Biomedical Ephemera, or: A Frog for Your Boils

Cadaver of newborn infant submerged two weeks (top) and four weeks (bottom) in running freshwater

Long before there were large-scale body farms (most famously the UT-Knoxville Forensic Anthropology Center, aka “The Body Farm”) to systematically test and observe the effects of various conditions on deceased bodies found in nature (or, for that matter, in unnatural settings), forensic pathology pioneers would sometimes replicate outdoor conditions on cadavers that were found and considered unidentifiable, and learn how different conditions affected the rates and modes of decomposition.

This newborn was found two weeks after death (determined by the growth rate of local algaes at that time of year), but was left in place for two more weeks in order to provide accurate depiction of a body submerged for one month in cold running water.

Note the algae forming a mostly-uniform coat on the body, but amassing much larger growths in the curves and open spaces, such as behind the knee, and in the crook of the elbow. Though the skin eventually decomposes and obscures the natural angles of those regions, the algal blooms will obscure such angles much earlier on in the decomposition process. From afar, this can make the cadaver appear to have been deceased for much longer than it actually has been.

Atlas of Legal Medicine. Dr. Eduard von Hofmann, 1898.

Fetal head - displaying bones, fontanelles, and average measurements at 9 months of gestation

The fontanelles (or fontanels) of the fetal skull are critical anatomical features during vaginal birth. These allow the cranial bones to move around such that the newborn often resembles a Conehead right after birth - but the look is a good thing! The funky look usually goes away within the first day or two, and this weird pointy head is the primary reason that mom could push that watermelon-sized baby through a pelvic opening that could ordinarily not even accommodate a large mango.

The mastoid, sphenoidal, and posterior fontanelle generally disappear by six months of age, while the larger anterior fontanelle can take up to two years to grow into bone. A sunken fontanelle is one of the ways to tell if an infant is dehydrated.

An American Text-Book of Obstetrics. Edited by Richard C. Norris and Robert L. Dickinson, 1895.

cabbagingcove:

Today in History - May 14

Ticrapo, Huancavelica Region, Peru, 1939

On May 14, 1939, a girl named Lina Medina became the youngest recorded mother in history, at 5 years, 7 months, and 17 days of age.

Originally thought to have a massive abdominal tumor that was growing at an alarming rate, Lina’s parents took her to the nearest hospital, where she was diagnosed as being seven months pregnant. The doctor who diagnosed her, Dr. Gerardo Lozada, took her to Lima, Peru, to a larger hospital, in order to have his diagnosis confirmed and to have Lina’s condition monitored.

One-and-a-half months later, a caesarean-section was performed on the small girl, and her son Gerardo Medina was born. He was named after the doctor who delivered him, and who mentored and provided medical care to both Lina and the boy, after the birth and through their young adulthood. Until he was 10-years-old, Gerardo was raised to believe that his mom was really his sister, but after incessant teasing at school one year, the doctor and Lina told him the truth. By most accounts, he was a normal child, and fairly bright. He died at age 40, of an unrelated bone cancer.

How did this happen?

Well, precocious puberty isn’t all that uncommon, but extreme precocious puberty is. Some children with extreme precocious puberty reach menarche (first menstruation) at nine months or younger, and if this condition is allowed to continue, the body develops to the point where a full-term pregnancy is completely possible. Today, hormone-suppressing drugs are available, and many of the complications of precocious puberty (both psychological and physical) are avoided, but the early versions of these medications were both dangerous and not terribly effective.

Lina had begun menstruating at eight-months-old, and began developing breast tissue at four-years-old. Though her hips had begun widening significantly beyond where they should be for a child her age, they were obviously nowhere near large enough to deliver a baby at just five-years-old.

Of course, this still leads to the question of who would impregnate a five-year-old. Her father was initially arrested on suspicion of incest and rape, but the charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence. Other possibilities included her mentally-deficient older brother, an uncle, or one of the village men, during an Andean fertility festival. Lina herself never gave a clear answer to who impregnated her, and it’s completely possible that she herself doesn’t know.

Lina Today

Lina Medina had a second son in 1972, almost 33 years after her first. She is still alive today, in a poor section of Lima, Peru, and lives with her husband Raul Jurado. Despite living in relative poverty, she refuses media and publicity as much as possible, and prefers her privacy over fiscal gain.

Read More about Lina Medina:

LINA MEDINA, MADRE A LOS CINCO AÑOS

Youngest Mother @ DamnInteresting

Youngest Mother? by Snopes

Time Magazine: Little Mother [similar case]

Calcutta Telegraph

All images from listed sources.

Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi and calf

There is no significant difference between the giraffe subspecies other than coloration and a slight size difference - sort of like a husky versus a Labrador retriever. Though zoos like to keep them separate (conservation of separate genetic lines is much easier), they can easily interbreed. In the wild, only the Reticulated Giraffe and Masai Giraffe are known to have interbred.

Transactions of the Zoological Society of London. Vol. III, 1848.

Elasmognathus bairdi (now Tapirus bairdii)

The tapir is an excellent case study for divergence in evolution. Approximately 50 million years ago, the ancestors of the tapirs lived throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. Around 20-30 million years ago, the American and Asian tapirs split off from their common ancestors, and began to diverge both morphologically and genetically.

From around 20 mya until about 3 mya, tapirs only lived in South-East Asia and North America (they had gone extinct in Europe and central Asia by now). Then, during the Great American Interchange, a large population of tapir migrated south, and formed the basis of the current South American Tapiridae. For a couple million years, tapirs lived throughout the Americas. During the last Ice Age, around 13,000 years ago, the North American tapirs died out, while the South American tapirs continued to expand their habitat (especially after the other megafauna began to go extinct).

Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 1867.

biomedicalephemera:

Isodore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Histoire Générale et Particuliere des Anomalies de l’Organisatoin Chez l’Homme, et les Animaux mummy.

biomedicalephemera

anatomicallyincorrect:

Views of a Foetus in the Womb (c. 1510 - 1512) is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.

I’m sorry, I know this is a legit form of artificial respiration (though not a common one…accordion-baby and modified CPR is more effective), but there’s nothing about either of these photographs that looks like it should be the way it’s presented - especially doctor-man’s eyes in the first one.

A Text-Book on Practical Obstetrics comprising Pregnancy, Labor, and the Puerperal State, and Obstetric Surgery. Egbert H. Grandin and George W. Jarman, 1897.

Thoracic x-ray of newborn.

Surgical Diseases of the Chest. Carl Beck, 1907.

Inuit woman getting her teeth examined. 1945.

Note her baby in her hood. Inuit women wore parkas that had hoods large enough to fit an infant if needed. This kept the babies close to their body, and wrapped in warm material, without having to make a separate papoose or harness to carry their baby in.