Some Thoughts on Medical Ethics

A few quotes from Hippocrates of Kos:

Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.
Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.
Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.
Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

These principles from ca. 400 BC Greece seem to The Git timeless and you might be tempted to think would be central to any modern system of medicine. Sadly, the nurses and physicians at the Royal Hobart Hospital Habattoire are not the only medical professionals ignoring them. Witness the following quote after defending keto diets as a promoting health in his experience. That is The Git only “needs” insulin when in hospital consuming a “scientific” diet. Following his recent surgery the food-like substance he was forced to eat consisted of 0% fat, 3% protein and 23% carbohydrate (mostly sugar).

Continuing to be clueless i see, i suppose for a guy who preaches pseudoscience, youtube videos with random wackos are to be expected. Again, you have 0 peer reviewed research to support anything you say. Plant based/vegan diets have been researched for the last 70 years or so, the scientific consesus of thousands of professionals of all areas is based on thousands of studies. You providing links to one or two random insignificant people few have ever heard of makes you an insect among giants. Come back when you’ve had discussions with various plant based physicians and have been introduced with their lifetime of research. P.S The likes of American DIabetes Association, Heart Association and Cancer society promote foods that cause the diseases they seek to prevent. Invalid sources. You don’t rely on those at all.

The Git had actually noted that the American Diabetes Association guidelines had changed in recent time and that he followed CSIRO’s dietary guidelines that are no longer the tired old food pyramid of yore. The food pyramid that this “expert” was advocating recommended 25% cereal grains in one’s diet. The new dietary guidelines recommend 50% fresh vegetables, 25% proteins (fish, meat, cheese, eggs etc) and 25% low GI carbohydrates (beans, lentils, chickpeas etc. For health maintenance it’s sufficient to eyeball these ingredients on the plate. There’s no need for tedious measurements as in so many difficult to follow diets if you just eat to sufficiency. Unlike a diet weighted heavily in favour of high GI carbs, such a diet is far more filling with less calories consumed.

Here’s Duke Clinical Research Institute’s take on the issue. It’s highly recommended that you view this video about the first class research this highly respected group of “random wackos” have undertaken. Not merely reduction in weight but also insulin control for Type 2 diabetics like The Git. For what it’s worth, Eric Westman, MD, MHS Director, Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic and William Yancy, MD, MHS Director, Duke University Diet and Fitness Center, Associate Professor of Medicine Research Associate, Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care VAMC have each published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in medical journals. How many “random wackos” with a publishing record like that do you know?

Scammed by eBay, PayPal and Igor65-23-03

This episode in the Git’s long and interesting life has its beginning almost fifty years ago when he was all of 21 years of age. He’d parted company with his wife some months previously when she’d started shagging the Git’s friends to demonstrate her solidarity with the then shiny new feminist movement. We’d both read Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch and Susan (a Jewess from London) had decided that equality was for women, but not mere males such as the Git.

Rather than drowning his sorrows in booze/drugs, the Git built his first ever hi-fidelity music system. The speakers and amplifier were home built. The turntable/tonearm a humble Goldring rimdrive affair mounted on a homemade plinth. The Git’s rather modest intake of drugs was an enhancement to listening to music rather than getting shit-faced.

One evening, a friend called The Grievable knocked on the Git’s door. He was as drunk as ten men and crying piteously. He confessed he’d been shagging the Git’s ex-wife for several weeks, unaware that she’d been married to his friend. The Git assured him it was of little or no consequence. The marriage had failed many months before, but The Grievable was inconsolable. He insisted that he must make amends. He was far wealthier than The Git and offered him a genuine high-fidelity tone arm and phono cartridge for a ridiculously low sum. Despite being relatively poor due to his habituation to record purchases, the transaction was made and The Git assembled a really first class record player.

The Git listening to Frank Zappa circa 1972. The turntable in the photo was lent by Burnie Hi-Fi while the Connoisseur turntable that was paired with the Shure SME was being ordered. The cassette deck to the right of the turntable was a Maruni, one of the earliest high-fidelity compact cassette decks on the Australian market.

