Silver too. But it is “somewhat” more expensive. I think there are a few places in medicine where it is used.
The first crop of baby swallows are flying so the air is crowded with junior birdmen. Every time one of the ravens flys by to and from the raven nest, it looks like a B-17 under attack by a swarm of Messerschmitts. The ravens are getting pissed. Yesterday, they were upset at an eagle that was perched near their nest.
Young swallows can act like a street gang. I watched a group harassing a kingfisher once. That bird dove into the water a couple of times to escape them.
Victorians could not have chosen brass to kill germs, partly because they were the first generation to even understand that there were such things as germs and partly because they didn’t know copper killed germs. Germ theory was not widely accepted until about 1880 and the antimicrobial properties of copper weren’t observed until 1893, and it took decades to figure it out.
Brass and copper are not “instant-kill” surfaces. They take hours to kill germs. In a high-traffic area brass and copper touch surfaces aren’t going to do much to stop germs from spreading.
The use of brass and copper was for other reasons entirely than their germicidal qualities.
Yes, I was thinking of that. Surgeons were just beginning to debate and understand the value of sterile surgical procedures in about 1880. So it seems unlikely that germs were a doorknob selection motive prior to that time.
Something has left a larger-than-a-robin headless bird in front of the garage door. It might be a young raven or crow. If I had a cat …
People would not need to understand the theory or reason to have noticed the effect.
Bloomberg article today. Can’t get around the paywall so I’ll just post the headline and the AI summary:
Iran Likely Added Russian-Made Missiles as It Rebuilt Arsenal
Summary by Bloomberg AI
• Western allies believe Iran has added new-build Russian weapons to its inventory and reconstituted large swathes of its missile arsenal during the ceasefire.
• Tehran has about three-quarters of the munitions it had before the war and can easily build it up further, according to intelligence assessments.
• Iran’s ability to reconstitute its missile arsenal makes the resumption of full-scale attacks a harder decision for the US, despite claimed tactical successes.
This upsets me greatly.
@TommyJay;
A combination of silver and a sulfa–Silver sulfadiazine– is an important, valuable (no pun) component of severe burn management. Bacteria love to grow in third degree burns, and without this cream burn death rates are much higher, due to sepsis.
@neo:People would not need to understand the theory or reason to have noticed the effect.
But there’s no evidence they ever noticed any effect. Before germ theory the primary theory of disease was “miasma” which is through air. I’m not aware of any literature in the 18th or 19th century where anyone refers to brass and copper doorknobs making people healthier and that’s why they use them.
The bestselling book of the day, Household Management (1861), has lots of tips for Victorians on maintaining their health and the use of brass and copper doorknobs for that purpose is not mentioned. The emphasis is on things like washing and having clean water and fresh air and not eating spoiled meat and whatnot.
I’m afraid this narrative is just invented retroactively. That something could have happened does not mean that it actually did.
Otay, one book from 1861 has the answers.
They realized that personal hygiene was important but they knew not of bacteria and viruses.
Zoot alours!
If only, I too, knew it all.
Niketas; TommyJay:
There’s a long history around the world of knowing that copper (which is the main ingredient of brass; brass is more durable) retards or helps prevent disease. See this, for example.
Mike Plaiss:
One of the things about news concerning Iran is that one can find nearly anything. If you’re feeling pessimistic, there’s plenty to back that up. Likewise if you’re feeling optimistic. At this point, I actually don’t trust any reports, optimistic or pessimistic. I just see no reason to trust any of them.
I do believe that of course the Iranian regime will be trying to re-arm itself. That just seems like common sense to me.
I would think that brass was used primarily for its malleability. Of the metals available in the late 1800s, it was probably the best for stamping and otherwise creating the ornate designs we find in those items. While it may have had an ability to kill germs, The idea of disease being caused by germs was barely infantile. Any benefit derived was unplanned and probably unnoticed. Even today, who knows what is not happening to them and goes looking for a reason why. The multiple hour “kill time” negates any benefit, then or now, on a frequently used surface.
On Iran…just saw the UAE is sending billions to Iran to buy them off from attacking them…who knows if it’s true. As Neo says, at this point all news reports seem to be FUBAR.
Zionism, Wikipedia, and “industrial-scale knowledge poisoning”
There is a thing called a clock and circadian rhythm to human societies, i.e., people aren’t using most doorknobs 24 hours a day.
This upsets me greatly.
AFAIC, it is opinion based on mysterious “intelligence assessments”. I doubt that Iran has recovered to 75% of their prewar levels. Or that Russia has been able to supply substantial arms. But those are just my opinions.
