Monday, November 25, 2013

Stuff from my other blogs

From my medical blog:

Kohl

Kohl was used in Egypt since pre dynastic times to protect the eyes from disease (presumably  trachoma, which is spread by flies. Ever see those photos of starving babies whose eyes are covered with flies? Maybe the poisonous kohl did discourage this from happening).
 

Polio in Syria
From strategyPage:

apparently the anti Polio campaign by the Taliban, which has killed half a dozen docs and health care workers in Pakistan/Afghanistan, is now spreading the disease with their jihadis
 

Garbage in Garbage out: problems with guidelines

NYTimes article about the "new" cholesterol guidelines.
Summary:
the heart attack and stroke rates have gone down, so the old data is out of date, so they calculate your risk to be too high.
and they don't know the reason behind this change.
and sometimes they calculate it wrong, assuming everything goes on a straight line, when in reality it does not.  


Flattened heads: Not just for Indians

Archeology magazine has a photo of a head flattened by using a splint.
 No, it is not an alien skull...(it's from Germany and probably from a lady associated with the Huns).

Mercury dangers

EnglishHistoricalAuthors blog asks: Was Charles II killed by poisoning (or maybe accidentally poisoned?) Like a lot of folks back then he was interested in making gold from base metals (i.e.alchemy):
 

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