like, you know, we need to phone the galenic tradition And whatever we have to do to like get this wound clean and then make sure that pus happens is important because you write so much about Puss this must be important so Cauterizing a wound not just to stop the bleeding but to make sure that like you saw that kind of tissue damage that would eventually Arot like you would get these like really gross wounds.
Starting point is 00:17:05 Like, and other things that you could do to ensure that pus happened became very important. And that's where you see it wasn't until really the middle ages of moving forward from even that based on these writings that you see people start to use the term lottable pus and that it becomes, like, not just a passive concept, that pus is okay, it's fine,
Starting point is 00:17:32 it's gonna happen, don't worry about it, as an active concept. What can we do to get the pus cooking? What can we do to make sure that this clean, healing, dry wound that looks great gets a ton of pus. And that's... Classic us. That's when things get really nasty.
Starting point is 00:17:54 Okay, I'm, I'm braced, I'm ready. Well, I'm going to take you there, but before we do that, let's go to the building department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I you let my God for the mouth. Okay, Sid, you warned me things were about to get quote, really nasty at this point. So as I said, we get to an idea where it becomes less of a passive concept. And now it's more of an active concept.
Starting point is 00:18:25 We're going to make Puss happen. If you're taking a step back here and thinking like, why in the world would we have thought this was true? One possible theory to keep in mind so that everybody who does this doesn't seem like they've gone totally wild with their ideas. If you look at wild with their ideas. If you look at a chronic wound infection, and I will, if you think about like from a medical standpoint,
Starting point is 00:18:53 what would have been observed? If you have a wound that is slowly healing, but then get some bacteria in it, and so then pus starts happening, and especially like that thick white pus that we're thinking about This is usually an infection that's treatable through drainage through Antisapsis, I mean nowadays we have antibiotics. That's all well and good sure
Starting point is 00:19:15 But like these were infections that people even back then would probably have survived Okay, and not lost a limb These were these were the more mild types of infections. The infections that didn't cause a lot of that pus would have been like necrotizing fasciitis. The kinds of infections, like what you think about as the flesh eating bacteria, that's what everybody likes to call it, right?
Starting point is 00:19:40 The flesh eating bacteria, necrotizing fasciitis. These kinds of infections don't tend to produce a ton of that like thick white pus that we think about. They're not as perulent as like they just sort of destroy all the tissue very quickly and they kind of liquefy. And so if you're comparing that to, uh oh, this wound is like the, all the tissue has turned really black and necrotic and there's just this thin watery, very smelly substance coming
Starting point is 00:20:12 out of it. As opposed to, oh, the wound still looks the same except now it's got pus on it. That's obviously the better option. So we're talking about a confusion of causation versus correlation, right? The wounds that had pus tended to get better. So the connection was made that they needed to get pus to get better. Right. Gotcha. So this is probably where some of these concepts, like why they solidified,
Starting point is 00:20:36 why they took the writings of Galen, which we very much think now looking back at them that he was not saying, please cause pus in a wound. He was saying, well, it's better than the alternative. And by the middle ages, we started saying the, the, the, the Latin was pus bonum at lot of all, meaning lot of all pus. And it was the mainstay of wound management. So you wouldn't just clean a wound or move the dead tissue and let stuff happen. Now you had to clean the wound, get the dead tissue out of there, and then do whatever it took to make sure that it got really nasty.
Starting point is 00:21:14 And the thing is we didn't understand, we still didn't know how to form pus because we didn't know why it was forming to begin with, right? Like we just still didn't understand germs, we still didn't know how to form pus because we didn't know why it was forming to begin with, right? Like we just still didn't understand germs. We still didn't understand bacteria. We didn't know infection So we had to so we looked for other things like well when that happens to a wound It also tends to look at what we would we already identified as the signs of inflammation Reu-bore, Dolor, the swelling, redness, edema, pain, these, these, you know, these date back to ancient times, these concepts of like what inflammation looks like and when inflammation was there, pus tended to be there So if you do something that caused inflammation, maybe you could also
Starting point is 00:21:57 Ensure that the wound would become purulent and so There were a lot of different techniques introduced to like irritate a wound, to apply caustic substances to a wound. To just make it grosser and worse. Yes. So it would get inflamed and purulent. There were people who fought back against this. There was a writer, a Theodoric,
Starting point is 00:22:20 Borbognoanie, who was a very prolific writer from the late 1200s, and he read about all these ideas of laudable pus and said, I think we may be got it wrong that either Galen was wrong or we are misinterpreting Galen, but something about this seems really wack. And I think we should just clean the wound. He did believe in cotterizing it to stop the bleeding and it would, you know, if you burn the wound, it stops the wound. He did believe in cotterizing it to stop the bleeding. And it would, you know, if you burned the wound, it stops the bleeding. And then just leave it be. And everybody was like, the adorick's so stupid.
Starting point is 00:22:51 He's so dumb. He thinks it's bad. This guy right here, he thinks it's plus is bad. He's so stupid. And everybody spoke out against him. I mean, he immediately spoke out against him. And to be fair, it wasn't just this idea. It was to go against Galen. Yeah. I mean, the he-mit-least we got against him. And to be fair, it wasn't just this idea, it was to go against Galen.