The tone arm was a Shure SME though longer than the standard model as it had been part of the ABC radio broadcast studio system and had been used to play 16 inch pressings. The phono cartridge was a Decca ffss Mark III that still ranks in the top 5% or less of vinyl transcription devices. While the Shure V15 series were more popular (due to their lower tracking weight), the Decca ffss was better at revealing the fine detail in well-made recordings. A big downside to the Decca (and many of its rivals) was the matter of replacing a worn stylus. This wasn’t something the user could do and requires considerable expertise. The slightly higher tracking weight of the Decca probably reduced record wear rather contradicting Shure’s claim of the V15’s lowest tracking weight reducing it.

Around the time the stylus on The Git’s Decca ffss became worn-out, four channel records were becoming available. There were two sorts of quadraphonic recordings: matrix and discrete. Discrete quad required a phono cartridge capable of reproducing frequencies above the 20kHz limit of audible sound and so instead of having the Decca retipped, he purchased a Grace F8f (the f was the new Shibata stylus profile) from Alex Encel in Melbourne. The Decca went into a sort of limbo until the mid 1990s. Experiments with borrowed equipment demonstrated that quadraphonic was a bit of a wash. The test records the Git purchased included Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves, Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe and several “kraut rock” recordings from Germany: Popol Vuh, AshRa Temple, Neu! and Amon Düül if memory serves.

Oh What a Lucky Man…

A couple of months ago, the Git began experiencing intense stomach pains. His GP had warned that in such an event he was to immediately call for an ambulance. Despite the lateness of the hour and it being a Saturday evening he did so. In the small hours of Sunday he was delivered up to the second worst hospital in Australia. Less than eight hours later he was wheeled into a surgical theatre and awoke with a 600 mm shorter small bowel. Another close encounter with Old Daddy Death!

There are worse things than being dead and the nurses in the ICU set about proving that. For close on two days several attempts were made by various nurses to insert a canula into the Git’s left hand with no great success. More of the drugs in the bag soaked into the pillow under his arm than went into his veins! Each attempt was accompanied by intense excruciating pain and he began to beg the nurses to kill him rather than continue the torture!

The hand and wrist are very swollen presumably a response to the many failed attempts to get a working canula. As he nears his 70th birthday the Git has little in the way of subcutaneous fat. The swelling was far worse at the end of the second day, but my camera shook too badly to make a clear picture!

Then an ex-army nurse called Steve asked if he could attempt to insert a canula. After much persuasion, the Git assented and Steve spent perhaps ten minutes gently palpating the Git’s forearm before announcing the standard: “Small scratch.” And to the Git’s astonishment it was indeed a small scratch. Unfortunately, the fentanyl knocked the Git for six and he had no opportunity to either thank Steve, or discover his surname.

The Continuing Saga of the Royal Hobart Habattoir

The Git has been having a somewhat difficult time of it the last few weeks. His marriage of forty years has broken down and he has moved into town. The house he moved into had been trashed by the tenants and finding tradies to undertake the more than $AU10,000 of repairs has proved difficult. They are all flat-out, fully-booked and the carpets despite being steam-cleaned by a professional, still stink to high heaven of cat-piss and dog-piss. The earliest they can be replaced is mid-to-late January. Final repairs to the kitchen can’t occur until March. Fortunately The Git’s friend Fran effected emergency repairs to several broken drawers and doors that had been badly damaged. The glass repairers were also very prompt, though they have yet to repair the damaged sliding door to the back yard.

On Tuesday the Git had his regular six-monthly cardiac check-up. He was transported to the Wellington Clinics of the Royal Hobart Hospital Habattoir by Transport Tasmania, a service provided to crippled old farts like The Git as part of myagedcare.gov, a fine example of our taxes doing something useful for a change. The Git arrived for his appointment a few minutes early (1.15 for 1.30) and was told he’d need to tell the hospital receptionist that he needed to be available for transport back home by 3 pm. At 3 pm he still hadn’t been seen so he informed Transport Tasmania who said that he’d need to have the hospital arrange for a taxi to drive him to his home forty minutes or so away. The hospital receptionist said “no can do—not our responsibility” and while the discussion on his mobile phone was taking place, the cardiologist came out of his consulting room to hear why the all the fuss. The Git handed him the phone and said: “You sort out this difference of opinion between Transport Tasmania and the hospital admin!”

The Git was becoming somewhat light-headed from the stress of this contretemps and having been standing beyond his limit for tolerating the pain that induces in his lower back. The Git lost balance and fell to the floor where several people kindly helped him to his feet so he could sit on his walker. Nathan (the cardiologist) said that something was seriously amiss (beyond the rather obvious excess accumulation of fluid in lower legs and lungs.)

