Daily history

Good morning,


Quote of the day:

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."

                                   Maria Robinson

At karaoke the other night one guy got up and sang "Folsom Prison Blues" made famous by Johnny Cash. When he sang the first note a foggy image of Richard's bar and grill north of Mount Pleasant, SC came to mind. Scott and the rest of you guys that go there will understand.

The sunrise over the Gulf was spectacular this morning. There was a high overcast with a few small clouds down low. The high overcast was a salmon color and the low clouds were Wedgwood blue. It looked like a painting.

I went to breakfast with my daughter and granddaughter this morning. We went to a famous eatery here called The Coffee Cup. I got there at 7:30a and it was jam-packed way more than normal. I went inside to secure a table and there was a TV camera crew and a newspaper crew. It seems that a politician named Marko Rubio was in there campaigning. The governor of Florida, Charles Crist, has decided to not run for governor again and will run for the US Senate. Marko Rubio is running against Crist for the Senate seat. Crist is a Democrat and Rubio is a Republican. Rubio came over to our table to chit-chat and give us his business card. The newspaper photographer took several pics of him talking with us and will be in tomorrow's paper. I told him I was a tourist from South Carolina. He said that South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint has endorsed his candidacy. I get e-mails from DeMint on occasion as I assume most of you South Carolinians do also. My daughter was not pleased with having her picture taken when she had on her "yoga clothes". Rubio seemed like a personable young man but he looked to be in his middle to late 30's, 40 at the most. He is from the Miami area. The Coffee Cup is not a fancy place and I asked my daughter why he chose this place. She said that all the "movers and shakers" in the area go there for breakfast. It is nothing like Stax Omega in Greenville, SC but Omega does not have Nassau grits, tomato gravy and fried kielbasa.
I read where Greenville county is going to build a new school in the Five Forks area. They are planning to spend $1.7 million for 21 acres. I don't get it. The Five Forks area is on one of the most congested roads in this hemisphere and that being Woodruff Road. I cannot imagine school buses traveling that road at 8:00a and 4:00p. I think the Greenville county comissioners cannot see beyond the end of their noses.

A group of Bigfoot chasers have chosen to camp out in a remote area of West Virginia where several sightings of a Bigfoot has been reported. They have all the whistles and bells like a GPS locator, audio recording equipment, etc. I am not sure those campers really believe that the beast exists. Perhaps they just want an excuse to get out of town for a while. Recently I was asked if I believe in ghosts. I put that question in the same category as the Bigfoot issue. I have taken the position that if I cannot prove that they do NOT exist then logic says that I cannot rule them out. That was a very nice dance I did, wasn't it?

There will be a bonus for y'all today. Since there is near panic about the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, I have added a short biography of Hippocrates, the father of medicine.

The Assitant Attorney General of South Carolina, 66 year old Roland Corning, was caught in a cemetary with an 18 year old exotic dancer in Columbia, SC. When Corning saw the cops he sped out of the cemetary in his SUV with tires smoking. The cops just called ahead and another cruiser stopped him. The cops searched his car and found a stash of Viagra, several vibrators and other assorted sex toys. Corning said that he likes to "be prepared". Since there was no crime commited, both Corning and the dancer were released. We South Carolinians have had to deal a scandal with Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentine "soul mate". Attorney General Henry McMasters has a low tolerance for anything resembling a scandal and fired Corning forthwith. It seems we have a lot of horny politicians, perhaps it is something in the water.

Good news:

In Albania it is estimated that there are over 750,000 concrete bunkers scattered over the countryside that have been abandoned. These half-dome shaped bunkers were ordered constructed when Albania was under the heel of the paranoid Russians. There is a move afoot to turn these "concrete mushrooms" into eco-hotels, gift shops, restaurants, etc. This would turn these eyesores into a way to make money for the people of Albania. Most of the bunkers have spectacular views out of what was a gunport.

This date in history October 29

1777    After a prolonged illness, on this date John Hancock resigns as president of the Continental Congress. Hancock is famous for his large and flowing signature on the monumental Declaration of Independence that was signed on July 4, 1776. He was present in one capacity or another at nearly every important document signing in this country’s fight for independence. He was a very wealthy man and had much to lose if the rebellion had failed. After resigning he went back home to Massachusetts and started his recovery from his illness. By 1780 he had recovered enough to run for the Governor of Massachusetts which he easily won. He served for five years and then refused to run again in 1785 and went back to his home. Two years later in 1787 he ran for the Governorship again and won. He served in this capacity until his death in 1793. His tenures as Governor of Massachusetts proved this man’s great leadership and administrative skills. Not only that, he was a feisty devil and the British knew it and had a bounty on him. After signing the Declaration of Independence, Hancock said “Now the British can read it without their spectacles, their bounty be damned.” I like it.