Starting point is 00:23:07 Yeah. Oh, shock. I mean, how could you believe that somebody, you know, hundreds of years ago didn't know? Exactly what they were doing. Exactly what they were doing. And so there was another surgeon, Guy Dishaliak, who wrote-
Starting point is 00:23:25 I trust this guy more already, by the way. Because his name's Guy. Seems, yeah, he was relatable. Guy was like, oh my gosh, Theodore is so wrong and he's so stupid. And I'm going to write so much about how stupid he is and how right Galen was and how important Pusses and how look the more things basically more is more he was like a really like Into overaccessorizing a wound kind of guy like the more stuff we can do to this wound Glucin rhinestones on there. Yes, more is more is more the better and Please don't listen to Theodoric because he's so wrong. And if you look at how much he wrote about it
Starting point is 00:24:07 and how Guy Deschoyak became like, the guy, I mean, he was Guy the Guy. He was the guy who knew about wound healing at this point in the middle ages. Everyone read his books, everybody ignored Theodoric and everybody followed in his tradition, which said, do everything you possibly can to a wound to make it gory. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:24:27 And once the past forms, you're on the right track. So much so that Garrison and his history of medicine, which is like a giant tone about the whole history of medical history, writes that he probably set antiseptis and surgery back like six centuries because of how vocal he was about this concept. I mean, it would take it would take Lister to undo this. Six hundred years later. So this is so this is when we see wound management become instead of just like I don't know clean it out and get it dry and cross your fingers
Starting point is 00:25:06 and hope things work. That's rough. And we start seeing like, all right, put some stuff on it. You got some herbs, make a paste, make a poultice. Do you have a hot iron? Maybe some hot tar. Do you have chalk? How about some copper?
Starting point is 00:25:23 Cobwebs are huge. Keep cobwebs with you at all times so you can stuff those cobwebs in any wound that happens. Cook up some egg whites, dump those on there. Honey will of course, everybody loves honey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, honey in there. But also some vinegar and maybe some radishes. It sounds like me ordering cold stuff.
Starting point is 00:25:40 Could you have turpentine? Yeah, turpentine. Can you dump a little bit of that in there? How about some turpentine? Powdered snail shells. Mmm. Nice little bit of that in there? How about some turpentine? Powdered snail shells. Mmm. Nice little bit of crunch. Pigeon blood.
Starting point is 00:25:48 Yeah, sure. Some lizard dung. No, thank you. No, you know what I will. It's Saturday. I'll treat myself. It was really the approach to healing a wound at this point was definitely more of a nurture over nature. That the idea was that it was not going to heal itself.
Starting point is 00:26:08 Well, that's true. When does the body ever do that? Well, constantly. Right. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. I'm with you.
Starting point is 00:26:18 You may be worried there. But it really was this idea that your body cannot heal itself, which of course is not true. And so we need to do everything we possibly can to, to, you know, move this wound along so that it will indeed heal. That plaster is very popular. Like a, like a bandage. Or a bandage or like a big thick plaster cast. See, Peppa Pig is messing up because they don't bandage
Starting point is 00:26:43 plaster. So you could put a big thick plaster cast. Oh, see, Peppa Pig is messing up because they don't bandage. Plasters. So you could put a big thick plaster cast around it, which was like, it's funny because you see, read about this. This would later actually help in fixing the problem because once you put these big thick plaster casts around them, you can't touch them. But also they would create like a plaster of pus, essentially. Oh, essentially. Oh, yum! Like they would get soaked through with pus
Starting point is 00:27:07 from these separating wounds, and you'd just get like this very unpleasant leg or arm. Pultuses, of course, tinctures. Just irritated. Noxious substances were very important. Um, and in addition to things like animal, dung and herbal paste or whatever, or just, or just cut it off. I mean, that was the other option that was given.
Starting point is 00:27:33 It was like, you know what? Let's also remember we do not know what we're doing. We are making it everything up. And so maybe amputation, which isn't great. We don't have anesthesia. Oof. Yeah. It's a rough day. Right on the afternoon. Not great to rivalry rate, also on that one. This concept of doing a bunch of stuff to produce this laudable past, this important, This important, applaudable, worthy of a standing ovation pus, this persisted until the late 1800s. Oh, man.
Starting point is 00:28:13 You don't see the death nail on this concept is not really until the very early 1900s. There's a mention of it like 1916, but then it's like, it's being mentioned as like, I think we all agree that this was, this is probably wrong now, right? Right. We should have thought of this several hundred years ago. This is a bad idea.
Starting point is 00:28:38 Let this one go too long. It was really, it started with Lister with the idea of antiseptic technique and that germs cause a wound to be infected. And so if you can keep the wound clean and don't let germs in, the pus never forms, and that's better, not worse, because infection is always a bad thing in a wound. You don't want infection in a wound, whatever the material seeping from the infected wound
Starting point is 00:29:06 looks like. So, he started with putting carbolic acid in the wounds and that definitely did keep them cleaner kept infection at bay. Still anacesia though? No. With the carbolic acid? No, not necessarily no. No, huh.