 Indeed, it was shortly discovered that The Git was suffering from seriously acute anaemia and so his recent weakness explained. The clinic had turned into admission to ERD for some major medical care (four blood transfusions over two days). An exploration of The Git’s stomach with a camera showed no signs of bleeding ulcers or other likely causes and the cause of this sudden serious loss of red blood cells remains unexplained.

The Royal’s level of “care” was pretty much on a par with previous episodes. Yesterday the nurses were “too busy” to replace full urine bottles. The strong diuretic that was intended to remove the excess fluid in legs and lungs was doing its job admirably. Nurses with more than a single brain cell have in the past brought two urine bottles so that when the filling of one was announced, they had a grace period before another was needed. On this occasion The Git’s bladder was filling to capacity before the nurses thought it “necessary” to replace the full bottle. It seems to the Git that if you’ve time to change wet bedclothes, you’ve more than enough time to convey two bottles to a patient’s bedside rather than one!

As usual the hospital diet was sending The Git’s blood sugars through the roof. On Tuesday the reading was a normal 4.5 mmol/l and that number had doubled by the following day. Instead of The Git’s usual wholemeal bread and cheese for breakfast, he was given white bread and two different jams, processed fruit and fruit juice. In other words luxury amounts of sugar. There were three teaspoons of cane sugar for tea, or “coffee”. If he’d consumed any of these sugar-rich foods one might expect those blood sugar readings would have increased even more rapidly than a mere doubling in 24 hours. Cold buttered toast makes for a boring and inadequate breakfast.

You might expect that once there was no longer a need of the drip or oxygen supplement, The Git might have been permitted a wheelchair to access the cafeteria attached to the hospital. They sell quite decent though not exciting food and real coffee, but no, that wasn’t permitted. When The Git’s mobile phone was returned to him in ERD, it had been smashed beyond repair. That meant he was cut off from a significant portion of the world. The nurses told him to use the hospital phone, but to what avail? The Git’s friends’ telephone numbers are a mystery to him and held in the memory of his phone these days. Whose are not? And since land-line phones are mainly used by telemarketers, mostly no longer a thing here in Oz. Telephone directories only list mobile numbers when requested by those willing to be bombarded by scammers! On previous occasions The Git could phone his older son or a city-dwelling friend to bring coffee and decent food from a nearby eatery.

As usual, several of The Git’s regular meds were denied him—notably those for COPD and the anti-inflammatory drug that does most of the heavy lifting in his pain-control. These days it’s naproxen, a slow release version of ibuprofen. After two days without, The Git had gout in his left great toe and if the past was to be repeated, the right great toe would follow suit two or three days later. Gout, a special sort of arthritic pain, is far and away one of the most excruciatingly painful. Even the lightest touch of a gout-inflamed joint will trigger 9 or 10 out of 10 pain assessment by a sufferer! So when a nurse kicked The Git’s gout-inflamed naked toe on Friday morning he naturally yelled out in agony. For this outburst he was roundly abused because the nurse’s kick was “accidental”. How an “accidental” kicking is supposed to negate perceived pain The Git has no idea, but to be accused of being abusive for swearing when painfully kicked is beyond the fringe of his comprehension. The Git’s amygdala knows nothing of intention. See the Wikipedia for an explanation of the hypoalgesic effect of swearing.

Of course nothing was done to ameliorate the gout-induced pain. The most obvious would have to be an ice-pack. Sports players prone to injury will be familiar with the odour of methyl salicylate (akin to aspirin): oil of wintergreen. The Git has used this to great effect on his lower back pain. Unfortunately, regular use irritated his skin by drying it excessively and it became scaly and itchy. Then there is the local anaesthetic lignocaine (lidocaine). Instead The Git was proffered almost any amount of oxycodone with the inevitable result of constipation. In January when the Git was admitted to the Royal with a blocked bowel, he was given lactulose, a rather potent laxative. When it began making its effect obvious, The Git had requested a bed pan. Around 45 minutes after the request and at least half an hour too late, a nurse arrived to find The Git had spent over 30 minutes lying in a pool of shit! If he was to relieve his constipation on this occasion, The Git was determined to do so at home if at all possible.

