Trees are good for your health – they suck up carbon dioxide and release oxygen, help reduce greenhouse gases and provide welcoming shade during the summer. But those aren’t the trees that have recently been in the news for helping to improve the health of many Americans. This time it’s family trees that are up for discussion – and electronic ones, at that.

Importance of Knowing Your Health History

The importance of knowing your family medical history can’t be emphasized strongly enough, according to Acting Surgeon General Steven Galson, whose office has been in charge of a new initiative to promote the use of a website where users can grow an electronic family tree to find out where their health risks lie.

The government’s new free service is hoping that people will compile their own family tree at home, and share the information with their families. Compiling an extensive and accurate family tree is even more useful than genetic testing to predict what your medical requirements might be in the future, experts say. It’s a highly useful tool for doctors, too, since it saves time and also provides lots of useful information about potential health risks. You can even use it as you’re applying, or looking into various family health insurance plans.

Significant Benefits of an Online Family Health Tree

The most significant benefit, perhaps, is that it’s likely to be more accurate than anything you remember off-the-cuff in a doctor’s waiting room. And by sharing the information with relatives from both sides of the family, it’s easier to compile an accurate family health tree that includes all the information that’s important.

The family health tree site at https://familyhistory.hhs.gov makes it easy to compile this information. The electronic tree you create can be easily mailed to relatives, who can add their own information into the tree. The information is entirely private, too. Information is downloaded to the user’s own computer, rather than being held on the web site.

Even more useful is the fact that a single click can “re-index” the tree to concentrate on showing the health risks of any relative on the tree – so it’s useful for everyone, not just the person who creates it.

Another benefit is the fact that environmental and lifestyle factors can be added to the tree – factors that are often forgotten during doctor’s visits. The family tree can be printed out or even emailed directly to your doctor, ensuring that none of that valuable information is lost.

photo credit: Wolfiewolf

Lack of Success in the Past

Health insurers have an interest in providing insurance coverage for those procedures known to be successful. The insurance company does not want to waste time or money paying medical health professionals for treatments which are unnecessary and ineffective. Therefore, the lack of success shown to be associated with lobotomies in the past can be said to be one of the main reasons why insurance companies won’t cover this type of procedure.

Of course, this may be no surprise, but medical evidence conclusively shows that lobotomies simply do not work in preventing or treating mental illness and in fact do more harm than good in the long run. In this case, a lack of treatment success means that the insurance company will see no justification in offering coverage for this type of procedure.

Not a Necessity in Treating Mental Illness

Another reason why insurance companies do not want to cover your lobotomy is due to the lack of necessity with regard to this type of procedure. Along with the lengthy amount of research showing that these types of operations simply do not work to cure mental illness, a lobotomy is not a necessity. There are plenty of prescription drugs and counseling treatments available to help individuals with their mental illness, many of which are deemed to be highly successful.

Cited As a Barbaric Practice

The lobotomy has also been cited as a barbaric practice by many. The exact procedure is painful and questionable in legitimacy which overall tends to equate with a barbaric treatment method. As most doctors in the world refuse to perform this type of treatment method, the insurance companies are even more opposed to providing coverage for a procedure of this type.

Fraudulent Insurance Claims

Some insured individuals have even gone as far as to falsely claim that they received this type of medical treatment and falsified documents to back it up. This is just one other reason why insurance companies refuse to offer medical health coverage for a lobotomy procedure.

More Information on Lobotomies

In order to gain more insight into lobotomies and why this type of procedure has been phased out of society, an hour length show on PBS entitled “The Lobotomist” is well worth the viewing time.

References

• http://www.freewebs.com/bruiseduk/lobotomy.htm

Photo credit: caramel377 (creative commons, 2.0)

The term snake oil then became a generic name for many of the future medicines marketed as panaceas or miraculous remedies. In reality the vast majority of these medicines were nothing more than the equivalent of sugar pills. Follow us on a journey as we take a look at some of history’s most charming snake oil labels.

Dr. Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery!

This was one of the many quackery medicines being sold to the public in the late 19th and early 20th century. Dr Pierce’s medicine went the bold route and claimed to be a cure for ALL diseases. Early forms of advertisement were used, including testimonials. One particular women wrote to Dr. Pierce claiming that his medicine cured her painfully long menstrual periods and what seemed to be a urinary tract infection. The ads often targeted men, but mainly focused on women. Some of the ads claimed:

Quote:

To make a woman as jolly a wife as she was a maid by re-establishing the health of the delicate womanly organs.

While male illness was claimed to be caused by “countless minute orgasms leagued against the health of the body,” women’s ads were psychological, telling them they were fragile and ill vs. men ads, which used science and logic.

Posted in the “Chico Weekly” in Chico, California. Dec 25, 1897.

Kickapoo Indian Sagwa

In the late 19th century, many quack medicine companies would use the names of Native American tribes to promote remedies for all sorts of ailments. Back then, people were easily duped by claims of using natural cures from tribal medicine-men, but what they didn’t know was that not all could be trusted. With Kickapoo Indian Sagwa—owned by John E. Healy and Charles F. Bigelow—a remake was created of the original, telling people that it would cure constipation, liver complaint, dyspepsis, loss of appetite, chills/fever and any other disease (how convenient!)

Medical shows were held throughout different counties and the owners would even hire Native Americans (likely not from the actual Kickapoo tribe) to attend the shows and help make the cure look authentic.

Different packages were used, so finding an authentic Kickapoo Indian Sagwa cure isn’t impossible (if they were still being made). The original came in a black box, the remake is in a white box. Collect yours while supplies last!

Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People

Another 19th to early 20th-century snake oil medicine was Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People. It claimed to cure…

Quote:

…Chorea (known then as St. Vitus’ Dance or Locomotor Ataxia), partial paralyxia, seistica, neuralgia rheumatism, nervous headache, after effects of la grippe, palpitation of the heart, pale and sallow complexions and all forms of weakness in males or females.

Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People was advertised in 82 countries, including America, Canada and the United Kingdom. The company was owned by G.T. Fulford & Company (founder George Taylor Fulford Sr.), which was created in 1890.

Many 19th, early 20th century drugs were fraudulent in nature, making millions of dollars in their short-lived stints. Owners would put on “commercials” during stage entertainment shows, much like what you see on television or hear on the radio. Some of the medications would contain large amounts of alcohol and actual cocaine, giving a false effect of healing.

Even medicines created to calm babies were heavily dosed with alcohol. The final hour of these quackery medicine companies were exploited by investigations conducted by a journalist named Samuel Hopkins Adams in the early 1900s, exposing 264 fraudulent firms and hucksters. The FDA was then formed in 1906, regulating medicines that were produced. The fraudsters faced no jail time and were fined to pay small amounts between $10-$50. Some hoaxes were re-created to look different and stated the medicine was regulated by the FDA.

In the 1950s, televisions became a better venue for advertisement, leaving only 10 road shows roaming about. People weren’t as naïve during this time, and by the 1960s there were no more road shows or false advertisements of the many snake oil labels that were created in early American history.