Critical Medicine

To think of not washing one's hands often throughout the day can lead to profound consequences. Indeed, inadequate handwashing in this era can result in sickness or death. Human hands encounter many objects and other people, all throughout the day. Hands can be visibly or invisibly dirty. Therefore, dashing through the day, handling money, shaking hands, visiting the restroom, and handling door knobs and various other items without taking the time to wash one's hands places oneself and other people at substantial risk for transmitted diseases.

In his The Dark Side series, Andy Thompson gives us a taste of the dark sense of humor paramedics use as a coping mechanism; here he packs laugh-out-loud moments into every word as he recalls health care professionals' encounters with the weirdest of behavior, hilarious misunderstandings, and cringingly embarrassing episodes.

The 1918 to 1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic is among the most deadly events in recorded human history, having killed an estimated 50 to 100 million persons. Recent H5N1 avian influenza epizootics associated with sporadic human fatalities have heightened concern that a new influenza pandemic, one at least as lethal as that of 1918, could be developing.

Early in September, 1918, the United States was invaded by a scourge of highly infectious and fatal disease, which spread with rapidity throughout the country, eventually infecting 500 million people worldwide, or about 27 percent of the world population, killing anywhere from 17 million to as many as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history. Known as Spanish Influenza, it was pandemic in its nature. No one seemed to know much about the disease or its treatment, and medical science and public health agencies were alike unprepared to cope with it.

What can we learn from the past pandemics? Do you want to know more about the Spanish flu? The pandemic had nearly similar causes to influenza; we are now fighting because of the reality that the H1N1 epidemic triggered Spanish flu from animals. The pandemic has catastrophic effects, and the overall mortality reported is greater than SARS, HIV, Black Death, and Ebola.