On Friday the doctors in charge of restoring The Git’s haemoglobin levels to normal and the reduction of fluid accumulation in his lower legs announced that he was free to return home where no doubt he would be more comfortable. The physiotherapist and another doctor disagreed vehemently and expended considerable effort to persuade him to stay until Monday. They told The Git that they believed he’s incapable of caring for himself properly whereas he believes the exact opposite. Being denied access to his regular meds, forced to soil himself in bed and eat food-like substances rather than real food, not to mention being kicked in a gout-inflamed great toe are all evidence that a substantial percentage of the nursing staff do not have The Git’s well-being as part of their agenda. There’s a rather too small a number of doctors and nurses who appear to be not just professional, but perform well above and beyond the rather low standards of their colleagues.

Among The Git’s other travails, he has a pressure sore on his right buttock caused by far too much time sitting and not enough standing. After much experimentation by his GP and pharmacist, the discomfort has been brought under control with lignocaine/prilocaine ointment (Numit). The Royal’s nurses told The Git that this “wasn’t available” at the Royal. A highly adhesive dressing was put on the sore and this rather increased his discomfort instead of decreasing it. When the dressing was removed, it took a layer of skin with it and the pain was well beyond that experienced without treatment of any kind.

The doctor hostile to The Git’s leaving the Royal put any number of largely unnecessary obstacles in his way and made much of The Git’s abusiveness. When The Git responded with examples of the nurses’ abuse that had provoked his anger, she denied any abuse by any of the nurses. Is it really a nurse’s duty to force patients to soil themselves, or refuse to provide food suitable for a diabetic to eat and deny them access to such? When The Git finally managed to exit and go to where he expected to be able catch a taxi home, he discovered that the Loony Left were protesting on the streets and that the lane of the street was closed by the police. They directed The Git around the corner to the cab stand on Liverpool Street and where he discovered the street there too was being blocked by protestors. The next nearest cab stand is two city blocks away and it was a slow and painful two hour struggle to get there. The protestors claim to be “saving the planet”, but seem totally oblivious to the needs of their fellow citizens less fortunate than themselves. Blocking vehicular access to a major hospital seems a peculiarly bloody-minded thing to do.

Almost four hours after leaving the hospital, The Git finally arrived home just in time for his new meds to be delivered by the Geeveston Pharmacy’s “Health Bug”. Contra the assurance that this would include a pack of Endone (oxycodone) there was none. Unfortunately The Git was unable to answer his phone to request his regular prescription on Wednesday. When he attempts to contact his GP on Monday he will have in all likelihood have run out. The drug that’s handed out like sweets in the hospital is especially difficult to obtain outside these days. Go figure…

Further Thoughts About Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu

In my previous post, I addressed some rather strange notions espoused by Bruce Pascoe. In my further reading of his essays I find:

Robert A Williams Jnr described this assumption in his book The American Indian in Western Legal Thought (OUP, 1990). ‘The West has sought to impose its vision of truth on non-Western people since the Middle Ages…sustained by a central idea: the West’s religion, civilisation and knowledge are superior to the religions, civilisations and knowledge of non-Western peoples. This superiority in turn is the redemptive source of the West’s presumed mandate to impose its vision of truth on non-Western peoples.’

This romantic notion is likely behind his similarly romantic notions in his reading of Australian history. Europe in the Middle Ages was a place of constant warfare between rival political and religious ideologies. For example, I recently read of the half a millennium of warfare between Anglo Saxon England and Scandinavia. Far from Christian England invading non-Christian Scandinavia, the reverse was happening. Europe itself was invaded by Mongolia in 1241, the Mongols reaching as far as Austria, Hungary, Poland and Germany. Mongolia at the time was identified with Prester John, a legendary Christian emperor though he later was believed to be from India and later gain, Ethiopia.

Travellers to China reported not on a culturally inferior empire, but one well in advance of Europe. For example, gunpowder and iron production techniques were imported from there. Aristotelian philosophy was imported from the neighbouring Muslim empire as was modern mathematical notation. Far from believing Christendom being culturally advanced, the reverse was widely believed and for good reason.

When Henry the Navigator’s explorations of the world began, it wasn’t to export anything (apart from Christianity); it was in order to take control of the source of imported goods that were hitherto controlled by the Muslims: Chinese, silk and ceramics, East Indian spices etc. This Europeans succeeded in doing by using its superior maritime gun power to take over strategic locations in the Indian Ocean and Pacific.

