Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Soups
We have celebrated the return of summer with soups on the last two days. The first was made by boiling up the remains of a small Waitrose chicken with carrot and onion. Strain, add a bit of chopped smoked back. Add some finely slivered white cabbage. Add some Sharwood's noodles and then serve after a few minutes. The second was made from the broth in which a bit of beef was boiled for yesterday's lunch. Add the remains of the chicken soup. Add 3 ounces of pearl barley and stand for a while. Bring to the boil and simmer for a while. Once again, add some chopped smoked back, some finely slivered white cabbage and then serve after a few minutes.
Add some cold mashed potato to what is left and leave to stand overnight. Warm up for breakfast, to make an excellent start to the day.
While all this was going on, pondered on a scene in 'Vintner's Luck', either a charity shop job or library cast off. In any event a rather odd film, but watchable none the less.
One scene involved a young lady being prepped for a breast cancer operation. All done very tastefully, but one did get to see some flesh. The point of interest was that although she appeared to take some potion just before the off, there was plenty of screaming once the doctor got under way (behind closed doors). Now the film was set in France, in the early nineteenth century, so laudanum would have been available. Why did they not dose her up with that to the point where she did not feel the pain?
Thought 1, fairly sure that it was not routinely used in the field hospitals of the day - although I seem to remember that C. S. Forester talked about Captain Hornblower having a small bottle of the stuff - and I would have thought CSF was careful about background of that sort.
Thought 2, was that the stuff was expensive or hard to get hold of, but that does not fly because the patient was rich and the surgery was planned.
Thought 3, ask Mr. Google, who directs me to a rather odd but rather interesting site called http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/. The thought there is that the amount of laudanum needed to deal with surgical pain is almost as likely to kill you as the surgery itself. If this is the case, it was not much of a choice: do nothing and die fairly unpleasantly later; go for the laudanum and maybe die fairly soon; or, go for the surgery without laudanum for the increased chance of survival but with much pain in the short term.
There was plenty of other stuff of interest, some on the relationship between pain relief and consciousness. Some of which reminded me of the claim by R. Penrose that consciousness will only be explained by the invocation of quantum effects.
PS: still being troubled by the mysterious white background which has to be turned off geek-fashion (see June 21st). When will the blogger crew get around to fixing whatever it is? On the other hand very impressed that I can fill up my elderly data stick to beyond 99% without it squealing. A far cry from the days when discs started to squeal at not much more than half full. Maybe it helps that the number of files is and has always been quite small.
Add some cold mashed potato to what is left and leave to stand overnight. Warm up for breakfast, to make an excellent start to the day.
While all this was going on, pondered on a scene in 'Vintner's Luck', either a charity shop job or library cast off. In any event a rather odd film, but watchable none the less.
One scene involved a young lady being prepped for a breast cancer operation. All done very tastefully, but one did get to see some flesh. The point of interest was that although she appeared to take some potion just before the off, there was plenty of screaming once the doctor got under way (behind closed doors). Now the film was set in France, in the early nineteenth century, so laudanum would have been available. Why did they not dose her up with that to the point where she did not feel the pain?
Thought 1, fairly sure that it was not routinely used in the field hospitals of the day - although I seem to remember that C. S. Forester talked about Captain Hornblower having a small bottle of the stuff - and I would have thought CSF was careful about background of that sort.
Thought 2, was that the stuff was expensive or hard to get hold of, but that does not fly because the patient was rich and the surgery was planned.
Thought 3, ask Mr. Google, who directs me to a rather odd but rather interesting site called http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/. The thought there is that the amount of laudanum needed to deal with surgical pain is almost as likely to kill you as the surgery itself. If this is the case, it was not much of a choice: do nothing and die fairly unpleasantly later; go for the laudanum and maybe die fairly soon; or, go for the surgery without laudanum for the increased chance of survival but with much pain in the short term.
There was plenty of other stuff of interest, some on the relationship between pain relief and consciousness. Some of which reminded me of the claim by R. Penrose that consciousness will only be explained by the invocation of quantum effects.
PS: still being troubled by the mysterious white background which has to be turned off geek-fashion (see June 21st). When will the blogger crew get around to fixing whatever it is? On the other hand very impressed that I can fill up my elderly data stick to beyond 99% without it squealing. A far cry from the days when discs started to squeal at not much more than half full. Maybe it helps that the number of files is and has always been quite small.
# posted by Jim @ 3:48 AM 
