The Return of the Leech

Back in the day--the 18th and early 19th century, and perhaps as far back as 1000BC--leeches were the cure all, from headaches to hemorrhoids, fever to flatulence and the common cold. Dr. Johann Friedrich Dieffenback (1792-1847), an early practitioner of plastic surgery, even successfully utilized leeches to aid in the reconstruction of the nose of Caroline Rohl, who had suffered from "degenerative scrofula". Dr. R.T Sawyer, founder of what is considered the world's first leech farm, quotes the good doctor in an article that appeared in the British Journal of Plastic Surgery:

Immediately after the transplant the tip of the nose
appeared chalk-white and started to change colour after a
few hours. Therefore, cold compressions were made and 20
leeches were applied to the surrounding area to soften the
developing inflammation, especially around the bridge of
the nose.

Today, leeches ("Hirudo medicinalis") are again being used in medicine, and are especially helpful when reattaching small multi-blood-vessel parts, like ears. In 2004, in fact, the FDA classified leeches as a medical device, the first of its kind: alive.

Live Science reports:

Leech saliva is made up of a potent cocktail of more than 30 different proteins that, among other things, helps to numb pain, reduce swelling and keep blood flowing.

In a recent paper published in the journal Pain, Dr. Andreas Michalsen and his colleagues demonstrate that a treatment of 2-3 locally applied leeches lessened pain in the knees of women suffering from osteoarthritis more effectively than a 30-day course of topical diclofenac, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug.

Let's hear it for the leech!

olaf at the book feast!

My publicist at Algonquin wrote to let me know that Olaf and I were invited to the author feast at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association's tradeshow in Portland this September. As soon as I know the exact dates I'll be going, I'll post them to the calendar. I'm excited! From the description, it sounds like I and a number of other writers are invited to answer questions and talk about our work at the book sellers' dinner, table to table rather than before an entire room, which is nice.

The Lobotomist

"The Lobotomist," a documentary about Walter Freeman (master of the "ice-pick lobotomy") aired on PBS in January of this year , but I just came across it online. Wow! In addition to introducing Walter Freeman and his methods for curing mental illness, the documentary features testimonials from several patients/their descendants. The daughter of Ellen Ionesco, the first patient to receive a "transorbital lobotomy," describes Freeman: "He looked kindly... very gentle."

Jocelyn Rice writes in Discover:

By the mid-1940s, Freeman was touring the country performing dozens of ice-pick lobotomies each day. He used picks from his own kitchen and carpenter’s hammers. Sometimes, for kicks, he’d operate left-handed. Physicians who gathered to watch would throw up and pass out—but patients often got better. Freeman could turn people who were smearing feces on walls and cowering naked under furniture into calm and docile citizens.

Freeman refined the technique of Egas Moniz, who in turn, was inspired by the work of Gottlieb Burckhardt, who is mentioned in "The Siblings", one of the stories in DOCTOR OLAF VAN SCHULER'S BRAIN, which, I suppose, is why I'm writing about it here. Check out the documentary if you have a chance. It's broken into short chunks, perfect for those times when one is feeling brain dead...

First Olaf event!

I recently received news that Olaf and I will be appearing at Keplers in Menlo Park on October 30. Although this may not end up being the *first* time I read, it is the first time I'm officially scheduled to do so. Woo! I have a lot of practicing ahead.


Details:
Thursday October 30, 7:30
Keplers
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Searching for God in the Brain

In 1664, Dr. Olaf van Schuler, protagonist of the first story in the book that bears his name, sliced open the heads of pigs, goats, and cows hoping to find the seat of the immortal soul. The soul resided in the brain, he believed, though he did not know exactly where. He poked and probed; he decided upon the pituitary gland.

Today, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania continue to search for the impact of higher forces on the brain. Injecting Tibetan Buddhist monks, nuns, and Pentecostals with radioactive isotopes and then scanning their brains, Dr. Newberg, a professor of radiology and psychiatry, hopes to identify how faith is manifest in brain activity.

According to the St. Petersberg Times:

The frontal lobes got especially busy. They're the part of the brain he calls the "attention area." The meditators had clearly tapped their frontal lobes to focus on their task.

He also saw the thalamus kick in. That's a pea-sized piece of the brain atop the brain stem that, among other things, sends sensory information to the frontal cortex, where much of our heavy thinking happens. Whatever was happening in meditation, the thalamus was making it feel very real.

