January, 2009
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Has Come To The MFDJ... January 1, 2009 Today's Shameful And Terrible Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Elephants were used as executioners of choice in India for many centuries. Hindu and Muslim rulers executed tax evaders, rebels and enemy soldiers alike "under the feet of elephants." Captain Alexander Hamilton, writing in 1727, described how the Mughal ruler Shah Jahan ordered an offending military commander to be carried "to the Elephant Garden, and there to be executed by an Elephant, which is reckoned to be a shameful and terrible Death." Some monarchs also adopted this form of execution for their own entertainment. Another Mughal ruler, the emperor Jahangir, is said to have ordered a huge number of criminals to be crushed for his amusement. The French traveller François Bernier, who witnessed such executions, recorded his appallment at the pleasure that the emperor derived from this cruel punishment. Nor was crushing the only method used by the Mughals' execution elephants; in the Mughal sultanate of Delhi, elephants were trained to slice prisoners to pieces "with pointed blades fitted to their tusks." Culled
from: Wikipedia |
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January 2, 2009 Today's Traumatic Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Women with vesicovaginal fistulas - a passageway from the bladder to the vagina that allows urine to leak through the vagina which is usually the result of traumatic labor - were, in the 19th century, social outcasts. No cure was available. In Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. J. Marion Sims (considered the father of American gynecology) treated three Alabamian slave women - Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy - all of whom may have been suffering from fistula problems, to develop new techniques to repair this condition. From 1845 to 1849 he experimented on them, operating on one of them 30 times (it remains unclear if this was necessary due to stitching failure, or if Sims did it deliberately). Although anesthesia had recently become available it was rarely used as yet; whatever the reason, we know he did not use it on the slave women though he did provide opiates after the surgeries (probably more to stifle their moans than to ease their pain). After the extensive experiments and difficulties, Sims finally perfected his technique and repaired the fistulas. It was only after the success of the early experiments on the slaves that Sims attempted the procedure on Caucasian women with fistulas, this time with anesthesia. Culled
from: Wikipedia *************
Sims is memorialized with a statue in Central Park (which some people
want removed - though I think that covering up the mistakes of the past
is always worse than discussing them). I think a far better solution
than removing Sims' statue would be to put up another statue in honor
of Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy, and their far greater contribution to medical
science.
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January 3, 2009 Today's Disfigured Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Hang
Mioku, now 48, had her first plastic surgery procedure when she was
28; hooked from the beginning she moved to Japan where she had further
operations - mostly to her face. Following operation after operation,
her face was eventually left enlarged and disfigured, but she would
still look at herself in the mirror and think she was beautiful. Eventually
the surgeons she visited refused to carry out any more work on her and
one suggested that her obsession could be a sign of a psychological
disorder. When she returned home to Korea the surgery meant Hang's features
had changed so much that her own parents didn't recognise her. After
realising that the girl with the grossly swollen face was indeed their
daughter her horrified parents took her to a doctor. Once again the
possibility that Hang had a mental disorder was raised and she started
treatment. However, this treatment was too expensive for her to keep
up and she soon fell back into old ways. Amazingly, she found a doctor
who was willing to give her silicone injects and, what's more, he then
gave her a syringe and silicone of her own so she could self-inject.
When her supply of silicone ran out Hang resorted to injecting cooking
oil into her face. Her face became so grotesquely large that she was
called "standing fan" by children in her neighbourhood - due
to her large face and small body. As Hang's notoriety spread she was
featured on Korean TV. Viewers seeing the report took mercy on her and
sent in enough donations to enable her to have surgery to reduce the
size of her face. During the first procedure surgeons removed 60g of
foreign substance from Hang's face and 200g from her neck. After several
other sessions her face was left greatly reduced but still scarred and
disfigured. And it would seem that even Hang can now see the damage
she has done; she now says that she would simply like her original face
back. Culled
from: Telegraph.Co.Uk ************* Be sure to check out the photos of the woman at the link above. The third photo in the slide show, showing Hang as a young attractive woman, is especially tragic. |
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January 9, 2009 Today's Eye-Popping Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In
1924, the use of cyanide gas was introduced as Nevada sought a more
humane way of executing its inmates. Gee Jon was the first person executed
by lethal gas. The state tried to pump cyanide gas into Jon's cell while
he slept. This proved impossible because the gas leaked from his cell,
so the gas chamber was constructed. Today, five states authorize lethal
gas as a method of execution, but all have lethal injection as an alternative
method. For execution by this method, the condemned person is strapped
to a chair in an airtight chamber. Below the chair rests a pail of sulfuric
acid. A long stethoscope is typically affixed to the inmate so that
a doctor outside the chamber can pronounce death. Once everyone has
left the chamber, the room is sealed. The warden then gives a signal
to the executioner who flicks a lever that releases crystals of sodium
cyanide into the pail. This causes a chemical reaction that releases
hydrogen cyanide gas. The prisoner is instructed to breathe deeply to
speed up the process. Most prisoners, however, try to hold their breath,
and some struggle. The inmate does not lose consciousness immediately.
