my ancestors seeing me shrug off a diarrhea session
People in the notes confused because they’re so accustomed to running water they don’t know how close diarrhea might have otherwise come to killing them if they’ve had it even once lol it’s killed more humans than just about anything in history
We’re the granddaughters of the bowels you couldn’t irritate
Mine would be baffled that I’ve gone 5+ years with bloody diarrhea. Inflammatory Bowel Disease has probably always existed, but they didn’t have treatment.
I do want to specifically shout out Dr Thomas Latta, who is the person who gave us IV hydration, and pretty much magically cured cholera with it in his first attempt. From his diary:
I attempted to restore the blood to its natural state, by injecting copiously into the larger intestines warm water.. trusting that the power of absorption might not be altogether lost, but by these means I produced, in no case, any permanent benefit.. I at length resolved to throw the fluid immediately into the circulation. In this, having no precedent to direct me, I proceeded with much caution. The first subject of experiment was an aged female. She had apparently reached the last moments of her earthly existence, and now nothing could injure her – indeed, so entirely was she reduced, that I feared I should be unable to get my apparatus ready ere she expired. Having inserted a tube into the basilic vein, cautiously – anxiously, I watched the effects; ounce after ounce was injected, but no visible change was produced. Still persevering, I though she began to breathe less laboriously, soon the sharpened features, and sunken eye, and fallen jaw, pale and cold, bearing the manifest impress of death’s signet, began to glow with returning animation; the pulse, which had long ceased, returned to the wrist; at first small and quick, by degrees it became more and more distinct … and in the short space of half and hour, when six pints had been injected, she expressed in a firm voice that she was free from all uneasiness, actually became jocular, and fancied all she needed was a little sleep.
Diarrhea can very easily be death by dehydration, especially when you can’t consume oral fluids (Cholera causes extreme vomiting as well). Not only did we solve part of the problem with clean water, the other half was learning how to put clean water into our bodies (with salt).
Also fun fact, Thomas Latta was active in England at the same time as John Snow, the father of epidemiology, also in response to the Cholera epidemics at the time.
Throughout history, so many people have worked so hard to alleviate human suffering, misery, and death. You will never know the names of all the people who have spent their life’s passion to take care of you, someone divided from them by decades, even centuries, someone whose existence they’d never know, whose name they’d never hear. But they did it, all the same.
I think this is an important thing to keep in mind.