Another sleight of hand is Pascoe’s referring to Aboriginal fish-trapping as domestication of fish or fish farming. All freshwater species of eel breed in the sea. The main fish species in NSW are Long Finned (Anguilla reinhardtii ) and Short Finned (Anguilla australis). “They start their lives as eggs in the Coral Sea off New Caledonia and or New Guinea in deep water 300 to 3000 meters down. It’s not exactly known as eels are still a mystery to most researchers as their life cycle has not been repeated fully in the laboratory as yet.”[1] Quite how Aborigines selectively bred (domesticated) eels when the exact location of their breeding ground remains unknown is a bit of a mystery. Of course there’s an extensive literature of fish-trapping by North American Indians, though this never makes the cognitive leap from hunter/gathering to farming that Pascoe does.

This is also not to say that fish farming doesn’t occur. The domestication of carp in Asia and Europe dates back to at least the Middle Ages if not before. Eels in Australia and salmon in North America are not domestic fish species.

Giants and Pygmies

In 1982 my wife and I took up subsistence farming in the Huon Valley of Southern Tasmania. It was in many respects a hard life, but rewarding. We grew nearly all our own food and I also made beer and wine. I’m a curious bloke and began a lifelong study of food production: its history, technologies, sociology… and I began writing about my discoveries. Very early on I befriended Margo Miller, a fellow enthusiast for organic farming and gardening. I still blush internally when I recall her taking me to task for one of my published articles.

“You referenced a work you’ve never read!” Margo declared. “How do you know that?” I asked, all innocence. “Because the secondary source you used made a diametrically contradictory claim to the primary source, which you’d know if you’d actually read it!” Whoopsie! Suitably chastened, I have perhaps not as scrupulously as I’d like been much more circumspect in my sourcing ever since. I very much miss my friend Margo whose untimely death shook me to my very core.

I was thinking of this while reading Dark Emu, a remarkable work of fiction by Bruce Pascoe wherein he claims that Australia’s Aborigines weren’t the primitive nomadic hunter/gatherers the European settlers claimed, but a politically unified country of peaceful, successful agriculturalists living in permanent settlements of 3,000 dwellings or more. His “evidence” for these “numerous” settlements came from his reading of Sir Thomas Mitchell’s accounts of his various explorations of the Australian continent. Mitchell published his journals in the mid-nineteenth century and they are readily available for those curious enough to read of his explorations and depredations.

Nowhere in his journals does Mitchell appear to notice the buildings and vast fields of cultivated Themeda triandra (kangaroo grass) that Pascoe claims he came across and destroyed supposedly as British government policy at the time. As far as this latter, Mitchell’s rather bloodthirsty confrontations with the Aborigines earned him the displeasure of the governor of the day though he ordered the suppression of Mitchell’s account of his slaughtering large numbers of natives.

Pascoe also claims that the intellectual giant Jared Diamond although a mere “theorist” supports his views on Australia’s natives when Europeans first arrived. Here’s what Diamond wrote in his excellent Guns, Germs and Steel:

“Australia is the sole continent where, in modern times, all native peoples still lived without any of the hallmarks of so-called civilization — without farming, herding, metal, bows and arrows, substantial buildings, settled villages, writing, chiefdoms or states. Instead Australian Aborigines were nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, organised into bands, living in temporary shelters or huts and still dependent on stone-tools.”

….

“Compared with Native Australians, New Guineans rate as culturally “advanced”… most New Guineans … were farmers and swineherds. They lived in settled villages and were organised politically into tribes rather than as bands. All New Guineans had bows and arrows, and many used pottery.”

….

“While New Guinea… developed both animal husbandry and agriculture… Australia… developed neither.”

---

The Principle of Empiricism, or See For Yourself

The title of today’s blog is taken from a short essay by Michael Shermer in John Brockman’s book This Explains Everything. In 1981, Brock founded an organisation called the Reality Club that was later rebranded as Edge when it went online. Edge publishes essays on challenging ideas in science and This Explains Everything is a highly recommended collection of such essays. Oddly though, there’s a persistent myth, repeated throughout the collection. That myth is the fundamentally empirical nature of science and the exemplar of that is the Galilean/Copernican Revolution that was vehemently and successfully opposed by the Church for over a century.

First, we need to understand that the Ptolemaic model of the solar system was a highly successful empirical model that remained in use for 1,500 years. Claudius Ptolemy’s meticulous observations of the heavens enabled him to create astronomical models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets. The myth has it that the book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) described a vastly more accurate model of the solar system and was immediately suppressed by the Church despite being championed by the greatest scientist of his day, Galileo Galilei.

