Polite Dissent

Time to pick — briefly — on New Amsterdam again. This appears to have been the third episode, so they must have shown a second episode that I missed last week.

The first topic is Civil War medicine.
Good: Morphine was available and used as a painkiller (though many Civil War veterans ended up addicted to it)
Good: Ether was used as an anesthetic (in roughly 30% of surgeries. Chloroform was the most common, but also more dangerous than Ether)
Bad: The term “Phantom Limb” was not coined until well after the Civil War, in 1872.

In terms of the more modern medicine:
Bad: Intramuscular shots aren’t given in the antecubital fossa (the inside of the elbow). IV medication is given, well, through IVs.
Bad: The doctors have an exaggerated sense of how effective antipsychotic medications are. Patients don’t miraculously become lucid, even after a few hours.
Good: I saw nothing wrong with the doctor’s physical exam technique.
Bad: There have been some studies suggesting beta-blockers will help victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, but they need to be given shortly after the traumatic event, not years later. That being said, beta-blockers still have some important other uses that may apply here: they are good for high blood pressure, certain social anxieties (public speaking, for instance), tremors, and a racing heartbeat. Overall, I find the studies suggesting beta-blockers for PTSD not particularly compelling or convincing.