Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (51 page)

Jet set: A typical banana travels 4,000 miles before being eaten.

Though the days of such gruesome 19th century medical practices as bloodletting and blistering are over, quack medicine is still going strong. Do oxygen bars battle the effects of air pollution? Do magnetic bracelets cure arthritis pain? We can’t say for sure, but here are af few modern “treatments” that leave us wondering.

Description:
The user sticks a hollow, cone-shaped candle into their ear canal and lights it. As the candle burns, it supposedly creates a vacuum that sucks out earwax, debris and other “toxins.” Claimed benefits include improved senses of smell and taste, clearer eyesight, purified blood, and even a “strengthened brain.”

Truth:
Sure enough, when you stick the candle in your ear, light it, and let it burn down, some crud forms inside the cone. What’s it made of? Candle wax. If there was any crud in your ear to begin with, it’s still in there.

Description:
“Fresh cell therapy, also called live cell therapy or cellular therapy, involves injections of fresh embryonic animal cells taken from the organ or tissue that corresponds to the unhealthy organ or tissue in the patient.” Some reported recipients: Marlene Dietrich, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and Fidel Castro.

Truth:
If you’re having trouble with your rump, injecting cells from a rump roast isn’t going to do you any good and may do harm. According to the American Cancer Society, the therapy “has no benefit, and has caused serious side affects such as infection, immunologic reactions to the injected proteins, and death.”

Description:
This procedure takes the power of positive thinking to extremes: the “surgery” is performed by a healer, using psychic powers alone.

Truth:
It’s pure sleight of hand. The most skilled “psychic surgeons” go as far as to use a false fingertip filled with artificial blood so that
when they draw the finger across your skin it leaves a red, “bloody” line that has the appearance of a surgical incision. Then they supposedly reach into your body and present you with what they claim are “diseased organs” or other body parts. What are they really? Usually chicken guts or cotton wads soaked in the fake blood. According to the American Cancer Society, “all demonstrations to date of psychic surgery have been done by various forms of trickery.”

Get moving: To lose 1 lb. of fat, you need to walk at least 35 miles (briskly).

Description:
Also called colonic irrigation, this one plays on the theory that if a treatment hurts, it must be doing some good: A rubber tube is passed into the rectum for a distance of up to
30 inches
(ouch!). Then as much as 20 gallons of warm water, coffee, herbal tea, or some other solution is gradually pumped in and out through the tube to remove “toxins.”

Truth:
“No such ‘toxins’ have ever been identified; colonic irrigation is not only therapeutically worthless, but can cause infection, injury, and even death from fatal electrolyte imbalance.”

Description:
Trepanation, also known as “drilling holes in your head,” is believed to be the oldest surgical practice in history. Archeologists have found skulls with holes drilled in them dating as far back as 5,000 B.C. Modern advocates of the procedure claim that drilling holes “relieves pressure permanently,” and in the process increases blood flow to (the brain and expands consciousness. One Englishwoman named Amanda Fielding performed the “surgery” on herself in 1970; she not only lived to tell the tale but ran for Parliament in 1978… and received 40 votes. “Although I trepanned myself in 1970, having unsuccessfully for several years looked for a doctor to do it for me, I have always been very against self-trepanation,” Fielding says now. “It is a messy business, and best done by the medical profession.”

Truth:
This form of treatment is not just dangerous, it’s also totally unnecessary. “This is nonsense,” says Dr. Ayub Ommaya, professor of neurosurgery at George Washington University.

Doctors in the 1700s prescribed ladybugs, taken internally, to cure measles.

May 18th, 1980 was a day that people living in southern Washington state will never forget
—
the day that Mount St. Helens literally blew its top. Here’s the story.

In 1774, Spanish captain Juan Josef Perez Hernandez sailed the harbors along the coast of what is now Washington State and British Columbia. Apparently he didn’t see much of interest and never bothered to stop. Four years later, English captain James Cook dropped anchor in one of those harbors, now known as Nootka Sound. Cook landed to stock up on fresh water and to trade with the natives. He took a few sea otter pelts back to the Old World, and soon otter pelts were being sold in Europe for $4,000 each, worth more than their weight in gold. Thus began the Otter Rush.

The Spanish claimed that since they had been the first to sail through the sound, the Nootka area belonged to them. The English said that since they had been first to set foot on the land, they owned the territory. The English built a fort; the Spaniards seized an English ship in retaliation. War seemed certain until England sent Ambassador Alleyne Fitzherbert, Baron St. Helens, to Spain to negotiate a treaty. In 1790, the Nootka Convention was crafted to give both countries access to the area. Several years later, Captain George Vancouver was exploring the Northwest, he saw a majestic mountain in the distance and named it after St. Helens. The native name was
Loo-wit-lat-kla,
meaning “keeper of the fire.” It was an appropriate name for a volcano.

On May 18, 1980, it exploded.

Scientists knew an explosion was imminent in April of 1980, when a bulge 320 feet high appeared on the side of the mountain, indicating that magma was pressing outward. The bulge was moving up at the sustained rate of 5 feet per day. Finally, the movement triggered an avalanche, which shook off the top of the bulge, exposing the white-hot interior to the air.

Wettest place on Earth: Tutunendo, Colombia. Average rainfall: 38.6 ft. per year.

Under normal conditions, water can’t be heated beyond the boiling point because then it turns to steam. But when it’s kept under pressure (as in a pressure cooker) it can be heated beyond the boiling point and still remain liquid. When the pressure is removed, the super-hot water flashes into steam. Because steam takes up a lot more room than water, an explosion occurs. It’s like carbon dioxide in soda: shake the bottle or can, and the gas wants to escape. Pop the top, and the release of pressure results in a mini-volcano of soda. That’s what happened to Mount St. Helens.

