Maple Syrup Urine Disease

hey kids, just a friendly reminder: don’t do drugs.

“Lilian, do you remember your papa? He has been off fighting Fritz in the war. Don’t fidget, Lilian; Papa is a hero. Don’t pout girl, help me bring the tea and crumpets to - oh look now you’ve spilled everything. What? Are you crying? Don’t cry, don’t cry. Don’t cry. Papa isn’t angry, look he is just trying to smile… GIVE HIM A KISS HE IS STILL YOUR FATHER.”

R.I.P. Walter Ernest O’Neil Yeo, 1890 - 1960  

Sailor, first successful skin graft

~*~May his courage and sacrifice forever remind us not to pick at our scabs.~*~

Damn it Jim, I’m a Doktor not a clairvoyant.

There is a species of leech known as Placobdelloides jaegerskioeldi that lives only in the anus of hippopotamuses. The leech can only feed on hippo blood and the anus is the only place soft, thin and vascularized enough to for it to get at the blood. 

If you want your night ruined too you should read up on maggot therapy and fecal bacteriotherapy. One involves having maggots eating the dead flesh around your wounds while the other involves treating bowel disease by transplanting fecal material from a donor into a patient via enema. 

So many gross medical procedures out there.

I get all of my diseases from an obscure African country that you probably haven’t heard of.

#hipsterscience! #hipstermedicine!

Health concerns? Curious about science? Ask me a question! But be sure to read the disclaimer first.

The episiotomy is when they cut the vadge open during childbirth so it’s a little bit wider so the baby can come out. It’s really gross.

The procedure is mostly done in Latin America, Poland, Bulgaria, India and probably a bunch of other poor countries. It’s done to prevent soft tissue trauma which is ironic because it involves cutting open lady parts with a pair of scissors. Jesus, I just threw up in my mouth a bit. Normally I try to stay away from anything involving childbirth because it’s fucking disgusting. Nobody wants to see that. On the other hand, if you do — here’s an instructional video. Seriously don’t watch that video I actually did a puke while watching it. Honestly it reminds me of this other video I saw where a horse gets stuck in the mud and the townspeople have to pull it out, except it’s a surgery on a human being. 

I was going to link to a picture but even I’m not that cruel. Childbirth is the one part of science I clearly don’t like because it’s just so gross.

Sorry for not posting this earlier. I’ve been dodging a loan shark who seems to think I owe him a burlap sack filled with pictures of the Queen. Big misunderstanding. All cleared up now. Even got to practice some medicine with him.

Anyways, trepanation. The lost science of drilling a hole into a human being’s head (see figure 1).

Why trepanation? Back in the day, a person would get trepanned to let out the demons swimming in his brains. Not so many demons around these days. These days it’s mostly done for the fun of it, or for mood enhancement. 

Mood enhancement, you ask sceptically? Yes, mood enhancement. Some people appear much happier as drooling idiots than as workaday thugs who spend their days worrying about my financial problems. 

To perform a good trepanning operation, you’ll need:

• A vise big enough to clamp down a head
• belts to hold down the rest of him
• anesthetic — I recommend Crown Royal and a small piece of wood for the patient to bite down on. No need to get fancy if the patient might not even be able to spell “loan forgiven” in a few minutes time.
• A drill with a new, clean bit 

A lot of people say that trepanation is barbaric, but you can ignore them if they argue that usury is perfectly acceptable, especially if they want 40% interest on money lost in a high stakes card game. That’s what’s barbaric.

As for the operation itself, there are a few things you need to keep in mind. First, go easy. I know it’s fun to go digging around for memories in someone’s skull with an electric drill, but there’s a fine line between “experimental brain surgery” and “call our friend the pig farmer, we’ve got a body needs getting rid of.” Second, smoke is not your friend. It’s a sign you have to go easier and slower with the drill. Take your time, there’s no rush. Third, and most important, is to have fun. I have fun by trying to figure out which parts of the brain are used for speech. For example, take a piece of his brains out and ask if he still remembers how much you owe him and repeat the process until he answers with words like “potatoes” instead of words that are numbers.