Despite the Church having expressed interest in his ideas when presented in a series of lectures at Rome by Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter in 1533, Copernicus was reluctant to publish his ideas. He finally agreed to give De revolutionibus to his close friend, Tiedemann Giese, bishop of Chełmno (Kulm), to be delivered to Rheticus for printing by the German printer Johannes Petreius at Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Germany.

The first thing to note about the computations using the Copernican system was that the results necessarily had to be identical (or nearly so) to those obtained by the Ptolemaic system. If they had been vastly different, they would have been useless because empirically incorrect! Since the results were the same, there didn’t seem to be any point to using them and indeed, the head of the Inquisition cautioned Galileo to refer to both systems as “mathematically equivalent” which of course they were. Galileo, rather foolishly refused to do so.

It’s interesting to note that both systems, the Ptolemaic and the Copernican, assume planetary orbits to be perfectly circular. In order to emulate the observed motions, both systems require the planets to also move around lesser circles in their orbits called epicycles and that the Copernican system requires more epicycles than the Ptolemaic. Thus calculations using the supposedly simpler and more elegant Copernican system are more protracted. A further argument against the Copernican system was that if it was physically true, then the brightness of Venus and Mercury should have varied as their distance from Earth varied. Neither planet varies in visible brightness and so the astronomers of the day concluded that the distance from Earth to Mercury and Venus did not vary.

Even worse for the Copernicans was Tycho Brahe’s calculation of the size of the fixed stars if Copernicus was correct. He calculated that they had to be many hundreds of times larger than the sun and refused to believe that to be the case. The Copernicans’ response to this criticism was that God’s omnipotence had created the fixed stars and He was free to make them as arbitrarily large as He pleased. The Jesuit astronomer Riccioli used telescopic observations to demonstrate that Brahe had severely underestimated the size of the fixed stars and complained about the Copernicans’ appealing to God’s omnipotence to rescue them from their dilemma.

Waiting in the wings as it were was Johanne Kepler and his heliocentric system. Using Tycho Brahe’s more accurate tables of planetary motions, Kepler had discovered that the planetary orbits while almost perfectly circular, were in fact elliptical with the sun at one focus. Ptolemy through luck had a slightly more accurate result by using common-sense observations than Copernicus had using a theoretically better point of view. Galileo owned a copy of Kepler’s book Astronomia nova, Kepler had sent him, though he refused to read it since it was “obviously incorrect”.

It amuses The Git immensely that Shermer and his pals pride themselves on their empiricism, but when it comes to bashing the Church they can see no need for it. Of course they are the product of universities, an educational institution begun by the Church a thousand years ago and yet another empirical observation they overlook.

It might be taken that I’m suggesting that all the essays in This Explains Everything are equally intellectually lazy; they’re not. The book is well-worth reading and contained some delightful surprises as well as several that showed an appalling lack of rigour.

Ashwood Books Launch

On Sunday 19th July DS Café hosted the launch of three new books by local publisher, Ashwood Books. Nearly a decade ago, the business was started by Jonathan Sturm to publish Ruth Young’s social history The Palais Theatre: A Social History of Franklin’s Town Hall 1912 – 2012 on behalf of the Franklin Palais Committee. On Sunday fifty attendees gathered to hear her husband John Young talk about his memoir Going Down Another Lane recalling in particular his and Ruth’s creation of Franklin’s Wooden Boat School and the Living Boat Trust.

John Young first left England, at 10 days old, for Sierra Leone with his missionary parents in 1934. Thus began a life of adventure, travel, and zest for new opportunities. After a childhood spent between Africa, the Yorkshire moors, and English boarding schools, he set off at 17 alone for New Zealand to be a forester and then to university, paying his way with an assortment of jobs from boatbuilder to wharfie to postman. Pursuing a career on the stage was somehow combined with completing an MA degree, as John energetically threw himself into working out where to live, what to do, and who to love. Marriage, a return to England to take a degree at Oxford, and starting a family, were followed by a move to South Australia and an academic career.

