As much as we enjoy conjecture and extravagant speculation regarding the future and the treasures it holds it’s a shock when something from the pages of the professional speculators, aka sci-fi authors, worms its way into our disappointingly nonfictional reality. Though in all fairness, less so when it comes from Japan.
Yet the newest way in which the metropolitan Japanese surprise and confound we less progressive western dullards is a bit surprising even with the knowledge of its origins. Frenetic salarymen dissatisfied with the pink-cheeked rush the pharmaceutical melange of energy drinks has to offer can now pop in to Tenteki10 for a vein full of “vitamins and other nutritional supplements”.
Yes that’s right; if you’ve got $20 (2,000 Yen) and 10 minutes you can have a doctor stuff your veins with the mysterious “vitamins and nutritional supplements” for what they describe as a “pick-me-up”. While I’m intimately familiar with the potentially less than pleasant effects of a botched intravening (to say nothing of potential “supplement” overdoses) I can’t help but wonder when we’ll have similar set ups in the States.
Even now you can swing by your local plastic surgeon’s office for a speedy syringe full of botulism for all your muscle paralysis needs. How long until Starbucks trades baristas for nurses? And further, how long until our “supplements” are supplemented with the wares of illicit chemists and old-fashioned coffeehouse snobbery is supplanted by a caste system of stat-boost aficionados?
My hope is not long; my daily ritual of chasing down a handful of No-Doze with three or four Viente Quad-Americanos has long since stopped clearing away the borderline somnambulance of the morning.
A massive collection of beautiful, Japanese anatomical charts, among other ephemera. I love how they flow from one to the next, creating chains of imagery. The second photo shown above is only a small part of a much longer chain.
The Chinese, for all their questionable practices, have at the very least seen fit to make it easier for English speaking tourists visiting their country, a prime example of which is pictured above. How else is a female visitor supposed to know in which direction she should turn in order to have lady-bits looked at? The Chinese know that not all Westerners are of a level of intelligence or education to know what the acronym OB/GYN stands for, let alone what medical arts a gynecologist practices. With this in mind the hospital did the only thing it could in such a situation, using the diction that even the most moronic Occidental outlander would understand: obscenities. In turn it becomes crystal clear where the speculum wielders can be found.
Conversely the department of “Fetal Heart Custody” brings to mind a wing of the hospital full of labyrinthine corridors and rows of bank-teller windows manned by the dour faced, low-level minions of some Kafka-esque bureaucracy dealing in prenatal cardiovascular systems in which parents desperately run from window to window in a futile effort to fill out all the proper paperwork necessary for completing the construction of their infant; an image that may possibly be closer to the truth than I realize.
The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. The crumbling remnants of academia swing from fatalistic resignation to maddened optimism in their addressment of what could be done to fight the sickness.
The vast numbers of doctors attempting to stem the tide of infection, invariably falling victim to the malady they treat, have begun to form fanatical extermination squads whose policies are condoned by authority. A notion forms, twisting the tenets of the Hippocratic oath to say that when the oath taker is subject to the half-death of infection they are obliged to spend their lasting days attempting to destroy the source of the contagion.
The paramilitary forces formed from the infected medical practicioners find themselves deigned to mete out persecution to the sufferers they were formally treating. Equipped with the leftovers of dissolved military forces, the Doctors’ Militia are organised to burn all infected areas and sufferers; a campaign which stalks across blasted lands, mirroring the wave of infection in an addled attempt at backtracking all the way to some imaginary source.
I have always understood the passion that drives the earnest trepanation enthusiast. Ensconced in the pickling sarcophagus of my skull, my brain meats are trapped, thirsty for the sweet taste of fresh air. It’s maddening: my brain picks up an electric drill and knows it’s a trigger-pull away from the cranial equivalent of a Sunday constitutional, but it doesn’t quite dare, knowing full well that if the parietal lobe gets a breath of fresh air, the cerebellum’s going to start complaining next.
So I refrain. But over at Retrospectable, my hot imaginary neuroscientist girlfriend Shelley Batts has stripped down to her bikini and written a post pointing out this excellent history of trepanation by the Neurophilosophy guys. Heady reading. Why did cavemen trepan? To treat migraines, apparently.
In a culture of casual nudity, cheap beauty, and non-stop supermodel rollerdiscos, what can a man do to get noticed? How can he draw slitted eyes away from mirrors, and fellow sapphic sphynxes, long enough to make any sort of impression? When personality, looks, and tiger speedos just don’t cut the mustard anymore, what else is left?