Starting point is 00:29:23 So, and that's, and that was the trade-off too. Like, and we've talked about this in things like the hydrogen peroxide episode. Like, if you're gonna put caustic substances on a wound that do kill bacteria, they're also gonna damage tissue. So, there was a trade-off at one point in medical history where we started putting stuff on wounds
Starting point is 00:29:41 that probably did do a pretty good job of killing any pathogens, but also like, you know, you, your tissue, your skin, and prevented healing, which is why it's a little, we've said this before on the show, but I hear it so frequently, I think it bears mentioning, please do not continue to put those substances on wounds. I know a lot of people get excited about like, they just cut themselves like outside and it's dirty, so they want to go dump like alcohol or hydrogen peroxide on it or whatever to clean it out.
Starting point is 00:30:10 And I mean, I guess, you know, it's dirty, whatever, you're not going to do too much damage initially to the wound, but then please don't ever do that again to it. Because every time you continue to apply that substance, you're preventing healing. Good to know. Yeah, that initial time, if there are germs, yes, you've killed them. Great job. Now, stop. Go put it away. Give it to someone else if
Starting point is 00:30:30 you can't help yourself. Hand it to a friend you can trust and say, don't give this back to me until my cut heals. Please don't continue to dump it on it because it will, all it's going to do is damage the tissue at that point. It's not doing anything good for you. I think I'll see you doctor if you're worried. But anyway, so let's just introduce this idea that like what if we just don't cause an infection? Of course this was radical, but enough evidence eventually, you know, was collected that this was true.
Starting point is 00:30:59 And when we look into like the following world wars, this is really where we see like wound management. We've talked about this before on the show. This kind of wound management really takes off during, unfortunately, during major world conflicts because there's a lot of wounds created. And so a lot of improved wound management techniques are found. And they found pretty quickly that if they could, especially in like Spain and Italy, during different conflicts there, that if they could, especially in like Spain and Italy during different conflicts there, that if you could clean a wound, to breed it, wrap it up in a
Starting point is 00:31:30 plaster and keep it covered and don't let anybody touch it or mess with it. Even if it did form pus, it was better. And some of them didn't form pus. And so like overall, this was a better method of wound care because as they would say, inspection is infection. The more you like you look at it, mess with it, the more likely you are to infect it, which is true. And so like if you could try to prevent, even as we had a very vague understanding of the germ theory of disease, people were already understanding that like when you get your fingers in there, things get worse.
Starting point is 00:32:07 And so this led to the idea that, okay, well, plus is not necessary for healing, but something we would rather avoid if possible. And then antibiotics were the final end of this. It started with actually these like sulfa drugs, which we, the most popular sulfa drug you think of now is back drum you've probably heard of. Soften with oxysol, a lot of people have had this antibiotic. The first antibiotics before penicillin,
Starting point is 00:32:34 which was the first widespread systemic antibiotic, we had these like sulfa drug like powders that we could kind of sprinkle on wounds, and that was done like on the battlefield in an open wound, and that was somewhat effective, and then penicillin was the big thing. So somebody got a wound, shoot him with some penicillin right there, send him to the hospital, it didn't get infected and obviously that was way superior to any method of wound healing that involved pus and infection and so no more, no more lotable pus. Nowadays,
Starting point is 00:33:04 that is how we treat psilitis is with antibiotics and when it comes to abscesses, it's still the same idea. Antibiotics are fantastic, but you gotta drain them. You have to open them up. Get it out. Break up any calculations that are in there. Sometimes it's like one balloon, like I said,
Starting point is 00:33:23 one water balloon and then sometimes it's sort of like a bunch of grapes. You don't need to do that again. And so then you got to break up all the little nope, septations. That's it. Between all the grapes.
Starting point is 00:33:34 You're done. All the little pockets. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We've really appreciated you. Ubitus, eBee, evacuea. Thank you, the taxpayers for these. Very important. Medicines is the taxpayer, it's very important. Minnesens is the internature of our program.
Starting point is 00:33:48 Hey, thanks to Travis and Theresa McAroy for watching our children while we record this episode of Saul Bones. We really appreciate it. If you like this show and you want to hear something and a similar format, but about manners and etiquette, you should check out Schmanners.
Starting point is 00:34:02 It's their show. And if you don't listen to it and you like our show, you should check theirs out.ners. It's their show. And if you don't listen to it and you like our show, you should check theirs out. I think you dig it. Thanks to the Max Fun Network for having us as a part of their extended podcasting family. And thank you to you for listening to our program.
Starting point is 00:34:18 We hope you enjoyed yourself. If you will be so kind, you can leave us a rating or review in your podcast platform of choice, or you can just tell some friends about the show we'd sure appreciate that. But that is going to do it for us for this week's hit so until next time my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!
Starting point is 00:34:57 Audience supported.

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