The blast was heard all the way to Canada. The main eruption continued for 10 minutes, followed by 9 hours of explosive ashfall. The energy released was equal to 27,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs dropped at the rate of one per second, for 9 hours. The volcano hurled 1.3 billion cubic yards of ash and rock into the air, enough to cover a piece of land a mile wide, a mile long, and as high as three Empire State Buildings.

The volcanic ash mixed with the water of surrounding rivers and lakes to form mud the consistency of wet concrete; it flowed downstream, wrecking everything in its path. An area stretching 8 miles out from the volcano and fanning to a width of 15 miles was flattened. But the damage extended much farther than that. Eleven hundred miles of Washington roads were impassable, stranding 10,000 people. Police cars were stalled, train service halted, shipping channels clogged, and power lines knocked out.

Two hundred square miles of wildlife habitat were destroyed. A million and half animals and birds lay dead, as well as half a million fish. A hundred miles of streams were wiped out entirely, and another 3,000 miles of streams were contaminated by ash. Twenty-six lakes were removed from the map. One hundred twenty-three riverside homes were washed away, and 75 cabins were wrecked. More than 1,000 people were left homeless. In all, $2.7 billion in damage was caused in a single day.

Fifty-seven people died; the only survivor in the blast area was a dog who had been on a camping trip with his family. One man who died instantly when the blast hit was found in the front seat of his car with his camera still held up in front of his face. Two young lovers in a tent were blown into a mass of fallen trees hundreds of feet away. They were found with their arms still around each other. Two other people were killed in their car as they tried to outrace the ash cloud. Most of those who died in the explosion were killed by inhaling hot, toxic volcanic gases and ash. And most had violated orders to stay away from the area.

After spending 84 days in Skylab, astronauts found that they were two inches taller.

Nearly half the state of Washington received visible ashfall. As much as 800,000 tons of it fell on the city of Yakima alone, 85 miles east of the volcano. In fact, so much ash was flushed into the Yakima sewer system that the treatment plant was shut down for fear of permanent damage. All over the region, water reservoirs were drained by communities trying to clean city streets and water rationing had to be imposed.

In Pasco, Washington, paper envelopes full of ash (mailed from residents to friends and relatives around the country) kept breaking open during processing, ruining the machinery. Someone in Seattle suggested dropping the “W” from the state’s name and calling it Ashington. The ash cloud from the blast took 17 days to go completely around the globe. One disc jockey joked, “If you were planning on visiting Washington this year, don’t bother. Washington is coming to visit you!”

Today, bluebirds are plentiful as they nest in the abundant cavities found in the mountain’s snags. Pocket gophers dig holes in the ash, tilling it. Elk, which returned to the area only a few weeks after the blast, leave droppings, which fertilize the ash. Fireweed, with roots that reach the fertile soil beneath the ash, turns entire hillsides pink with flowers. Mosses, grasses, shrubs, and trees all took root again soon after the blast. The trees now stand over 20 feet tall in some areas. Nature recovers, and the moutain is heading back to normal. Except for one thing: the majestic vista that inspired Vancouver is not quite as majestic now. Mount St. Helens is 1,200 feet lower than it was before the eruption.

March 14 is National Pi Day. Why? In mathematics
pi =
3.14

You’ve heard of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the A-Bomb.” But have you heard of Lise Meitner? Her discovery of nuclear fission opened the door to the creation of the atom bomb, much to her regret. Here’s her story.

Lise Meitner was born in 1878 in Vienna, Austria. She was very bright, but in those days it didn’t matter—education was for boys only. People thought that if the delicate female brain was subjected to too much education, the result would be mental illness and infertility. (Schooling for girls ended at age 13.) Fortunately for Meitner in the 1890s, the Viennese government began to permit women to attend high school and college, making it possible for her to pursue her passion—physics.

After graduating from the University of Vienna in 1906, Meitner went to Berlin to attend lectures by Max Planck, later winner of the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum mechanics. The existence of the atom had only recently been discovered and the study of radiation was new and exciting—and Berlin was where these sciences were being advanced most vigorously. She decided to stay.

At the University of Berlin, Meitner had to ask permission to attend classes. Planck was reluctant to allow a woman in, but begrudgingly gave his permission, saying, “It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that Nature itself has designated for woman her vocation as mother and housewife, and that under no circumstances can natural laws be ignored without grave damage.” Planck later recognized that Meitner had great talent, and she became his assistant. Eventually she was offered a position doing research… though she was not allowed to work in the same lab as the men and was instead given a makeshift workshop in the basement. Her parents supported her financially, but she wrote scientific articles to earn additional income, signing her name “L. Meitner.” (Journals would not publish work written by a woman.)

At the university, Meitner began working with another scientist, Otto Hahn. Together they made numerous discoveries about the nature of the atom and radiation. They remained scientific partners for the rest ot their lives.

If you had a million $1 bills, you’d need a box as big as a small coffin to carry them in.

When the modern Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute opened a new wing devoted to radiation research, Hahn was offered a job and Meitner accompanied him… officially listed as his “unpaid guest.” (Hahn got paid for his work; she did not.) At the institute, Meitner discovered the element
protactinium.
Though she did the majority of the work, Hahn’s name appeared as the senior author on their scientific papers. Consequently, the Association of German Chemists presented him with their highest award, the Emil Fischer Medal. Meitner received only a copy of his medal.