Deep within the confines of western Zimbabwe can be found the Vadoma tribe, who are also called the “ostrich people”. This is because of a genetic condition called ectrodactyly, which effects one in four of the children within this population. Ectrodactyly is also known as “lobster claw syndrome” and can effect both the hands and feet. In the case of the Vadoma the middle three toes are absent and the two outer ones are turned in.
Ectrodactyly is a dominantly inherited genetic mutation and there are some who theorize that such mutations are usually passed on if they prove beneficial, leading to the hypothesis that their feet may aid in tree climbing. However, more likely is that the defect remains prevalent because of rampant inbreeding. It is against tribal law for members to marry outside the tribe.
I assume that I am not the only person aquiver with the anticipation of this being co-opted as an “extreme” body modification?
Every once in a great while something catches me off guard. I am not ashamed to admit it. It hasn’t happened in quite some time but while meandering around I found this interview with Martin (the only name given).
Martin seems to have spent much of his life enamored of one hobby, namely modifying his penis. This is, in and of itself, not particularly off-putting, after all most of us have seen at least photos of, say, a Prince Albert. However, this is so far removed from the epic modifications that Martin has undertaken as to be irrelevant.
Littered throughout the interview are pictures of various surgeries, in various stages, that Martin has performed upon himself. This is when things become awkward for, you see, upon clicking on one of the small, pixelated/censored thumbnails I was presented with an image so abstract, so painful to me that my brain almost ceased to function. There I sat, slack-jawed, my breath slowly escaping from my lungs in a horrified wheeze for what seemed like an age.
Needless to say that, should someone have walked by and peered over my shoulder, the image may have instantly been rejected by their psyche as well, thus saving me the chore of explaining why I, a supposedly straight man in a monogamous relationship, was spending time staring at images of cocks.
I don’t know about where you live, but in my corner of northeastern Pennsylvania there isn’t much in the way of interesting food. The closest that I come to danger, upon the rare occasions that I eat out, is the threat of contracting bovine spongiform encephalopathy from my steak. I certainly do not partake in the life-on-the-edge culinary experience of fugu, or pufferfish.
Considered a delicacy in Asia, the fugu contains a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX), found in the liver, ovaries, and flesh. The fish are so deadly that sushi chefs in Japan must endure a vigorous test; a test that only about thirty percent actually pass. The small amount of poison found in the flesh produces a “funny tingly sensation on the tongue and lips”, which is good because, if you’re anything like me, garnishing your hamburgers with Demerol is both expensive and stressful (not so much post-meal, admittedly).
However in large doses, like those found in the liver and ovaries, the effects are quite different:
“Those poisoned gradually lose muscle control, although not consciousness, and eventually suffocate to death when the diaphragm becomes paralyzed.”
Fun! A firsthand account of a non-lethal case of fugu poisoning is quite harrowing:
I do not personally know Steve Erenburg, who goes by the name of Radio Guy, but he may be one of the coolest people I’ve never met. This is due, in large part, to the fact that he happens to collect and deal in such oddities as the “Shock Therapy Helmet” and “Oudin Resonator”, among other various contraptions, medical instruments, and equipment, including this incredible firefighter’s respirator from the 1800s. I badly want one of these, you know, just to wear around the house.
“Hospital staff found him lying in a pool of blood, and the man told doctors he ‘had torn his eyes because it tickled and that 10 years earlier he had shot himself in one eye with an airgun rifle.’”
The only evidence of any injury to the man was a small hematoma. The CT scan was originally interpreted as a bullet wound. It was only 4 days later, after the man had died, that it was discovered to be a ball point pen. It remains, apparently, one of the only recorded suicides by a “low-velocity” object.
“Grace” has filled his/her/its latest LiveJournal entry with photos of the gorgeous miniatures of nautical medical kit he/she/it has crafted. My lust for all things antiquarian, particularly of the medical nature, as well as my natural human love of miniaturized things (what, you don’t love miniature things, you say? TO HELL WITH YE! Over the side with ‘im, mates–his miniature scrote can feed the miniature sharks!) is so titillated by this work my tentacles just want to curl.
Too bad I’d lose every damn one of the miniatures within two or three days, so it’s best that these are not mine.
I, Derek Cthulhu Fh’tagn Pegritz, have a confession to make: I have a raging medical fetish, especially when it comes to mortuary equipment and insane asylums. I collect antique medical equipment, and my house looks like a combination of a 1920s doctors office and a shrine to Skinny Puppy and broken computer equipment. If I ever find an Innsmouth babe of my own, we shall certainly honeymoon at Danvers Asylum in Danvers, Mass.
So when I came upon Cyril Van Der Haegen’s online portfolio, I was interested in just flipping through the illustrations, chasing down a few rumored R’lyehan prints until…I came upon the one above. Continue Reading…
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
