Nurse Ratched’s Place

Do you remember the book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus? Here are the men from mars. Note the antennas on their space helmets. The men use the antennas when they try to read a woman’s mind. Silly men, all they have to do is ask her what’s she thinking about. When will they ever learn?

Pop psychology books have really evolved over the years. My favorite book is Feeling Good by David D. Burn, M.D. It was first published in 1980. Whenever I see a copy at a thrift store, I pick it up so I can have it on hand for my patients. Times have really changed, and here are some books I think you’ll find entertaining.

If you want an entertaining look at the bad-old-days, this is the book for you. Plain Facts for Old and Young was written by John Harvey Kellogg, and was published in 1892. It was a very popular book in its day, and told readers how to have a healthy physical and psychological life. It was also the book that first suggested that you would go blind by “doing it.” I’ll write more about that later. What makes this book note worthy isn’t it’s content, but it’s author.

Dr. J.H. Kellogg was a surgeon, and was the director of the Kellogg Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Dr. Kellogg believed that natural foods, along with enemas and hydrotherapy, could cure everything except chronic masturbation, which was the cause of every illness known to mankind. Dr. Kellogg believed that natural foods such as corn could cleanse the body of impurities and cure a variety of nervous disorders. He invented Corn Flakes so his patients at the sanitarium could start their day with a healthy breakfast. Dr. Kellogg’s brother, William K. Kellogg had a sharp business sense and convinced his brother to go into partnership with him in 1906. They formed the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company under William’s management.

Dr. Kellogg was known as a champion of healthy eating, high colonics, and a disdain for sex. I’ll never be able to look at a box of corn flakes the same way again.

Sigmund Freud wasn’t only the father of modern psychoanalytic, he was the father of pop psychology books. In Psychopathology of Everyday Life, published in 1951, Freud is the first to bring modern psychiatry to the masses. This book first introduced the American public to the concepts of the Freudian slip and repression.

The back jacket reads:

“Have you ever forgotten the name of a person you know well, mislaid a familiar object, or used the wrong word in writing or conversation? If, like most of us, you’ve made these everyday mistakes, are you sure they were accidents?

According to Sigmund Freud, the founder of the modern psychoanalytic movement, most common slips of the tongue or annoying errors are reflections of disturbances in our personalities, some of which may be buried so deep that we ourselves are hardly aware of them. In this fascinating and useful volume, he analyzes the unconscious sources of ordinary errors and lapses, and draws frankly on his own experiences, as well as those of his friends and patients, to show that there is nothing accidental in psychic life.” If you ever find this book in good condition at a thrift store or flea market, grab it. This book is a first edition and very hard to find.

When a student asked him why he always had a cigar in his mouth, Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” I wonder what he was really thinking.

Dr. Phil wasn’t the first guy to tell men how to get along with their wives. All About Men, written by Dr. Joseph H. Peck, is a self help survival manual for men. The book was published in 1958. Dr. Peck said he wrote the book for “ordinary men who are trying to feed their families, raise children, pay taxes, and stay a few steps ahead of the sheriff.”

Dr. Peck didn’t have a fancy Ph.D. from a elite university, but was one of the first physicians in pioneer Utah. His practice covered a section the size of Connecticut, and his patients included a whole tribe of Gosiute Indians. He said he learned about human nature during his days as a country doctor. Tracing his subject from birth to death, Dr. Peck gives men advice on solving everyday life dilemmas. Of course many of these dilemmas involved women. He was very insightful, and admits that his wife trained him well. Here’s one of my favorite passages from the book regarding pregnancy, and the man’s role in caring for his wife.

“A pregnant wife has a whim of iron. In the middle of the night she may insist that you run downtown and get her a bottle of beer and some pastrami. Do as she says. If you pity yourself, go to the zoo and look at the king of beasts crouched in one corner of the cage while his pregnant mate prowls, growling and snapping and, as like is not, making a pass at him now and then. Your troubles aren’t unique.”

