Filed under: General
And what would Independence Day be without a clip from the musical 1776? Here’s one of the songs, “But, Mr. Adams,” concerning who gets to has to write the Declaration of Independence.
More than once, I’ve pointed out when a penciler takes a little artistic license and draws extraneous IV lines, tubes, and wires in hospital scenes.
This cover, however, takes to a new ridiculous extreme. Exactly how many tubes and wires does John Lynch need?
There are days when a gorilla practicing medicine makes as much sense as anything else.
Filed under: Comics
With the 2009 Tour de France starting this weekend, I thought it would be the perfect time for this bike themed public service ad from 1960. There’s not much too it: a few take home points and then a quick quiz. Can you pass? (I missed one, but I blame the art — I thought the kid on the bike was intentionally trying to run over the pedestrians).
As usual, this PSA was written by Jack Schiff. Pencils and inks were by Bernard Baily. This PSA was found in DC comics of September 1960, including Adventure Comics #276. And for the record, the winner of the 1960 Tour de France was Gastone Nencini, the “Lion of Mugello.”
More PSAs
Uncanny X-Men #512
Matt Fraction, writer
Yanick Paquette, penciler
Beast and his team of scientists have traveled back in time to the San Francisco of 1906 looking for Nicola and Catherine Bradley. They find Catherine just in time to rescue her from an attack by goons from the Hellfire Club — immediately afterward, Catherine Bradley suffers some significant vaginal bleeding. The doctor who examines her diagnoses her with placenta previa and places her on bedrest.
Placenta previa occurs when the placenta, instead of its normal location along the side or top of the uterus, implants along the bottom of the uterus, covering up the opening to the birth canal. It is a fairly common cause of vaginal bleeding during later pregnancy, but is very, very rare in the first trimester (the first three months of pregnancy).
More common causes of first trimester bleeding include implantation bleeding, miscarriage or threatened miscarriage, or an ectopic pregnancy. Trauma can play a role as well, as can non-uterine causes of vaginal bleeding.
There is nothing a physician or mother can do to cure placenta previa. Minimizing the recurrence of bleeding from the previa is wise, so that is why bed rest is recommended. Luckily, most placenta previa resolve by themselves — as the uterus grows during pregnancy, it pulls the placenta up higher. For a placenta previa discovered during the second trimester, there is a 90% chance it will resolve by the delivery date.
Currently, a cesarean (c-section) is the preferred method in the United States for delivering the baby when there is placenta previa. If c-section is not an option — for instance, in certain more remote parts of the world, or at the turn of the 20th century — the baby can be delivered vaginally, but it is a bloody mess. While there is a risk the mother may die due to placenta previa, it is the baby who faces the greatest risk of death. Currently in the United States, the maternal mortality rate from placenta previa is 0.03% (I don’t have the data, but I suspect the risk was several orders of magnitude larger in 1906).
(And whatever happened to that Cambodian psychic, X’ing X’iang? As of the last issue of the final Team 7 mini-series, she was imprisoned within the Internal Operations building. Is she still there?)
All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts
Just look how far we’ve come with regards to polio in the past 56 years.
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