Nothing published anywhere by anyone concerning the Iran situation is credible. Nothing. However, I have reached the point where, “Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” seems entirely reasonable. Ceterum (autem) censeo Iran et islam esse delendam.
Thanks Cicero.
The whole issue of who “knew” what about medicine and health across history is quite complex and nuanced.
I have a friend who is my age and has been a nurse her whole life and has worked across the hospital and up that food chain a ways. Now retired and re-employed as a traveling temp, her tasks are in legal and regulatory compliance, but also & especially quality control and assurance. She said one day, “I’m in the OR this morning.” “As an OR nurse?” I asked. “No, I’m certifying the quality and completeness of the re-outfitting prior to the commencement of surgeries.”
Anyway, her first husband was fully versed in Chinese and Asian medicine. She has a much more flexible and varied ideas about medicine than the typical Western dogma would teach. Not that the typical Western dogma is so terrible. Just that it doesn’t comprise everything.
This is just fiction, but I watched most the series Poldark some time ago, set in the UK back in the 18th to 19th century. There is a lot of back-and-forth between a wealthy community and a poor community with the lead character having come from the former and ending up in the latter after falling on hard times.
The wealthy tend to hire doctors and most of the time the patient ends up dead. The poor resort to limited “old wive’s remedies” that generally work much better. I was always amused when the doctor was called and the result was a disaster.
” Western allies believe Iran has added new-build Russian weapons to its inventory and reconstituted large swathes of its missile arsenal during the ceasefire.” -Mike Plaiss
Others have already commented, but why should we believe this sort of anonymous sourcing? Are these western allies of the US or Iran?
I haven’t heard the amount of missiles they are firing as a salvo, but not close to the first few weeks– mostly drones (which can still be deadly.)
IMO, the propaganda and psyops against President Trump has affected all of us. We’ll tend to believe people that obviously mean us ill will, but discount our own military/civilian leadership. Yes, President Trump is talking up the “negotiations/ceasefire” when he knows as well as anyone they aren’t “good faith” negotiators. He just said so.
But his talk of a deal has kept oil prices from spiking. In fact they continue to decline down to the low/mid $80’s/barrel. I’m fine with the yo-yo strategy to negotiations if it keeps oil prices in check.
I do believe the President is serious– Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons program or a nuclear weapon.
@om– It all depends upon which door the knob is affixed to… That is why I categorized them as “high traffic” in minimalizing the prophylactic benefit. It private homes the [unknown at the time] germs would have many other means of infecting family members. I remain unconvinced of the medicinal properties of brass door fittings on public health.
Another Mike:
The “other means” are a red herring. They weren’t probably licking the door knobs.
IIRC considerable effort was placed not so long ago in disinfection of surfaces that were handled or touched by the “unwashed masses.” Is chromium plated steel or various alloys of stainless steel superior to copper/brass? Or just glove up?
David Foster – another interesting post!
@ Steve > “Ceterum … censeo Iran et islam esse delendam.”
Extra points for extending the iconic Latin phrase about Carthage
(and more popularly today, WordPress).
“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” is often abbreviated as “Carthago delenda est” per Wikipedia.
@ Selfy – David Foster’s link is more than just interesting, it is vitally important in the LLM age.
As stated in the conclusion, the corruption of history by partisan Wikipedia editors is propagated throughout all the AI responses that depend on the on-line encyclopedia (IOW, all AI everywhere).
Although I can’t independently verify Mark’s assertions, we know that the leftist partisans at Wikipedia have been crafting the content there into biased propaganda for a long time. Of course, they deny it, but it is manifest if you scan through a few posts about things you know something about.
Wikipedia, like “60 Minutes,” survives (survived?) because of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Syndrome.
The post itself is by Jonathan, and consists of excerpts from a long Xweet thread by Mark Zlochin in Israel.
Mark Zlochin (LINK) Re dishonest post-October 7 re-writing of Wikipedia articles about Zionism and Israel.
What was dishonest?
To summarize: those behind the coordinated takeover systematically suppressed the themes of antisemitism and persecution that were the founding impulse of the [Zionist] movement – the reason Herzl and his contemporaries concluded that Jews needed a state of their own to survive. This wasn’t some minor theme in Zionism’s history. It was the reason the movement existed – and they buried it. In its place, they amplified the highly partisan and contested framing advanced by Zionism’s ideological enemies – portraying it as primarily a colonial and dispossessive project. In doing so, they replaced the movement’s own historical self-understanding with the characterization promoted by those most hostile to it, and presented the latter as if it were the neutral scholarly consensus.
Why it matters:
This is critical, because Wikipedia is one of the primary training sources for AI models – and these models don’t simply absorb what’s present, they absorb relative weight. A thematic cluster that dominates the article shapes the model’s representation of the concept far more than one that appears marginally. What was just described doesn’t just change what one webpage says – it changes the answer to the question “what is Zionism?” as delivered by search engines and AI systems to billions of people around the world.