Yep, he was one smart cookie.

This book is about recycling your life style the psycho-energetics way. Doesn’t that sound far out? Recycle Your Lifestyle was written by Dr. Paul Mok and was published in 1972. Dr. Mok tells readers that if they are ready for an “exciting lift off,” he will provide the answers to help them find nirvana. He tells readers how to recharge their psychic energy systems and resist and control negative energy forces while “getting it together.” I read this book and had the urge to run out and buy a lava lamp and break out my Jimi Hendrix records and my tie-dye shirts.

Groovy!

Happy Halloween everyone, and welcome to Doctor Zombie’s Same Day Surgery Center. Doctor Zombie and his colleagues are busy today. I wonder what procedure he’s performing on his patient. Whatever it is, it looks like the anesthesiologist needs to get his act together and check out Surgeonsblog. Doctor Schwab wrote a great post about giving anesthesia.

My little friend, Sparky,and I are sending birthday greetings to our good friend in Baltimore. Happy Birthday, Counselor. Enjoy your special day.

I wish my mechanic had wireless Internet at his garage.

I’m having the oil changed in my car tomorrow and I won’t have any way of reading blogs. I wish I were like this girl. She’s young, cute, and knows how to work on her own car. Now if I could get my mechanic to install wireless Internet along with a day spa, I’d be all set.

Don’t you hate spending your day off doing something that you’re not looking forward to doing? Nurses always enjoy having time away from the hospital. It’s nice to have a day to yourself. I once had a nursing supervisor who just didn’t “get it.”

The sun is peeking through my bedroom window. It’s 5 a.m. and I’m in a deep sleep. The phone rings:

Nursing Supervisor: Good morning Mother Jones, RN, this is Mrs. Annoying from the hospital. I’m calling because we need you to come in today to work on your unit.

Me: What? Who….what did you say?

Nursing Supervisor: Oh, did I wake you? I’m sorry. I wanted to call you early so you wouldn’t be late for work.

Me: It’s my day off.

Nursing Supervisor: But we NEED you. You MUST come in. We’re DESPERATE.

Me: No thank you, (grumble-grumble), I’m not coming in (muffled swearing), stop calling me (homicidal thoughts). Goodbye!

A day off is a sacred day. Girls (and boys) just want to have fun!

Ladies, according to the book, The Perfect Woman, written by Dr. Mary R. Melendy, M.D., Ph.D., we’re all raising our children all wrong. The perfect mother’s soul mission in life is to raise sons who will one day dominate their wives, and to raise daughters who will obey their husbands. I missed the boat on that one. My daughters won’t take crap from men, and they make their boyfriends take out the garbage.

Dr. Melendy uses Lititia Bonaparte as an example of the perfect mother. She’s proud of her son. See the bust of her son sitting on the pedestal? I think Dr. Melendy had a thing for Napoleon. She said that Napoleon was an “extraordinary man, and quoted him as saying, “The fate of a child is always the work of his mother.” Napoleon was quite the emperor. He waged war against his European neighbors for 17 years, is responsible for nearly six million European deaths, fathered numerous illegitimate children, and bankrupt the French treasury. I don’t know that it’s fair to always blame parents for how their kids turn out, but Mrs. Bonaparte raised a little megalomaniac. Way to go, Mom!

The perfect mother knows how to prepare healthy meals for her children, and good nutrition must start in infancy. Here’s my favorite recipe for baby food from her book:

Take a pound of flour, put it in a cloth, tie it up tightly, place it in a saucepan full of water, and let it boil for four or five hours; then take it out, peel off the outer rind, and the inside will be found quite dry. Grate and serve with new milk.

Yummy!

Dr. Melendy also gives mothers advice on teething. She warns that teething can cause water on the brain and is responsible for many infant deaths. One remedy for teething pain is taking the child to the country for a bit of fresh air. She said, “The number of deaths in cities from teething is large, in the country it is comparatively trifling.”Dr. Melendy said to give a baby laxatives if the child develops diarrhea and to coat the child in olive oil. Oh yes, there’s one more thing, NEVER rock a baby to sleep. It can cause convulsions!

