Drugs/medical issues in T2k (includes 'Drug use & availability in the Twilight War')

[dragoon500ly]

FM 21-76

Intestinal Parasites

You can avoid infestations of worms and other intestinal parasites if you take preventative measures. The most effective way to avoid intestinal parasites is:

Do not eat uncooked meat or raw vegatables (possible contaminated with raw sewage or human waste used as fertilizer). If you do become infested and lack proper medicine, try one of these home remedies. Keep in mind that these home remedies are not without danger, they work on the principal of changing the environment of the gastrointestinal tract:

Saltwater; mix 4 tablespoons of salt in 1 qt of water and Drink. DO NOT repeat this treament.

Tobacco; eat 1 to 1 1/2 cigarettes. The nicotine in the cigarette will kill or stun the worm long enogh fr your system to pass them. If the infestation is severe, repeat the treatment in 24-48 hours, BUT NOT SOONER.

Kerosene; Drink 2 tablespoons of kerosene but no more. If necessary, you can repeat this treatment in 24-48 hours, BUT NO SOONER.

Hot Peppers; peppers are effective only if they are a steady part of your diet. You can eat them raw or put them in soups or rice and meat dishes.

[Medic]

For drugs in Twilight, two natural substances that would be of high value would be anything opium-based and cocaine.

Opiates are very useful for treating pain, though the problem is with the dosage, because you have to know the purity/potency of the said batch. Opiates cause, in high doses, cessation of breathing and unconsciousness, which is the thing that kills most junkies ODing on them. With potent enough stuff the guy can be out cold very quickly - I actually encountered one, while working as a paramedic, who had not even had managed to pull the needle out of the vein.

Cocaine, though mostly known for party usage by yuppies in the 80ies is a good local anesthetic, still used in nasal surgery for an instance. It does reduce the bleeding a bit as well as numbing (and it does cause excessive talkativeness and hilarity in the patient, if he is awake). It can be used to numb up the eyes as well, and pretty much anything else as well. Of course, in the Twilight timeline, the availability is not very high.

An interesting, potentially useful alternate is an aquatic centipede, found at least in the Mediterranean. While being bitten doesn't really feel that nice, the bite numbs the location bitten shortly after. I'm not completely familiar with what the said centipede secretes, but as far as I've heard, it is pretty effective.

[dragoon500ly]

FM 21-76

Diarrhea

This is caused by such things as a change of water and food, drinking contaminated water, eating spoiled food, becoming fatigued and using dirty dishes. You can avoid most of these causes by practicing prentive medicine. If you get diarrhea, however, and do not have antidiarrhea medicine with you, you may find one of the following treatments is effective.

Limit your intake to fluids for 24 hours.

Drink 1 cup of a strong solution of tea every 2 hours until the diarrhea slows or stops. THe tannic acid in tea helps to control diarrhea. Tannic acid is also found in the moist inner bark of hardwood trees. Boil the inner bark for 2 hours or more to release the tannic acid. Although this solutation will have a vile taste and smell, it will stop most cases of diarrhea.

Make a solution of one handful of ground chalk, charcoal, dried bones and treated water (the solution should have the consistency of kaopectate). If you have some apple pomace or the rinds of citrus fruit, add an equal portion to the mixture to make it more effective. Take 2 tablespoons of the solution every 2 hours until the diarrhea slows down or stops.

Drink lots of liquids to replace lost fluids.

[HorseSoldier]

Packing a wound with sugar can also be used to prevent infection, in places or situations in T2K where sugar is available.

I remember reading somewhere that during the American Civil War, Confederate surgeons used horse tail hairs, boiled, for suturing, since silk was blockaded. Since their use required boiling to make them pliable, they had lower infection rates than the unsterilized silk sutures of the era.

[Graebarde]

Came across this in FM 21-76 "Survival"

To Make Soap

Extract grease from animal fat by cutting the fat into small pieces and cooking them in a pot. Add enough water to the pot to keep the fat from sticking as it cooks. Cook the fat slowly, stirring frequently. After the fat is rendered, pou the grease into a container to harden.

Plase wood ashes in a container with a spout near the bottom. Pour water over the ashes, and in a separate container collect the liquid that drips out of the spout. This liquid is the potash or lye. Another method for obtaining the lye is to pour the slurry (the mixture of ashes and water) through a straining cloth.

In a cooking pot, mix two parts grease to one part potash. Place this mixture over a fire and boil it untils it thickens.

After the mixture (the soap) cools, you can use it in the semiliquid state directly from the pot, or you can pour it into a pan, alow it to harden and then cut it into bars for later use.

