Did you know?

[facthunter]

Some of you blokes would talk the Leg OFF an iron Pot. I'd rather be average than MEAN, anytime. Nev

[pmccarthy]

Life at boarding school, and in mining camps has given me a very good appreciation of the bell curve. 

[red750]

The first civil aircraft registrations in Australia were prefixed G (for Great Britain) followed by AU.

 

Full details here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[old man emu]

I'm posting this link to a video, not for the subject matter, but to get you to look at the background images. The video is about how sheep fixed a problem with weed control on a solar farm in China. We have talked about grazing sheep under solar panels, but what astonished me was the size of this solar farm.

 

 

[red750]

[facthunter]

Would Killing Hitler have stopped the war?  I'm not sure about that. Russia's Way of countering Hitler's invasion  ended WW2..Nev

[red750]

This article was posted on Facebook. Very interesting.

 

For fifty years, he was one of the British Empire's most brilliant surgeons—and after he died, the world tried to erase everything he'd accomplished because of what they found when they examined his body.

London, 1809. A slight young man barely five feet tall enrolled at Edinburgh University medical school. His name was James Barry. He was brilliant, abrasive, and determined to become a surgeon.

He was also living a secret that would remain hidden for the next fifty-six years.

Barry excelled at Edinburgh, graduating with honors in 1812. He joined the British Army as a medical officer and was posted to Cape Town, South Africa in 1816.

What happened there would change surgical history.

In 1826, a woman in Cape Town was dying in childbirth. The baby couldn't be delivered naturally. In that era, this was essentially a death sentence—both mother and child would die. Cesarean sections had been attempted for centuries, but almost never successfully. The mother nearly always died from blood loss, infection, or shock.

Dr. James Barry decided to try anyway.

He performed the surgery with precision and care that was extraordinary for the time. He controlled bleeding meticulously. He worked quickly to minimize shock. He managed post-operative care with techniques far ahead of standard practice.

Both mother and baby survived.

It was one of the first successful cesarean sections in Africa, and one of the earliest in the British Empire where both patients lived. The child was named James Barry Munnik Bekker in honor of the surgeon who'd saved both their lives.

But Barry's achievements went far beyond one surgery.

Over his fifty-year military career, he revolutionized medical care across the British Empire. He improved conditions in military hospitals and prisons. He advocated for clean water supplies and proper sewage systems—critical public health measures before germ theory was understood. He insisted on treating soldiers, prisoners, and enslaved people with the same medical standards as officers.

He fought constantly with superior officers who thought he was arrogant and difficult. He was court-martialed multiple times for insubordination—usually for refusing to provide inadequate medical care or for treating people his superiors thought didn't deserve treatment.

He was promoted anyway, eventually becoming Inspector General of Military Hospitals—one of the highest medical positions in the British Army.

Barry served in South Africa, Mauritius, Jamaica, St. Helena, Trinidad, Malta, Corfu, and Canada. Everywhere he went, he improved medical standards and saved lives. He was known as brilliant, temperamental, eccentric, and absolutely uncompromising about patient care.

He kept everyone at a distance. He never married. He had a long-term manservant named John who was fiercely protective of his privacy. He wore padded clothing and walked with a peculiar gait. People found him strange, but his medical skills were undeniable.

In 1865, Dr. James Barry died in London of dysentery at approximately age 70.

And then the secret came out.

The woman preparing Barry's body for burial, Sophia Bishop, discovered that Barry had been assigned female at birth. Moreover, she claimed there were marks suggesting Barry had given birth at some point.

Bishop told the army. The army told the newspapers. The scandal exploded.
Victorian society couldn't comprehend what they'd learned. The newspapers struggled with how to report it. Medical journals debated what it meant. The army sealed Barry's records.
And almost immediately, people began trying to erase Barry's achievements.

Instead of celebrating one of the British Empire's most accomplished surgeons, Victorian society focused on scandal and deception. Instead of acknowledging fifty years of medical innovation, they obsessed over Barry's body.

The person who'd performed groundbreaking surgery, who'd revolutionized public health across multiple continents, who'd fought for the medical treatment of the most vulnerable people in the empire—all of that got buried under shock and gossip.

Barry had specifically requested in writing that there be no post-mortem examination after death. That request was ignored.

Barry had lived as a man for over fifty years, had built a career as a man, had been buried with military honors as a man. After death, all of that was suddenly called into question.

Here's what we know for certain: James Barry was an extraordinary surgeon who saved countless lives and advanced medical practice across the British Empire.

