lucie

pitbullmabari:

the-real-seebs:

nunchler:

asymbina:

pitbullmabari:

pitbullmabari:

pitbullmabari:

Dr James Barry, the first doctor to perform a successful C section wherein both mother and child survived, was a huge champion of handwashing at a time when most doctors didn’t wash their hands. For this reason, many of the chilldbirths he delivered resulted in healthier babies and mothers. He was also a gay trans man, who specifically wrote that upon his death he wished for his body to be taken in its nightshirt, wrapped in his sheets as a shroud, and placed into the coffin so that nobody would see his body. His wishes were not respected, and as a result he was outed at his death.

i’ve also been informed he had a poodle. He named his poodle Psyche. I’d just like to congratulate him on being an excellent human being, who not only pioneered modern medicine but also had good taste in dogs. that is all.

types of responses to this post

1. i thought this was fake but it’s not
   
2. here’s the sawbones episode about him
3. cis people

He was also reportedly quite the ladies’ man, and he’d apparently carried a child to term and gave birth.

he’s one of my favorite historical figures and ive read a lot on him including the biography Scanty Particulars by Rachel Holmes. a lot of the details of his life are difficult to figure out, partly cause he was very private and partly cause he had so many rumors surrounding him. here are some of my fave facts about him:

-he was very concerned with protecting poor people, women and people of color, aka all the people most of upper class british society at the time cared the least about. he worked to reform prisons and hospitals in south africa at risk to his own career, and also improved the conditions under which poor enlisted british soldiers and their families lived

-he was kind of a known hothead. he was rumored to have fought at least one duel (probably not true though). florence nightingale hated him even though they had similar ideas about medicine because they had such a clash of personalities in the brief time they worked together

-he was a vegetarian and took a goat with him on sea voyages so he could always have fresh milk

-even though he had an abrasive personality and made a lot of enemies, his patients, especially the women, really loved him because they felt like he knew what he was doing and actually cared about their health

-he died poor because the british army ripped him off >:/

edit i almost forgot the best thing. he didn’t just have one poodle named psyche. he had a bunch. when one died he would get a new poodle and name that one psyche too

“i thought your poodle died?”

“psyche!” [poodle comes trotting in]

this is the best response

14 Lines From Love Letters Or Suicide Notes

doclubenpoetry:

(reposted by request. cheers.)

 
14 Lines From Love Letters Or Suicide Notes.

1. Don’t freak out.

2. We both know this has been coming for a long time.

3. I have been staying awake at nights, wondering if I should tell you.

4. I bought the kind of crackers you like. They are in the hall cupboard.

5. Now that we have watched all the episodes of True Blood, I do not know what else to do next.

6. I have just been too afraid for too long.

7. This is the kind of thing where waiting for the time to be right would just mean waiting forever; it’s the kind of thing no one else can help you decide.

8. I came home on Thursday and found all of the chairs in the house stacked in a pile in the center of my kitchen; I don’t know how long they have been like that, but it must have been me that did it. It is the kind of thing a ghost might do, to prove to the living he is still there. I am haunting my own apartment.

9. My grandmother was still alive when I was five years old and she told me to check if the iron was hot enough yet, so I pressed my hand against it, and it was red and screaming for hours. Twenty five years later she would still sometimes apologize, in the middle of conversations, I feel so bad about making you touch the iron, she would say, as though it had just happened. I cannot imagine how we forgive ourselves for all of the things we didn’t say until it was too late. But how else do you tell if something is hot but to touch it?

10. I imagine my furniture in your apartment.  

11. I wonder how many likes it will get on facebook.

12. My dad always used to tell the same joke, but I can’t remember the punch line.

13. I was eight years old and it took three weeks (three eight year old weeks— imagine) to gather everything I needed to be Batman. Rope, boomerangs, a mardi gras mask with the beads cut off. I couldn’t find a cave near my house, so I buried them all in a bundle under the ivy. For years after,

I tried to find that spot again.

          The ivy grew too fast.

              I searched in so many spots

it seemed impossible I had missed any.

But I never found it.

How can something be there

       and then just not be there?

         How do we forgive ourselves

             for all the things we did not become?

14. I was never bold enough to buy bright green sheets. I wanted them, but always thought they were too brash, even with no one but me to see them. I bought a set yesterday and put them on the bed. I knew that you would like them.

—-

cactsus:

me to myself every time i speak: say less