[. . .]
And this is just one article, but as @AshleyRindsberg has documented, the same network of editors has made around one million edits across more than 10,000 articles – systematically reshaping Wikipedia’s entire coverage of Israel in the same direction. This is what systematic and deliberate industrial-scale knowledge poisoning looks like.
Zlochin’s discussion on X is worth reading in full. He is writing about Israel and Zionism but his points apply to every disputed topic. Caveat lector.
“See this…”
Not to mention this…(?)
Numbers 21:9
(For the backstory:
Numbers 21:4-9.)
AesopFan – I liked the phrase “knowledge poisoning,” in the article at David Foster’s site.
FWIW, from WSJ:
“The Fed has lost hundreds of billions of dollars due to its huge interest rate risk position. This costly risk was established under the then-chairman, Ben Bernanke, who assured Congress it would be temporary. It wasn’t. It was continued under the regimes of Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell and remains embedded in the Fed’s balance sheet today, almost 18 years after Mr. Bernanke’s original gamble.
The interest rate risk position is fundamentally simple. It consists of making long-term, fixed rate investments financed by floating rate funding: invest long, borrow short. It closely resembles the risk of a typical 1980s savings and loan. Because it took this risk, the Fed reported large net losses for the three calendar years 2023, 2024, and 2025, with the losses totaling the egregious sum of $211 billion.
This is more than four times the Fed’s total book capital of $46 billion, which means that its capital is gone, even though the Fed refuses to show any reduction in the capital on its financial statements. The Fed argues that it can on its own decide on a special accounting treatment for itself, different from everybody else, which it would never allow its regulated banks to follow.
In addition to the annual operating losses, the Fed has suffered as of March 31 mark-to-market losses of $857 billion. The Treasury securities the Fed owns are worth on the market $546 billion less than it paid for them. Its mortgage-backed securities are worth $311 billion less than it paid. The operating losses and mark-to-market losses together add up to more than $1 trillion and are 23 times the Fed’s reported book capital.”
But Not To Worry! Only paper losses!
Our Insect Overlords (The Federal Reserve).
This is why they blockef the investigation into the fed the possums and the judge did (leon,)
Greenspans behavior from 2004-06 was probably malpractive but hold my ale mug
Powell
Has the Fed staved off a depression or encouraged at least one compare 1893 before and 1929 after
Disclosure day continues to be a dissapointment
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Silver too. But it is “somewhat” more expensive. I think there are a few places in medicine where it is used.
The first crop of baby swallows are flying so the air is crowded with junior birdmen. Every time one of the ravens flys by to and from the raven nest, it looks like a B-17 under attack by a swarm of Messerschmitts. The ravens are getting pissed. Yesterday, they were upset at an eagle that was perched near their nest.
Young swallows can act like a street gang. I watched a group harassing a kingfisher once. That bird dove into the water a couple of times to escape them.
Victorians could not have chosen brass to kill germs, partly because they were the first generation to even understand that there were such things as germs and partly because they didn’t know copper killed germs. Germ theory was not widely accepted until about 1880 and the antimicrobial properties of copper weren’t observed until 1893, and it took decades to figure it out.
Brass and copper are not “instant-kill” surfaces. They take hours to kill germs. In a high-traffic area brass and copper touch surfaces aren’t going to do much to stop germs from spreading.
The use of brass and copper was for other reasons entirely than their germicidal qualities.
Yes, I was thinking of that. Surgeons were just beginning to debate and understand the value of sterile surgical procedures in about 1880. So it seems unlikely that germs were a doorknob selection motive prior to that time.
Something has left a larger-than-a-robin headless bird in front of the garage door. It might be a young raven or crow. If I had a cat …
People would not need to understand the theory or reason to have noticed the effect.
Bloomberg article today. Can’t get around the paywall so I’ll just post the headline and the AI summary:
This upsets me greatly.
@TommyJay;
A combination of silver and a sulfa–Silver sulfadiazine– is an important, valuable (no pun) component of severe burn management. Bacteria love to grow in third degree burns, and without this cream burn death rates are much higher, due to sepsis.
@neo:People would not need to understand the theory or reason to have noticed the effect.
But there’s no evidence they ever noticed any effect. Before germ theory the primary theory of disease was “miasma” which is through air. I’m not aware of any literature in the 18th or 19th century where anyone refers to brass and copper doorknobs making people healthier and that’s why they use them.