Eva Ruzicka gave an impassioned talk about women’s health as she had been asked to speak on behalf of John Young’s sister’s new book, Foiled Creative Fire. Heather Goodare resides in Scotland and is a breast cancer survivor. Her book tells the stories of women through the ages who experienced breast cancer, at times when modern medicine was not available to help: in spite of this, several of the women recovered well and went on to live productive lives. The novelist Fanny Burney was one of these, whose mastectomy was performed by Napoleon’s best surgeon; the Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell was another. In these two cases their creative fire was not foiled: they both went on to do more admirable work.

Another theme of the book is feminism: often these women were greatly talented, but they had to fight even to be able to work at their chosen occupation. Medical research on the subject of depression and anxiety followed by cancer has now caught up: it is established that there is a link. This book will be of interest to members of the general public who have experienced cancer, together with their doctors and nurses, and academics working in the field of cancer and the mind. It is unique in its approach to the subject.

It has been a busy year for Ashwood Books. Jonathan Sturm edited and typeset Paul McGowan’s memoir 99% True that went to number one in its category on Amazon within a fortnight of its launch last year. This month saw the launch of his own book This Gardening Life. Ashwood Books’ Susan Young said that like his previous highly successful Complete Organic Growing, also published in the Huon 25 years ago, it is chockablock with practical organic gardening advice. This time around Jonathan also reflects on living The Good Life in the Huon Valley and his experiences as a pioneer organic market gardener before it became fashionable. As well it looks at the science behind what used to be considered “muck and mystery” from a layman’s point of view.

Ashwood Books are sold world-wide through Amazon and the Book Depository as well as locally by the Franklin Post Office, DS Café and of course Fullers in Hobart. This Gardening Life is also available at Julie’s Nursery on the Grove Straight. You can “look inside” Ashwood Books at www.ashwoodbooks.com.

It’s been a busy year…

… for The Pompous Git. In March, he released Dr John Young’s memoir, Going Down Another Lane. On 1 July, John’s sister Heather Goodare’s Foiled Creative Fire will be publically available. Yesterday the press proof of This Gardening Life arrived from IngramSpark. In researching the many essays on science and climate change The Git penned on his old blog, he discovered the entry for when he started This Gardening Life — it was in 2002! From the same era:

Feminism is one of those words that contains an apparent self-contradiction. My free Word Web dictionary defines it as”: A doctrine that advocates equal rights for women”. Not “equal rights for people, regardless of sex, colour, marital status, age etc”. Just… women. By implication that means non-women, that is men, should not have equal rights. If it is meant to stand for “equal rights for everyone,” we already have a perfectly good word for that: “egalitarian”. So, the word feminism is either redundant, or about anything but equality, or equal rights.

The early agenda of the feminists in the 1960s and 70s was apparently a logical extension of the suffragette movement that resulted in women achieving the vote and property rights. The demands of the new movement in the early 1970s were for:

* equal pay
* equal employment opportunity
* free contraceptive services
* abortion on demand
* free 24-hour childcare

The Whitlam government in Australia, before being effectively torpedoed by the CIA, managed to introduce legislation to provide equal pay for equal work and significant moves were afoot regarding the rest. Since Australia, like the US, is a federation of states, the provision of equal pay for federal employees affected only that minority employed by the federal government. Nevertheless, the Women’s Electoral Lobby had proved itself a potent political force in a major federal election and continued to have similar effect on subsequent state elections, as well as public opinion. There were few who took South Australian, John Petch’s “lunatic fringe” label seriously. In The Git’s instance, it made him want to vote for the “lunatic fringe” on the grounds that the lunatics currently in charge were noticeably deficient by most measures!

The demand for equal pay met with considerable approval from many, if not most. Women who performed the same task as a man to the same measure of competency, logically should receive the same remuneration. The Git often made the observation at the time that if there were to be a financial reward for belonging to a particular sex, then women should be the recipients, not men. The women in his employ were more punctual, less likely to turn up to work inebriated/hungover, had fewer absences and were less inclined to leave without notice. They never achieved the same heights of performance as the best of the men, but were far more consistent from day-to-day and week-to-week. They were generally also far less demanding of my time and easier to get along with.

When poisons were good for you…

The Git doesn’t watch much television. The other night a show on ABC TV called Catalyst that’s purportedly scientific mentioned the “poison carbon dioxide. That reminded him of a magazine he used to write for many years ago, a New Zealand publication called Soil and Health. The following appeared in the December 1989 issue. It wasn’t one of my pieces being written by one Keitha Alcorn.

The following notes on a vicious cycle fuelled by lack of carbon dioxide are paraphrased from “New Scientist”, December 3,1988.