According to former San Quenton, California, Penitentiary warden, Clifton
Duffy, "At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain, and
strangling. The eyes pop. The skin turns purple and the victim begins
to drool." Caryl Chessman, before he died in California's gas chamber
in 1960 told reporters that he would nod his head if it hurt. Witnesses
said he nodded his head for several minutes. According to Dr. Richard
Traystman of John Hopkins University School of Medicine, "The person
is unquestionably experiencing pain and extreme anxiety...The sensation
is similar to the pain felt by a person during a heart attack, where
essentially the heart is being deprived of oxygen." The inmate
dies from hypoxia, the cutting-off of oxygen to the brain. At postmortem,
an exhaust fan sucks the poison air out of the chamber, and the corpse
is sprayed with ammonia to neutralize any remaining traces of cyanide.
About a half an hour later, oderlies enter the chamber, wearing gas
masks and rubber gloves. Their training manual advises them to ruffle
the victim's hair to release any trapped cyanide gas before removing
the deceased. Culled from: DeathPenaltyInfo.Org |
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January 16, 2009 Today's Oxygen Deprived Yet Truly Morbid Fact! The most common symptom of a heart attack is, of course, chest pain: a tightness, pressure or squeezing, often described as an "elephant on my chest", which may be lasting or come and go. This is the heart muscle struggling and dying from oxygen deprivation. Pain can radiate to the jaw, throat, back, belly and arms. Other signs and symptoms include shortness of breath, nausea and cold sweats. Most victims delay before seeking assistance, waiting an average of 2 to 6 hours. Women are the worst, probably because they are more likely to experience less well-known symptoms, such as breathlessness, back or jaw pain, or nausea, says JoAnn Manson, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. Survivors say they just didn't want to make a fuss; that it felt more like indigestion, tiredness or muscle cramps than a heart attack. Then again, some victims are just in denial. Delay
costs lives. Most people who die from heart attacks do so before reaching
hospital. The actual cause of death is often heart arrhythmia - disruption
of the normal heart rhythm, in other words. Even small heart attacks
can play havoc with the electrical impulses that control heart muscle
contraction, effectively stopping it. In about 10 seconds the person
loses consciousness, and minutes later they are dead. Patients
who make it to hospital quickly fare much better; in the UK and US more
than 85 per cent of heart attack patients admitted to hospital survive
to 30 days. Hospitals can deploy defibrillators to shock the heart back
into rhythm, and clot-busting drugs and artery-clearing surgery. Culled
from: New
Scientist |
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January 19, 2009 Today's Lurching Yet Truly Morbid Fact! One
of the most bizarre experiments was performed in the 1960's, when 10
soldiers boarded an aircraft for what they believed was a routine training
mission from Fort Hunter Liggett airbase in California. After climbing
to around 5,000 feet the plane suddenly lurched to one side and began
to fall. Over the intercom, the pilot announced: "We have an emergency.
An engine has stalled and the landing gear is not functioning. I'm going
to attempt to ditch in the ocean." While the soldiers faced almost
certain death, a steward handed out insurance forms and asked the men
to complete them, explaining it was necessary for the army to be covered
if they died. Little did the soldiers know they were completely safe.
It was merely an experiment to find out how extreme stress affects cognitive
ability, the forms serving as the test. Once the final soldier had completed
his form the pilot announced: "Just kidding about that emergency
folks!" A later attempt to repeat the experiment with a new group
of unwitting volunteers was ruined by one of the previous soldiers,
who had penned a warning on a sickbag. Culled
from: The Guardian |
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January 29, 2009 Today's Crushing Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Hundreds
of children crowded into the Laurier Palace movie theatre in Montreal
on January 9, 1927, eagerly anticipating the matinee performance of
a comedy titled Get ‘Em Young. Shortly after the movie began, a
small fire broke out in the projection room, but was quickly brought
under control. The incident would have ended there had not children
seated in the gallery panicked. Rushing to get out, a few youngsters
apparently fell as they rushed down a stairway from the gallery. What
followed was a deadly chain reaction. Other children toppled onto them,
while the frightened crowd continued pushing forward. Within seconds,
the stairwell became a mass of tightly packed, screaming children hopelessly
trapped—just five steps away from the exit. When help arrived,
the children were so tightly wedged in that twenty men working together
could not separate the pile of bodies. Firemen finally resorted to chopping
holes from underneath the stairs and through an outer wall. By then,
the most of the youngsters they freed had died in the crush. Only one
of the 78 victims was over sixteen years old. Culled
from: The
Pessimist's Guide To History |