A perfect mother knows how to keep her child from becoming sick. Dr. Melendy said that if a cold stable makes a healthy horse, then a cold drafty room should make a healthy child. However, Dr. Melendy concedes that from time to time every child gets sick. Here are some of her recommended remedies for childhood illnesses.

Croup: It is imperative that a child with croup be placed in the state of “free vomiting.” At the earliest sign of croup, give Wine of Ipecac every five minutes until free vomiting is established. If after an hour vomiting does not occur, give the following mixture:

One scruple of Powdered Ipecac, 1 ½ oz. of Wine of Ipecac. Shake well and give one to two teaspoons every 5 minutes until free vomiting occurs. After the vomiting, place the child for 15 minutes in a warm bath. When out of the bath give him small doses of Wine of Ipecac every two or three hours. If all else fails give a teaspoon of kerosene.

Bronchitis: Confine the child to his bedroom, and if very ill, to his bed. Let him rest on a pillow on your lap. If fever occurs give the following:

Mix two drops of Tinct. Of Aconite with one full glass of water. Give one teaspoon of mixture every 15 minutes. For external application, take a strip of old muslin, wet in kerosene, and wrap around the neck and cover with a dry cloth. Leave on until the skin is red.

When a child becomes a teenage, the perfect mother’s duty is clear; make them ashamed of their bodies and tell them that sex is bad….very, very bad. But most importantly, the perfect mother must warn her children about the “evils of self abuse.” You know what I’m talking about. Dr. Melendy explains that self abuse drains blood from vital organs, and is an “offense against moral law.”

Is it safe to say we’re all going to hell?

In my next installment of the Perfect Woman we will discuss Dr. Melendy’s thoughts on what qualities a good nurse must have, and recipes for the sick.

Warning: This is a rant. I’m on my soapbox, and I’m not in a good mood.

I was having lunch the other day with some nursing colleagues when someone mentioned Clara Barton. My associate had visited Clara Barton’s home in Glen Echo, Maryland when she was on vacation. She said that walking into Clara Barton’s house was like walking on hallowed ground. Another nurse a the table tilted her head, smiled, and said, “It sounds like you had a lot fun, but you do realize that Clara Barton wasn’t really a nurse.” There was dead silence at the table. We stared at her in disbelief. I finally broke the silence. “Clara Barton is a nursing role model,” I said. “She cared for wounded soldiers during the Civil War, and she was the superintendent of NURSES for the Union army. How can you say she wasn’t a nurse?” Our colleague, who holds a Ph.D. in nursing and who is a nursing educator, didn’t flinch. She said, “Clara Barton didn’t go to an accredited nursing school, and she didn’t have a degree, therefore she wasn’t a real nurse.” After hearing this logic I headed for the bar—I needed a drink.

There’s a feud going on in the nursing community, but this feud isn’t between the Hatfields and the McCoys, it’s between nurses who hold a nursing degree and those who don’t. It’s a passionate feud and the battle lines are drawn. I graduated from a three-year hospital diploma program, and even after working as a bedside nurse for nearly thirty years, there are some who claim I am not a “real nurse.” This infighting is tearing the profession apart.

I wonder what Clara Barton would think about all the bickering if she were alive today. I think she would be amused that some highly educated people view her as less than a nurse. Unfortunately those same people wouldn’t care what Clara thought because she never earned a nursing degree. Nurses are a catty group, and I’m sure Clara’s detractors would belittle her ideas, undercut her efforts to improve health care, and snicker at her qualifications to run the American Red Cross.

Here’s a news flash to my nursing colleagues that just don’t get it: Clara Barton was a nurse, and so are ALL the men and women in the nursing profession who work everyday, taking care of their patients.

