#hazardoustoothers

"Suxamethonium chloride", that is:

The administration of sux is part of the rapid sequence intubation (RSI) protocol, which means a medical team is actually trying to keep you alive – they’ve just got to paralyze you do to it.  If you’re being intubated, you’re airway is blocked and the RSI protocol is employed to get a breathing tube down your throat.  To get this tube in quickly, they’ll paralyze and sedate you.

Sedation means you won’t be conscious when the paralysis sets in.  Respiratory support means something will be breathing for you when the muscles involved in respiration stop working.  In 5 – 10 minutes, a clinical dose of sux wears off as it’s rapidly metabolized by your body.  The sedation will likely last longer.  The goal is that by the time you’re awake, your breathing has been stabilized and perhaps other medical issues have been (or are being) addressed.  This is the intended use of sux.  But, like many chemicals, people can use it for nefarious reasons.

This, dear reader, is a falciform amputation knife. It was the popular tool of choice by 18th-century surgeons who preferred to cut through the skin and muscle before amputating the bone. To do this, the surgeon would take the falciform knife, hook it around the injured or infected limb, and cut in a circle to separate the flesh and muscle from the bone. After this had been completed, the surgeon would then use a surgical saw to cut off the remaining appendage. A good surgeon could do all this in under 2 minutes. Unfortunately, very few people survived such trauma.

By the 19th century, this technique had fallen from fashion as surgeons opted to use a straight-edged knife which would allow a flap of skin to remain after the limb had been removed.  That skin would then be used to cover the stump, providing protection to what would otherwise have been an open wound.