Few things to remember when attempting this.
1) Do NOT use aluminum pots or utensils!!!
2) READ MORE on the subject before you need to actually do anything such as this, then practice what you have read a couple of times. This is the basic principle, but there are things to do that if not done right can cause injury. If the lye is too strong it will make a soap that is very caustic, even burning the skin.
3) It needs to be stirred almost continiously until it thickens, then put it in what ever molds you have prepared for it. Don't leave it in the pot to set up!!
4) DO NOT USE ALUMINUM!!!


Basic camp soap for doing the dishes and cleaning is easy to make by adding wood ashes to the frying pan with some water. IT makes it's own soap, though I would not care to wash my body with it, it does clean the utensils quite well. Use sand for the abrassive helps it along too.

One of my favorite books is Caveman Chemistry by Dunn. One of the projects in this book is making soap. I've attached the link to a free PDF of the book, which makes chemistry easy to read and understand for the layman. His 28 projects are also something to think of when thinking of rebuilding techology. IMO no library should be without it.

http://cavemanchemistry.com/cavedemo.pdf

[Graebarde]

http://www.ar15.com/content/manuals/FM21-76_SurvivalManual.pdf

The link to a PDF of the Army Survival Manual.

[WallShadow]

Came across this in FM 21-76 "Survival"

To Make Soap

Extract grease from animal fat by cutting the fat into small pieces and cooking them in a pot. Add enough water to the pot to keep the fat from sticking as it cooks. Cook the fat slowly, stirring frequently. After the fat is rendered, pou the grease into a container to harden.

Plase wood ashes in a container with a spout near the bottom. Pour water over the ashes, and in a separate container collect the liquid that drips out of the spout. This liquid is the potash or lye. Another method for obtaining the lye is to pour the slurry (the mixture of ashes and water) through a straining cloth.

In a cooking pot, mix two parts grease to one part potash. Place this mixture over a fire and boil it untils it thickens.

After the mixture (the soap) cools, you can use it in the semiliquid state directly from the pot, or you can pour it into a pan, alow it to harden and then cut it into bars for later use.

As someone foolish and brave enough to try to make lye soap and tallow candles (yuck!) from the basics (except for the lye--it was commercial), the best tip I got was from a butcher where we bought the 2nd batch of beef fat--he ground it all up like hamburger, so that when we rendered it, it was much easier to separate the fat from the connective tissue. This saves a lot of time in the rendering process, as you don't have particles of any size that would take longer to melt.

[WallShadow]

An easy one, right under our noses

Quick-- Age-old treatment for a tropical mosquito-borne disease--and you can find it in your supermarket!
Give up



Tonic Water. Contains Quinine. The British serving in tropical climes took to mixing it with gin to offset the terribly bitter taste, and to encourage all to partake of the necessary medicine.

So, I can see survivors running through the market desperately seeking the soft drink aisle!

[mikeo80]

Question for Grae

In the discussion of making soap, you say NO Aluminum. Why not Aluminum Pots

You repeat the warning, emphasise it, but for the life of me, I can not understand why. Please enlighten me.

My $0.02

Mike

[HorseSoldier]

Lye can react with aluminum producing bad results.

[WallShadow]

Bad results including useless soap and a ruined aluminum vessel. Two fails for the effort of one (five if you count the wastage of resources, energy, and time)

[Graebarde]

In the discussion of making soap, you say NO Aluminum. Why not Aluminum Pots

You repeat the warning, emphasise it, but for the life of me, I can not understand why. Please enlighten me.

My $0.02

Mike

As the others have stated, it's the adverse reaction of lye with aluminum. Wall's reply sums it up best.

[dragoon500ly]

What's really funny about the whole homemade soap thread is that the official survival manual doesn't have the warning not to use aluminum....pity the poor GI using his messkit to make soap!

[Graebarde]

What's really funny about the whole homemade soap thread is that the official survival manual doesn't have the warning not to use aluminum....pity the poor GI using his messkit to make soap!

It was probably written and proofed by people that had NEVER made or been around the actual making of soap. If you don't know what to do, perhaps you shouldn't be writing the article Actually I was surprised there even was a mention of making soap in the manual.

[WallShadow]

On the other (soapy) hand...

Using Pyrex or similar dishes has its own benefits--glass/porcelain is non-reactive, it's easy to remove the soap from the vessel, and you can heat the vessel itself to start the reaction. BTW, Pyrex is one of the high-temperature glass substances many lab beakers, flasks, etc., are made of.