1901    On this date in a nurse named Jane Toppan is arrested in Amherst, Massachusetts. It seems that in the recent past this woman had been responsible for the death of the entire Davis family of Boston. As with most serial killers Jane had an atrocious childhood. Her mother died when she was very young and her father, a tailor by trade, was crazy as a loon. He went to an asylum after sewing his eyelids shut. Jane bounced around several foster homes until she was finally adopted. Jane expressed a desire to become a nurse and attended a nursing school. But Jane was not interested in healing as much as she was interested in hanging around morgues an autopsy rooms. She began her reign of terror by being an in-home nurse which gave her an opportunity to do her evil things unobserved and unsupervised. She finally ended up in the Davis house in Boston to take care of the feeble Mattie Davis. Soon thereafter Mattie died, followed swiftly by Mattie’s sister Annie, Mattie’s father Alden and Mattie’s sister Mary. Mary’s husband called bullshit on this as being too much of a coincidence and demanded autopsies of all the above. The autopsies revealed that all had died of an overdose of morphine. Upon hearing that autopsies were going to be performed on the Davis family, Jane hightailed out of town but was easily captured. While she was on the run she chose to murder her sister with an overdose of morphine also. At trial she admitted to at least twenty murders but the authorities thought she was responsible for over 100. Jane was sentence to life in a mental institution. While there she was constantly bugging the nursing staff to give her some morphine and a syringe so she could kill even more. She died in 1938 and hell rejoiced to their new arrival.

1962    Bahamian actor Sidney Poitier testifies before the United States Congress about the lack of opportunity for black actors and actresses in the movie industry. Sidney was recognized as a superb actor and was indeed an Oscar winner for his performance in the movie “Lilies of the Field”. What I don’t understand is what Sidney wanted Congress to do about it. The movie industry is like any other business, its goal to make money for their investors. If I was an investor I would not give damn about the equality of the casting of roles, I would just be interested in the making of a profitable enterprise and the producers and casting directors had damn well better keep that in mind, racial issues not withstanding. Congress cannot dictate to a business enterprise such as this who they must hire or not hire. After all the success of any movie is greatly dependant on the skill of the actors, not the color of their skins. Or am I being too pragmatic?

1740    On of the greatest writers of his time is born on this date. James Boswell is born in Edinburgh, Scotland to wealthy and influential parents. The name Boswell goes deep into the history of the ancestry of Scotland. As with most parents of that era, they had already decided that James was going to be a lawyer. Well, after James grew up he decided that he wanted to be a writer instead and ran away from home and traveled Europe and met with other great writers such as Rousseau, Voltaire and a short Corsican that later became the legendary Napoleon Bonaparte. But James parents ran him down and brought his young ass back Edinburgh and began forcefully teaching him English law. That did not extinguish the flame of writing burning inside James in spite of the fact that he established a successful law practice in London. He eventually became a very successful writer of essays. He consorted with another successful writer in Samuel Johnson and they exchanges ideas regularly. James delivered his most famous and successful essay “The Life of Samuel Johnson”. This essay came in three volumes. Boswell finished writing the first two but while writing the third he decided to drink heavily and chase skanky women in the London night life. Boswell died drunk with a smile on his face before finishing the third volume. He was 53 years old.

1901    The assassin of US President William McKinley is executed in the electric chair. Leon Czolgosz went to meet his maker medium rare. Leon was in a receiving line waiting to shake the hand of President McKinley at the World’s Fair. When it came Leon’s turn, he had a handkerchief tied around his right hand hiding a small revolver. McKinley thinking that Leon was crippled reached out with his left hand and Leon pumped two rounds into McKinley’s abdomen. Leon was immediately disarmed and arrested. Of the two shot, one went all the way through and caused very little damage but the other one lodged near his liver and had to be removed surgically. It looked like McKinley was going to be OK but after a couple of days her started getting worse and soon died. It was gangrene that had set up inside his abdomen that was undetected. Leon was unrepentant to the end. His last words were “I am not sorry, he was an evil man.”

1619    English explorer and bon vivant Sir Walter Raleigh has a fateful meeting with a big guy with a big axe on the lawn of the Tower of London and goes to meet his maker in two pieces. It seems that Sir Walter had been a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and she was quite fond of him. She sent Sir Walter on several exploratory trips to the new world including the fateful settlement on Roanoke Island, North Carolina of which not one scrap was ever found after a supply ship arrived two years later. After returning to London Queen Elizabeth found out that Sir Walter had been having a liaison with a Scottish beauty named Bessy Throckmorton, one of the Queen’s Maids-of-Honor, and the Queen became enraged the threw Sir Walter and Bessy into the Tower. Sir Walter coughed up enough money to bail he and Bessy out. Sir Walter and Bessy were married and they tried their damnedest to stay out of the way of the Queen. Elizabeth died in 1603 and James I rose to power. James accused Sir Walter of opposing his becoming King shortly after the coronation but allowed him to live so he could send Sir Walter on some more expeditions. Sir Walter finally returned from an expedition of establishing a village near a gold mine in South America. James I evidently felt that Sir Walter had outlived his usefulness and recalled the supposed crime of 15 years before and had him executed. Sir Walter Raleigh was 66 years old and had spent the greatest part of his life in the service of his country. But as the saying goes “What have you done for me lately, Walt?”

