Unvested Interest
Phobia of the Week
Vehophobia -- fear of roller coasters
Best Medicine
If God wanted me to touch my toes, He would've put them on my knees.
Observation
"God heals, and the doctor takes a fee." -- American statesman and polymath Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Franklin had a deep interest in medicine, with writings covering the treatment of the common cold to promoting exercise and a moderate diet. He was also a medical activist and inventor, championing smallpox inoculation, taking a leading role in founding Pennsylvania Hospital (the first such institution in the British North American colonies) and inventing devices such as bifocal glasses.
Medical History
This week in 1885, the first cremation in England took place at Woking, where a crematorium was built. The deceased was Jeannette C. Pickersgill, a well-known figure in literary and scientific circles. By year's end, only three cremations had occurred out of 597,357 deaths in the UK, but those numbers soon began multiplying.
The practice of cremation goes back much further, with evidence dating back to the late Stone Age in Europe and the Middle East. Cremation was also part of the lives of Indigenous people in some parts of the Americas, though the first commercial crematorium in the U.S. did not exist until 1876 -- still nine years before the British.
Sum Body
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