Don’t you just love it when studies confirm what we’ve known for years? According to researchers at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, men are always thinking of sex. Well, duh! I wonder how they collected their data.

Reacher: “Sir, are you always horny?”

Male Subject: “What?”

Reacher: “Sir, do you lust in your heart?”

Male Subject: “Are you on drugs? What kind of a question is that!”

The research also found that 19 percent of women think about sex on a daily basis. I’m not in that 19 percent. I’m getting forgetful in my old age, and I’m always trying to remember where I put my car keys. I don’t have time to think about sex.

Click here to check out the Kinsey Institute website.

Here is a grass roots nurse who is working to improve health care in America. She is asking the doctor to support the National Nurse Act. He thinks it’s a great idea. Smart doctor.

Heads up everyone, Alisa Schneider and Teri Mills from the National Nurse Team will be guests on Satellite Sisters next Friday, October 27th, at 10:30 am PST. To find a radio station near you, click here.

Mother Jones RN will be listening, and I hope that you will be listening, too.

A few days ago, we discussed what a perfect woman looks like according to the book, The Perfect Woman, written by Mary R. Melendy, M.D., PhD. Today, I’m sharing Dr. Melendy’s beauty secrets for getting that perfect woman glow.

First, find a rubber hose and shove it up your nose. According to Dr. Melendy, flushing the body with water from the inside out will make you robust, hence, giving you a healthy glow. I thought doing things like that would cause a nosebleed, but what do I know, she’s a doctor and I’m just a nurse. She also suggests hiring a chambermaid to hose you down with cold water. I recommend that you stand inside of a tub before your chambermaid administers this treatment, otherwise you’ll have a mess on your hands. The woman in the illustration is not standing in a tub. I guess back then, being beautiful didn’t mean you had to be smart, just subservient to your husband’s will.

Dr. Melendy said that bathing is an essential part to being beautiful.

Here are Dr. Melendy’s rules about taking a bath:

1) Take a bath when you’re warm. After you take a bath, exercise. Sweat makes you glow.
2) Do not eat two hours before, or one hour after bathing.
3) The best times for bathing are at 10 a.m., 3 p.m., and at bedtime. Every full bath should be taken quickly, and should be followed by a vigorous rubdown, and exercising.
4) Wet the head and chest before bathing to prevent colds.

Dr. Melendy said that a woman’s hair is her glory. She tells readers that brushing their hair everyday will remove dust, thereby preventing dandruff, and she suggests that readers shampoo their hair with Green’s soap, pure Castile soap, Woodbury’s tar soap, and Pear’s soap. Castile soap is great stuff. When I was a nursing student, we used Castile soap as a shampoo in the hospital, and we still use it when we give soap water enemas. I know, too much information.

I will be posting more tips later. Next time, we will discuss perfect motherhood.

I found this book on e-Bay and just had to bid on the darn thing. Our nurse looks like she walked in on her patient without knocking. Doesn’t the prisoner looked surprised? My nursing instructor, Miss Manners, taught us to always knock before entering a room, and she gave us a tongue lashing if we walked into a patient’s room unannounced.

Dr. Louis Berg wrote this trashy novel. The former prison psychiatrist said his book is an account of what goes on behind prison walls. The Macaulay Company published the original book in 1934. The book was also turned into a movie in 1938

“Young Dr. Evans Dale was in prison, paying society’s just price for transgressing its commandments. This courageous outlaw was the man Judy Grayson loved, but when his life hung in the balance, the only person she could turn to was powerful, ambitious Dr. Hartmann, who wanted Judy for himself.

Judy Grayson dared to bring her gift of healing into an underworld of men—thieves, drug addicts, and murderers!”