Born today:

1897    Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. He said “If the day should ever come when we Nazis must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that it will shake the universe and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.” Hey Joe, what really happened was the Allies sealed off the western side of Germany and allowed the Russian army to attack unhindered from the east. The Russians were bloodthirsty for revenge because the Germans had slaughtered over 26,000,000 Russians in their attack toward Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. Then when the Russians found the German extermination camps of Dachau, Buchenwald and several others, they decided that no German air breather should live. They headed toward Berlin slaughtering everybody and everything in sight including dogs, cats and various and sundry livestock. The Russians crushed any resistance to the city of Berlin that was being defended by sub-teen boys and men in their 70’s. Yeah Joe, mankind was stupefied alright. And you being the brave son-of-a-bitch that you were, poisoned yourself, your wife and your five children. It was that kind of cruelty that stupefied mankind to this day.

Born today:

1971    US actress Wynona Ryder. She said “I feel my best when I am happy.” Wynona, shut up.

Died today:

1619    English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. He said “All men are evil and will declare themselves so if the occasion occurs.” See the above paragraph on Joseph Goebbels.


                                         Hippocrates

                                The Father of Medicine

Hippocrates of the island of Kos , Greece was born about 460BC. He was the founder of the Hippocratic School of medicine which separated medicine from other studies such as theology and philosophy and made the practice of medicine a profession. By the way, it is pronounced hip-POCK-ra-teez. His greatest contribution was what is known today as the Hippocratic Corpus which was a series of observations by him on some of his patients. It also contains the expected moral codes and good habit that a physician should abide by commonly known as the Hippocratic Oath. It is generally accepted that he did exist but anything else about his early life is considered legendary because his chroniclers wrote about his life 200 years after his death so the information had to be handed down orally meaning that it is unreliable. But there is no question that he did write the Corpus. It has been reported that he was taught medicine by his father and grandfather and was also taught other things by other Greek teachers. It is likely that he attended school at the Asklepieion on Kos . The great Greek philosopher Plato said that Hippocrates did indeed attend Asklepieion. The Asklepieion was a school building that the ruins of still are still with us. The practice of medicine in those days were exceptionally difficult due to the Greek taboo of dissections of animals, be it human or otherwise. So to deal with this there were two schools of thought. One was the Knidian School which dealt primarily with the diagnosis of a disease and there was the Koan School which was less devoted to diagnosis but focused on patient care and prognosis. Hippocrates was of the later. Diagnoses were notoriously inaccurate because the general opinion was that the cause of most diseases was an imbalance of the “humors”. The four humors were blood, dark bile, yellow bile and phlegm. For instance, if an overabundance of phlegm was diagnosed the treatment was large amounts of citrus, etc. It was not until Galen that true diagnostics made giant leaps forward. A biography on Galen will follow later. Hippocrates had two sons in Thessalus and Draco but it was his son-in-law Polybus that followed him in his medical studies and continued the teachings of Hippocrates after his death. Hippocrates can be documented to have lived to be 90 years old, but others believe he lived to be over 100. It was his teachings that demanded professionalism from his students that is the legacy he left the medical profession. He specified that physicians should always be neat, clean and well groomed. He even specified fingernail length. Here is the modern version of the Hippocratic Oath. The original version had a lot of references to the Gods.

1. To teach medicine to the sons of my teacher. This practice has all but disappeared

2. Not to teach medicine to other people. He is talking about don’t teach medicine to anyone not in medical school.

3. To practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patient and try not to harm them. What about Dr. Jack Kevorkian?

4. Never do deliberate harm to anyone in someone else’s interest. Everyone should read about the German Dr. Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz concentration camp during WWII.

5. Never try to induce an abortion. Obviously this oath has fallen by the wayside.

6. To avoid violating the morals of my community. Doctors are expected to be pillars of the community, except Dr. Hannibal Lechter.

7. To avoid doing a procedure that a specialist can do better. In the original version it makes reference to “stones”. They were talking about kidney or gall stones and that a specialist should deal with this. This is the first reference to a difference between a physician and a surgeon.

8. To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority. It is this oath that detractors of the death penalty point to when a doctor is present and assists in a legal execution.

9. To avoid sexual relationships or inappropriate entanglements with your patients and their families. This one is a no-brainer, y’all.

The next greatest physician to come along was another Greek named Galen in 129AD. A biography on this hero will follow soon.

Since the time of Hippocrates and Galen the medical profession has ebbed and flowed in its level of expertise and the good of the people. During the dark ages the good of the patient was secondary to superstition and the will of the church. Back then if a person showed mental instability or even behaved differently than what the church dictated, a doctor was not even considered because they were believed to “possessed of demons” or “witches and warlocks” and were tortured and hanged or even burned at the stake. Later on to even in the 1800’s some people’s illnesses were diagnosed as having too much or bad blood and would be bled a given amount which in most cases was very detrimental. This procedure almost gets back to the idea a bad or imbalanced “humors”, a giant leap backwards. Thankfully, we are in the age of enlightenment. We are healthier and live much longer than our ancestors but we are a hell of a lot fatter.

I am going to stop now, I feel like I am coming down with something.

                        In honor of Hippocrates I will say:

Ευχαριστίες για το άκουσμα μπορώ μετά βίας να περιμένω μέχρι το αύριο