We know Barry performed one of the first successful cesarean sections in Africa. We know Barry fought for sanitation, clean water, and medical care for marginalized people. We know Barry challenged medical orthodoxy and military hierarchy to improve patient outcomes.

We know Barry wanted privacy and specifically requested no examination after death—a final wish that was violated.

The rest—how Barry understood their own identity, why Barry lived as a man, what that meant to them—we can't know. Barry never explained publicly. The only person who knew was Barry, and Barry took that knowledge to the grave.

What we do know is that Barry's medical achievements deserve to be remembered.
The child born by cesarean in Cape Town in 1826 grew up, had his own children, and his descedants are alive today—all because James Barry had the skill and courage to attempt a surgery most surgeons wouldn't try.

The soldiers, prisoners, and colonized people who received medical care because Barry insisted they deserved treatment—their lives mattered because Barry fought for them.

The hospitals that improved sanitation, the cities that built clean water systems, the medical standards that were raised—all because Barry wouldn't accept "good enough" when lives were at stake.
For over a century after Barry's death, these achievements were footnotes to scandal. Medical history books focused more on Victorian shock than on surgical innovation.

Only recently have historians begun to properly recognize Barry's contributions to medicine and public health.

Today, there are plays, books, and documentaries about James Barry. Medical schools teach about Barry's innovations. Public health experts cite Barry's advocacy for sanitation and clean water.
The child from that 1826 cesarean, James Barry Munnik Bekker, grew up to become a prominent South African. His grandson, James Barry Munnik Hertzog, became Prime Minister of South Africa.
Three generations descended from a surgery most doctors said was impossible—all because one surgeon refused to accept that "impossible" meant letting patients die.

Dr. James Barry lived for fifty years as a military surgeon, saving lives and challenging medical orthodoxy.

Whatever else Barry was, whatever secrets Barry kept, whatever identity Barry held privately—those achievements are undeniable.

The world tried to erase them after Barry's death.

We shouldn't let that erasure stand.

Because James Barry proved that brilliant medical care, fierce advocacy for patients, and revolutionary public health thinking matter more than society's rigid expectations.

And that's true regardless of what anyone discovered after Barry died.

In honor of Dr. James Barry (c. 1789-1865), Inspector General of Military Hospitals, who saved countless lives and whose medical innovations outlasted Victorian scandal.

 

 

[onetrack]

Interesting story, but I'm of the opinion, the man in the photo is not Dr Barry - because the face in the photo is a totally different-shaped face to the paintings and portraits of Barry.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Barry_(surgeon)#/media/File:James_Barry.jpg

 

https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/how-history-keeps-ignoring-james-barry/

[nomadpete]

Did you know....

 

Getting old is when the first painful stretch of the day is wiping yer ass 2nd thing in the morning...

[red750]

51 minutes ago, onetrack said:

I'm of the opinion, the man in the photo is not Dr Barry

Your images appear to be at a much younger age. All 3 have an feminine look about the. If you do a websearch for Dr James Barry and click on Images, the image attached to my article appears numerous times, as well as your images.

 

[onetrack]

That's no guarantee the photo is correct, plenty of websites simply use the same photo without doing "due diligence" checks. Age doesn't affect the essential shape of ones face, the paintings and portraits show a long thin face with a pointed chin, not the very round face of the gent in the photo. Plus the gent in the photo is definitely a man, whereas the paintings and portraits show a definite femineness.

[pmccarthy]

According to this website the picture is of merchant Joseph Barry. See https://oh2e.tumblr.com/

[red750]

Here's another one for you to pull apart. Also from FB.

 

Billy Sing.docx

 

 

[onetrack]

I knew and have read about the life and achievements of the WW1 sniper Billy Sing, he certainly was poorly treated by many overtly racist people at the time.

Wikipedia has a good informative page on him, and books have been written about him. The writer of the article above, appears to be American, as all the wording uses U.S. English spelling.

[old man emu]

The Yanks simply have to differ from the rest of the world in most things. One of those is how they write dates. While the rest of the  world goes DD/MM/YYYY, the Yanks go MM/DD/YYYY.  There is only one day of the year (I think) when the Yanks' format is the same as the rest of the World's - the first day of the year 01/01/YYYY. 

 

Also have you noticed that the Yanky way of saying a date is becoming more common? How often are you hearing a date spoken of as Month/Day/Year, as in January First?

[Jerry_Atrick]

02/02, 03/03, etc are the same...

 

I often hear January the first and similar for other dates

Edited 15 hours ago by Jerry_Atrick

[old man emu]

7 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

02/02, 03/03, etc are the same...

Didn't think of those. It was too early in the morning for analytical thought when I posted.