“The low level of carbon dioxide in hyperventilation triggers a wide range of physiological changes, many of which are not fully understood. It affects the activity of many cells within the body, especially those in the nervous system.

“Even a slight fall in overall levels of carbon dioxide will stimulate nerve cells, which then prime the body for action. Muscle tension is increased, sensitivity and perception heightened, the pain threshold lowered and adrenalin released into the blood — the Fight or flight’ mechanism is in action.

“But as carbon dioxide levels fall even further, cells begin to produce lactic acid to reduce alkalinity, and metabolism begins to suffer. Fatigue, exhaustion and coma may result. The initial stimulation of nerve cells brought about by hyperventilation can cause tingling sensations, numbness, anaesthesia and, in some instances, convulsions.

“The cells making up smooth muscle are also kicked into action by low levels of carbon dioxide. The effect is to constrict blood vessels, including those serving the heart and brain. The heart may begin to pound, miss a few beats, produce palpitations or angina pains. The brain may receive up to 50 per cent less oxygen than normal, leading to dizziness, faintness, flashing lights or tunnel vision as well as a feeling of unreality.

“Low levels of carbon dioxide can also cause chemical changes in the membranes of mast cells, a type of white blood cell that plays a part in the immune system. This stimulates the cells to release histamine and other chemicals, which may reinforce changes already under way, such as the constriction of the blood vessels.

“Carbon dioxide also helps to maintain the correct pH — 7.4 — within the body. But if the level of carbon dioxide falls in the blood and other body fluids, molecules of carbon dioxide diffuse out of cells to replace it. The cells then become more alkaline than normal, and may be spurred into frantic activity..

“One of the ways the body tries to correct excess alkalinity is to excrete negatively charged bicarbonate ions in the urine. These are taken from the weak carbonic acid in the blood, and their removal leaves positively charged hydrogen ions in the blood, making it more acid.

“But this can cause other problems, because the kidneys have to ensure the ionic balance of the urine they excrete. They do this by excreting positively charged metal ions along with the bicarbonate. According to Len McEwen, these are mainly magnesium ions from inside cells, where two-thirds of the body’s magnesium is held. Cells, however, need to maintain their proper ionic balance too, and if they are short on magnesium they may pull in or manufacture positive hydrogen ions instead.

“This is where the problem arises, because cells judge acidity by the presence or absence of hydrogen. If there is excessive hydrogen inside the membrane they will see this as excess acidity, even though the outside is too alkaline. These cells will therefore push the body to hyperventilate even more to raise their alkalinity.

“In this way, low levels of magnesium combined with hyperventilation may create a feedback loop that perpetuates the situation indefinitely. McEwen reports that he has found low levels of magnesium within cells in all his patients who hyperventilate, and claims that he can cure some of them just by giving magnesium supplements”.

Hyperventilation may cause the following: low C0₂ can produce panic attacks; agoraphobia -fear of being alone; angina; allergic reactions; gastric symptoms; hysteria; muscle spasm; coma; altitude sickness caused by low levels of C0₂ because of panting breading caused by thin air at high altitudes; numbness of limbs, anaesthetic effect – lowers the pain threshold (cannot feel pain)

Uncontrollable hyperventilation is a different matter and can be life threatening; can effect cardiovascular symptoms causing palpitations, missing heart beats, chest pain and Raynards disease; deadening of fingers and toes; can destabilise the central nervous system and cause dizziness and disturbance of vision and tingling sensation or numbness; effects on the gut include wind, pain, diarrhoea and constipation; muscle pains, tremors and spasms of the limbs, fatigue, exhaustion and general weakness and sleep disturbances; tension and anxiety, panic attacks.

So, remember the first breathing exercise and practise it. If you find yourself hyperventilating, try to breathe deeply and slowly, which is difficult if you have angina.

Hyperventilating can cause: constriction of blood vessels; production of large amounts of adrenalin; increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system; increases ability of blood to clot; destabilises the rhythm of the heart (a heart attack needs hyperventilation and primed body chemistry).

Asthmatics cannot breathe deeply and compensate by faster breathing People with allergies, especially wheat, tend to hyperventilate Tight jeans also cause thoracic breathing

There are many, many variations of breathing techniques but these simple ones appeal to a lot of people in distress.

Of course it’s not only humans that are “poisoned” by CO_2.