Each year, more than 800,000 Americans will suffer a heart attack. More than 150,000 will die before they experience their first symptom. Could they have been saved? A relatively new and effective way to screen people at risk for heart disease is called coronary calcium scanning. Calcium scanning has been around since the late 1990s, and started capturing people’s attention…
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Great Achievements in Medical Fraud How the foot operated breast enlarger and Recto Rotor revolutionized medicine
If you were diagnosed at the turn of the century with lumbago, puking fever, black vomit, consumption, decrepitude, falling sickness, milk leg, ship fever, softening of the brain, St. Vitas dance, trench mouth, dropsy or heaven forbid, dyscrasy then you were in big trouble. Not only did the “modern” medical community misunderstand most of these diseases, they were also clueless…
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Better Shoe Fitting through Science The Adrian Pedoscope: a new way to fit shoes
During the 1940s, people were concerned about their feet. Mothers, fathers – even the U.S. Army. As a result, the guardian of modern foot care was born – the “Adrian X-ray Shoe Fitting Machine.” A Star is Born Although there are a number of conflicting stories about its origin, the first x-ray shoe fitting machine has generally been attributed to…
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A Foley Artist Reveals His Secrets Double punching a roasted chicken with a rubber kitchen glove: a new art is born
The scene in the Hollywood movie is a leather-jacketed hero who scuffles with a bad guy, walks through the snow and then guns his motorcycle engine before zooming off into the night. But, what really happened was a Foley artist punched a roasted chicken with a rubber kitchen glove and squeezed two balloons together while walking on a sandbox filled…
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The Wilhelm Scream A good Hollywood scream is hard to find; unless you know where to look
In the early days of the film industry, it was hard to find a good scream. Before the invention of sound bites, directors who needed a blood-curdling shriek from actors often got rather paltry sounding yelps. That is, until Private Wilhelm entered the scene. In the 1951 war classic Distant Drums, a soldier is dragged under water by an alligator…