I checked out Dr. Berg, and he was not only an author, but also a great scientific researcher. (Please visualize me rolling my eyes). In 1941, Dr. Berg theorized that radio soap operas were responsible for tachycardia, arrhythmia, emotional instability, and vertigo. To put his theory to the test, he listened to an episode from two radio serials, and then monitored his own blood pressure 30 minutes. His blood pressure increased. Dr. Berg concluded that radio soap operas were dangerous to their “unfortunate addicts,” and that middle age women, teenagers, and “the neurotic” were especially at risk for the shows’ ill effects.

I wonder if Dr. Berg listened to the radio show, The Woman in White?

The Woman in White, ran from 1938-1942, and was one of the first serials to focus on a hospital. (Cue in overly dramatic soap opera organ music).

In today’s episode of The Woman in White, heroic Karen Adams, star nurse, is faced with a dilemma. Only recently Nurse Adam’s boyfriend, the handsome, yet deceitful, Dr. Kirk Harding fathered a child with Janet Munson. To make matters worse, Janet has married Nurse Adams’ brother. And standing in the shadows is Dr. Lee Markham. Nurse Adams thinks of Dr. Markham as a friend, but he loves Nurse Adams from afar. Can he find the courage to tell Nurse Adams about his feelings before she throws her life away on a cad?

Will Nurse Adams, unaware of Dr. Harding’s dalliance with Janet, become his wife?
Will Janet tell her new husband that he is not the father of her child?
Will Janet and Nurse Adams ever figure out that Dr. Harding is a dog, and kick him to the curb?

Turn in tomorrow for the next episode of The Woman in White (cue out organ music).

Like Dr. Berg, the show’s creator, Irna Phillips was an oddball. Soap opera historians agree that Phillips was a hypochondriac. She allegedly consulted a doctor everyday. In 1970, Phillips decided to take a European vacation and booked passage on a hospital ship. What is it with these artistic types anyway? There’s no business like show business.

In today’s book report, I’m revealing some tips on how to be the perfect woman. In her book Perfect Womanhood, published in 1901, Mary R. Melendy, M.D., PH. D. tells readers how to have a happy marriage, healthy children, and a radiant body.

First, let’s discuss what a perfect woman looks like. Forget looking like an anorexic super model. According to Dr. Melendy, the perfect woman looks like this sculpture of Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister, Paulina. She has a big butt, a large waist, and a flat chest. According to Dr. Melendy most women are drop dead gorgeous, so let’s move on.

Dr. Melendy writes that beauty starts from within. The perfect woman only thinks thoughts of joy, love, and peace. She instructs women to sit in silence for an hour every night and think subservient thoughts because it helps them become less selfish and more submissive to their husbands’ will. Yeah, right. I’m sorry, as someone who refuses to be a doormat, I’m going to have to pass on this one. The only thing I want to do at night is watch a little TV and surf the web.

Dr. Melendy said that the perfect woman worships her husband, and has LOTS of babies. She said that the a woman is the “seed from which life springs forth.” She also says a good mother knows how to prepare home treatments when someone in her family is ill.

Here are just a few treatments that the good doctor recommends in her book.

Diphtheria:

“Aconite, Belladonna, Kali Chloricum, Kali Bi-Chromicum, Proto-Iodide, or Bin-Iodide of Mercury are the principal remedies in this disease.

Give one teaspoon of Aconite and Belladonna in alternation, every hour until the fever subsides. If, however the symptoms grow worse, give five drops of Belladonna, twenty drops of Kali Chloricum, and half a grain of the Kali Bi-Chloricum, each in a tumbler half full of water. Of the Mercury, which is also powder, give a dose about the size of a small pea.”

Chicken Pox:

“For fever and headache, give Aconite and Belladonna, alternately (turn about).

If there is aching of the bones, and bilious symptoms, give Bryonia and Rhus, alternately.

For restlessness and nervous excitement, disturbed sleep, etc., give Coffea. If there is a painful discharge of urine give Cantharides or Conium, or both alternately.

If the eruption is very server, give Tartar Emetic.”

Be watching for more tips from Dr. Melendy’s book on how to be the perfect woman.