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The Feral Child Tied To A Toilet For 13 Years
The Lost Genius of Roald Dahl
Everyone knows Roald Dahl’s stories, and several generations have grown up on Willy Wonka, Matilda, and more. But lurking behind the Oompa Loompas and the giant peaches is the life of a scientist, an inventor, and a medical pioneer so important that his work has saved thousands of lives worldwide -- and Dahl did his best to make sure you didn’t know it.
The bizarre life of Roald Dahl is a true story full of twists, turns, and tragedies. He survived his own traumatic brain injury in a World War II plane crash, and it might have done him a bit of good as a creator. But years later when his infant son was hit by a taxi, Roald harnessed his surprisingly deep medical and scientific knowledge to help create a cerebral valve that would benefit generations of children… all while keeping his own involvement quiet.
His most significant contribution to medicine may have come after that when his wife Patricia Neal suffered a series of strokes. Roald Dahl wasn’t a neurology expert, and he had no special expertise in brain injury or stroke recovery. What he did have was a creative mind, and the regimen he invented to rehabilitate Pat’s brain and body became the standard for our treatment of strokes.
Was Roald Dahl a fantastic artist, or was he a talented scientist? The answer is… yes. And that begs the question: is there even a difference?
The bizarre life of Roald Dahl is a true story full of twists, turns, and tragedies. He survived his own traumatic brain injury in a World War II plane crash, and it might have done him a bit of good as a creator. But years later when his infant son was hit by a taxi, Roald harnessed his surprisingly deep medical and scientific knowledge to help create a cerebral valve that would benefit generations of children… all while keeping his own involvement quiet.
His most significant contribution to medicine may have come after that when his wife Patricia Neal suffered a series of strokes. Roald Dahl wasn’t a neurology expert, and he had no special expertise in brain injury or stroke recovery. What he did have was a creative mind, and the regimen he invented to rehabilitate Pat’s brain and body became the standard for our treatment of strokes.
Was Roald Dahl a fantastic artist, or was he a talented scientist? The answer is… yes. And that begs the question: is there even a difference?
The Man Who Killed Millions Trying To Grow Food In Snow
There’s more to the story of Trofim Lysenko and the Soviet Union’s most disastrous era of science than you probably realize. Everyone knows of “Lysenkoism” regarding the USSR’s failed theories of genetics, but Trofim Lysenko’s lifelong body work was driven by a perfect combination of history, revolution, political theory, power, and personalities.
Lysenko’s impact on Russian biology was a direct result of crafting science -- and scientists -- in service of Vladimir Lenin’s new Soviet man at a time when the international scientific community was making tremendous progress on genetics and biology. But to Lysenko and Josef Stalin, the real science was in the potential of plants and animals to behave like Soviet citizens.
That led Russia and its scientists down a path that derailed progress for decades. But what if Lysenko’s theories on the inheritance of acquired traits actually have merit? A resurgence of support for Lysenko has gone beyond the grim history of science to look at what we know about altering the expression of DNA and how a human’s experiences in life can even affect their grandchildren. The truth is that modern genetics has little to nothing to do with Lysenko, but the specter of his pseudoscience continues to haunt the disciplines of genetics and biology -- and science as a whole.
The Man Killed For Saving The World
When we look back on the history of science and scientific progress, we celebrate the pioneers who dared to make life-changing discoveries. The truth is that the first people to introduce a paradigm-shift almost always face persecution, and many are overshadowed by the less-controversial minds who follow them.
Such is the case of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor who fought a lifelong battle against a disease he couldn’t see and that the medical establishment repeatedly told him wasn’t real. How does a scientist or doctor combat bacteria when they don’t even know it exists? The epidemics bacteria, viruses, and germs brought to innocent hospital patients wracked hospitals of the day, but the history of medicine is as much one of complacency and cosmic explanations as it is about breakthroughs.
Ignaz Semmelweis used incredible powers of logic and deductive reasoning to isolate a problem so complex that it stymied all the scientific minds of continental Europe, first by examining data within the clinics of his own hospital, and then identifying the source of infection. Through years of refining an antiseptic regimen that would end up saving an incalculable number of lives -- and paving the way for better-known scientific giants like Lister and Pasteur -- Semmelweis compiled one of the era’s great medical texts, one that would change healthcare worldwide.
And for that, he was ridiculed, criticized, fired, dismissed, institutionalized, and beaten to de*th. The shocking story of Ignaz Semmelweis is the real story of scientific progress.
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