The surprise was elsewhere, in the parietal lobe, the part of the brain that helps us orient ourselves in relation to things around us. Newberg discovered that the nuns and Buddhists had actually shut down that part of the brain, suspending their senses of space and time. It was then that they entered the peak of their transcendent experiences — altered states of "timelessness and spacelessness."

Does this mean that religious experience is "all in your head?" Dr. Newberg comments on this in the Global Spiral:

Imagine, for instance, that you are the subject of a brain imaging study. As part of this study, you have been asked to eat a generous slice of homemade apple pie. As you enjoy the pie, the brain scans capture images of the neurological activity in the various processing areas of the brain where input from your senses is being turned into the specific neural perceptions that add up to the experience of eating the pie: olfactory areas register the delightful aroma of apples and cinnamon, visual areas perceive the sight of the golden brown crust, centers of touch perceive the complex mix of crunchy and gooey textures, and the rich, sweet, satisfying flavors are processed in the areas responsible for taste. The SPECT brain scan would show all this activity in the same way that it revealed the brain activity of the Buddhists and the nuns, as blotches of bright colors on the scanner's computer screen. In a literal sense, the experience of eating the pie is all in your mind, but that doesn't mean the pie is not real, or that it is not delicious.

Newberg's next book, How God Changes Your Brain, comes out in March.

Olaf reviewed in Publishers Weekly

This just in--the first review of DOCTOR OLAF VAN SCHULER'S BRAIN, from Publishers Weekly:

Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain
Kirsten Menger-Anderson. Algonquin, $22.95 (304p) ISBN 978-1-56512-561-2

Menger-Anderson’s vivid and original collection follows several generations of New York doctors and charts the social and political forces that shaped New York City from the 17th century to today. Dr. Olaf van Schuler emigrates from Holland to New Amsterdam in 1664 and continues his study of animal brains. After he has a child by Adalind Steenwycks, each subsequent generation spins out in its own story, concluding with Dr. Elizabeth Steenwycks, the medical researcher daughter of Dr. Stuart Steenwycks, a plastic surgeon dying of a rare and fatal brain malady. Each generation applies the then current medical wisdom to tasks as varied as explaining a death by spontaneous combustion, resuscitating a boy’s corpse and using phrenology to predict human behavior. In the early 1970s, Americans’ obsession with their body image arises in the woeful tale of Sheila Talbot, 21, whose leaky breast implants hark back to the less-than-helpful medicine practiced in previous generations. The reader can follow how far medicine has advanced, but, surprisingly, note how human suffering and misery hasn’t come such a long way. (Oct.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Spontaneous combustion... can it happen to you?

In "The Burning," one of the stories in DOCTOR OLAF VAN SCHULER'S BRAIN, spontaneous combustion is used as a legal defense against murder. The story is set in the early part of the 18th century, a time when doctors diagnosed illness in terms of the humors, and medical implements were not sterilized before surgery, or at any other time for that matter. How quaint to believe that a human could combust spontaneously, some say. How long ago that was.

Yesterday, the Denver News reported a case of spontaneous combustion. In this case, a boy was badly burned, though not consumed, by a 2-foot-deep layer of coal dust heated by sunshine until it reached an explosive state.

Current thought on the cause of spontaneous combustion varies, but the most popular belief is likely the "wick effect", in which "the clothing of the victim soaks up melted human fat and acts like the wick of a candle," according to wikipedia. The wikipedia article also tells the fascinating story of the BBC's attempt to "prove" the viability of this hypothesis.

In August 1998, using a dead pig wrapped in a blanket and placed in a mocked-up room, the BBC set out to prove the wick effect theory in its science television show QED, episode entitled "The Burning Question".

A small amount of petrol was poured on the blanket as an accelerant. After igniting the petrol, the researchers left it to burn by itself. The temperature of the fire was regularly recorded at only around 800 °C (1472 °F).

As the fire burned through the pig's skin, the fire melted the pig's subcutaneous fats, which flowed onto the blanket. Bone marrow, which also contains a high amount of fat, contributed to the burning.

Sadly, the experimental results were questioned by one of the experts brought on to the show, John E Heymer, "a former police officer and author who has written extensively on the field of spontaneous human combustion" and a frequent contributor to Fortean Times, which is where I first came across the combustion story.

Clearly, the experts continue to disagree.