h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Actually, having given it some more though, I should be more precise:

In the right area, but directionally, the principle is almost the diametric opposite.

@115.

Nope GT.

they were prayed to death, when they got ill instead of propper medical care the staff would pray for them

and god killed them

he likes killing kids

look around you

rant

wrong thread

well did god do it

Nope. Just people

Too clean, then.

Or something like that.

TRiG.

TRiG +3

Correct - an obsessive obsession with hygiene was the other cause. I'll explain all in the write up.

Well done!

obsessive obsession - that made sense in my head, but now I come to read it back I wonder what was I thinking?

post92

Ooops Clive!!!

You missed that one!!!




GT

Actually no, I've been busy tonight so not done the right up yet. I'll explain it then but I'll let Hd have a DGI +1

In 1915 one physician Henry Chapin canvassed American foundling homes and reported in most every child died before the age of two. The situation in hospitals was only marginally less horrific.

A child hospitalised for more that two weeks would start to show signs of "Hospitalism", as it came to be known, a listless wasting away, involving weakening of muscles, loss of reflexes greatly increased risk of gastrointestinal and lung infection and all despite adequate food intake. Mortality rates had gone up 10 fold with the onset of Hospitalism.

Hospitals were dangerous places to be back then. The assumption was that the gastrointestinal problems were exacerbated by the cramped conditions, a decade later and Pneumonia was thought to be responsible.

What is now clear is that Hospitalism lay at the intersection of two ideas of the time, namely a worship of sterile aseptic conditions at all costs and from the (overwhelmingly male) paediatric establishment a belief that the touching, holding, nurturing of infants was sentimental foolishness.

Most child-rearing experts notions would be considered cold and austere by today's standards. In the first decade on the 20th Century, the equivalent of Dr Spock - one Dr Luther Holt - authored the best-selling parenting book of the time "The care and feeding of children" (15 editions between 1894 and 1915)

It contained within it such gems warning parents of the adverse effects of the "viscious practice" of using a cradle, picking up the child when it cried or handling the baby too often. Visiting hours to children's wards by parents were restricted to only a few hours.

Such was the prevailing attitude, one largely of children should be seen and not heard, that when one paediatrician from Chicago's memorial Hospital instructed his staff to pick up and "amuse" each infant several times a day was being hailed a s a radical several yars later.

By 1942, developmental psychology had developed enough to proffer an answer to the troubling cases of hospitalism in the decades previous and New Yorker Harry Bawkin, named it. "emotional depravation"

An instructive experiment at Mcgill University using rats servses to make the point: When an infant rat is licked and groomed by it's mother, the pup secrets growth hormones that trigger cell division Harry Harlow found similar effects in studying primates, in his infamous 'depravation' experiments.

A rare (thankfully) but terrible affliction often seen in cases of severe neglect and abuse (the locking in the basement coal-sluice and beaten kind) is psychosocial dwarfism, a failure in young children to lengthen their bones (to literally "grow") - is related to thos same lack of stimulus and hormone response.

Now human children aren't rats or all too often the victims of serious abuse but it is instructive to see this pattern of how neglect ad growth and survival are linked across species.


Back to hospitalism - despite adequate nutrition, a sufficient number of blankets and various medical menaces kept at bay, the children would waste way from emotional depravation, as they became depressed and listless their immune systems would weaken and soon those gastrointestinal and lung infections would find them.

At which point the feverish medical enthusiasm for aseptic isolation would kick in.

Seeing the infections as the cause rather than the effect, the goal that that they would not be touched by human hands carrying infection. And so the children were further excluded in the belief that better hygiene would see them well, when in fact it was killing them. Mortality rates soared.

QI - A Germ of a Good Idea (aka: Cause of Death IV)
------------------------




Correct (+3)
------------------------
Taff (18) - "Less than 10% survived."
Mal (73) - "Lack of Human contact "
Pebble (82) - "Isolation" & "Self-fulfilling Prophecy."
Pebble (117) - "Don't mollycoddle them!"
TRiG (126) - "Too Clean"


QI Bonus (+6)
------------------------
Taff (56) - "Bread Mould"
Rod (59) - "Ergot and The Salem Witches."
Bob (68) - "Iron age Grain Storage"



DGI Bonus (+1)
------------------------
Feisor (52) - "failure to thrive"
*tricky to score this one, yes that's the thing, but it was the interaction with the mentality of excess hygiene I was after.*

TRiG (69) - "Give them a hug"

HygienicDispenser (92) - "they were washed to death"
*Just to explain my reasoning again, the cause was the isolation in the name of hygiene, this had the opposite effect of increasing the cleaning regime but rather minimised it. So close but too much in the wrong direction.*

TRiG (109) - "free from influence"
Tzjin (115) - "Depression, then Death!"



Klaxon (-5)
------------------------
Taff (18) - "The Spanish Flu"
Taff (28) - "Typhoid"
King Bomba (33) - "Tuberculosis"
Taff (36) - "Malaria"
Taff (36) - "Dysentery"
Taff (36) - "Cholera"
Taff (36) - "Measles"
Taff (36) - "Small Pox"
Taff (38) - "the 'flu"




Elf Bonus (+2)
------------------------
Clive.




Total to be added or subtracted.
------------------------
Pebble +6
Rod +6
Bob Stafford +6
TRiG +5
Mal +3
Clive +2
Feisor +1
Tzjin +1
Hygienic Dispenser +1
King Bomba -5
Taff - 31



Well how rare is this: a three-way tie for top place? GROUP HUG!!!

For TRiG in second place jelly and ice-cream on your birthday because you are super fantastic!

In third palce - a medical miracle - it's Mal with perfectly wholesome +3.

But what's the plaintive, animal, wailing noise? Beaten, broken ignored and locked in the coal scuttle because, well frankly, he deserves it - it's Taff with -31

I work hard on those summaries. Nice to know they amuse someone other than just me.

Excellent, Clive. summary executions included.