Thursday, January 24, 2013

Still reading the biography of Louisa May Alcott

It's so sad to read about the hurt done to her body by her wretched diet while growing up--bread, apples, and sometime oatmeal were the family meals for weeks on end.  And futher damage done by the physician who gave her mercury (calomel) for a typhoid remedy.  (fyi, it doesn't work and mercury is poison).  And who knows what else misguided behaviors, common for the times.

Will the people of our future look back on us and feel sorry for the people who die of cancer, dementia, and diabetes, thinking, "Those poor, misguided people!  All they needed was gene therapy, elimination of such-and-such from the diet, and fresh, wholesome foods."

If only I could live to see the day.

Later...and later in the book.  Several modern-day doctors reviewed the records.  They don't think that the blue pills (mercury-based) given to her in the Civil War hospital caused her later-in-life illnesses.  Based on her symptoms and paintings from the time, they think it was lupus.  There's still no cure for lupus.

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