Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies #21 (Dell, 1943)

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.

This cover, however, takes to a new ridiculous extreme. Exactly how many tubes and wires does John Lynch need?

cover from Team 7 #2, art by Aron Wiesenfeld

There are days when a gorilla practicing medicine makes as much sense as anything else.

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

Tags: comics psa bike tour de france jack schiff bernard baily

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

Tags: comics medicine nosebleed team 7 chuck dixon

from Adventure Comics #191 (August 1953)

Just look how far we’ve come with regards to polio in the past 56 years.

Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom #3 by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Phil Noto

Another example of the straddle-the-chest style of CPR seen in comics — definitely not the recommended position in real life.

You’ll notice that Supergirl is giving rescue breaths. As I mentioned yesterday, rescue breathing is no longer recommended for most CPR situations, but this is a near drowning scenario — one of the instances when rescue breathing is still recommended.
But how can she give rescue breaths as shown when she’s sitting on his chest?
And to really nit-pick, she needs to tilt his head back to open the airway better. And keep her arms straight when giving compressions.

On the other hand, we know that Superman has some bizarre internal anatomy, so maybe this is Kryptonian style CPR…

After last week’s brief discussion of CPR¹, I felt it would be a good time to look at CPR as practiced in a variety of comic books. First up, DV8 #3 (1996), by Warren Ellis² and Michael Lopez.

Evo and Frostbite stumble across the body of a young woman who has suffered a drug overdose. They proceed to CPR.

Evo is shown using a sit-on-top-of-the-patient style, as opposed to the correct off-to-the-side style. I don’t know why he’s chosen this stance, but it’s going to make it more difficult to move the patient and I suspect it will restrict some of the blood flow to the legs. It would also be a bad idea during a code blue because those femoral veins and arteries he’s blocking are good places get vascular access (plus it’s mighty hard to balance like that on a hospital gurney).

I have absolutely no idea what Frostbite is doing with the patient’s arms, unless he’s trying to use an older and for-good-reason forgotten resuscitation techniques. Whatever he’s doing seems to make her sleeves appear and disappear though.

Even though rescue breathing is no longer recommended for standard CPR, it was when this book was published, so it’s unusual that Evo and Frostbite are ignoring it — especially since they remarked earlier that she is suffering from respiratory arrest.

Successful resuscitation? Yes (though they then leave the scene, leaving the patient alone to suffer the other potentially fatal effects of her drug overdose. After all, the drug is still in her system.)

NOTES:
1. What I’ve read suggests CPR as we know it was developed in the late ’50s and early ’60s, but not taught to the public until the early ’70s. I’d like to think the Avengers would be ahead of the curve and trained in CPR by Iron Man #18. In 2008, it was switched to a chest compression only style.

2. Yes, Ellis is British, and they may have CPR taught slightly differently there, but DV8 takes place in the US, so I’m going to hold him accountable for the standard American Heart Association CPR.