The bestselling book of the day, Household Management (1861), has lots of tips for Victorians on maintaining their health and the use of brass and copper doorknobs for that purpose is not mentioned. The emphasis is on things like washing and having clean water and fresh air and not eating spoiled meat and whatnot.
I’m afraid this narrative is just invented retroactively. That something could have happened does not mean that it actually did.
Otay, one book from 1861 has the answers.
They realized that personal hygiene was important but they knew not of bacteria and viruses.
Zoot alours!
If only, I too, knew it all.
Niketas; TommyJay:
There’s a long history around the world of knowing that copper (which is the main ingredient of brass; brass is more durable) retards or helps prevent disease. See this, for example.
Mike Plaiss:
One of the things about news concerning Iran is that one can find nearly anything. If you’re feeling pessimistic, there’s plenty to back that up. Likewise if you’re feeling optimistic. At this point, I actually don’t trust any reports, optimistic or pessimistic. I just see no reason to trust any of them.
I do believe that of course the Iranian regime will be trying to re-arm itself. That just seems like common sense to me.
I would think that brass was used primarily for its malleability. Of the metals available in the late 1800s, it was probably the best for stamping and otherwise creating the ornate designs we find in those items. While it may have had an ability to kill germs, The idea of disease being caused by germs was barely infantile. Any benefit derived was unplanned and probably unnoticed. Even today, who knows what is not happening to them and goes looking for a reason why. The multiple hour “kill time” negates any benefit, then or now, on a frequently used surface.
On Iran…just saw the UAE is sending billions to Iran to buy them off from attacking them…who knows if it’s true. As Neo says, at this point all news reports seem to be FUBAR.
Zionism, Wikipedia, and “industrial-scale knowledge poisoning”
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/76952.html
Another Mike:
There is a thing called a clock and circadian rhythm to human societies, i.e., people aren’t using most doorknobs 24 hours a day.
This upsets me greatly.
AFAIC, it is opinion based on mysterious “intelligence assessments”. I doubt that Iran has recovered to 75% of their prewar levels. Or that Russia has been able to supply substantial arms. But those are just my opinions.
Nothing published anywhere by anyone concerning the Iran situation is credible. Nothing. However, I have reached the point where, “Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out” seems entirely reasonable. Ceterum (autem) censeo Iran et islam esse delendam.
Thanks Cicero.
The whole issue of who “knew” what about medicine and health across history is quite complex and nuanced.
I have a friend who is my age and has been a nurse her whole life and has worked across the hospital and up that food chain a ways. Now retired and re-employed as a traveling temp, her tasks are in legal and regulatory compliance, but also & especially quality control and assurance. She said one day, “I’m in the OR this morning.” “As an OR nurse?” I asked. “No, I’m certifying the quality and completeness of the re-outfitting prior to the commencement of surgeries.”
Anyway, her first husband was fully versed in Chinese and Asian medicine. She has a much more flexible and varied ideas about medicine than the typical Western dogma would teach. Not that the typical Western dogma is so terrible. Just that it doesn’t comprise everything.
This is just fiction, but I watched most the series Poldark some time ago, set in the UK back in the 18th to 19th century. There is a lot of back-and-forth between a wealthy community and a poor community with the lead character having come from the former and ending up in the latter after falling on hard times.
The wealthy tend to hire doctors and most of the time the patient ends up dead. The poor resort to limited “old wive’s remedies” that generally work much better. I was always amused when the doctor was called and the result was a disaster.
” Western allies believe Iran has added new-build Russian weapons to its inventory and reconstituted large swathes of its missile arsenal during the ceasefire.” -Mike Plaiss
Others have already commented, but why should we believe this sort of anonymous sourcing? Are these western allies of the US or Iran?
I haven’t heard the amount of missiles they are firing as a salvo, but not close to the first few weeks– mostly drones (which can still be deadly.)
IMO, the propaganda and psyops against President Trump has affected all of us. We’ll tend to believe people that obviously mean us ill will, but discount our own military/civilian leadership. Yes, President Trump is talking up the “negotiations/ceasefire” when he knows as well as anyone they aren’t “good faith” negotiators. He just said so.
But his talk of a deal has kept oil prices from spiking. In fact they continue to decline down to the low/mid $80’s/barrel. I’m fine with the yo-yo strategy to negotiations if it keeps oil prices in check.
I do believe the President is serious– Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons program or a nuclear weapon.
@om– It all depends upon which door the knob is affixed to… That is why I categorized them as “high traffic” in minimalizing the prophylactic benefit. It private homes the [unknown at the time] germs would have many other means of infecting family members. I remain unconvinced of the medicinal properties of brass door fittings on public health.
Another Mike:
The “other means” are a red herring. They weren’t probably licking the door knobs.
IIRC considerable effort was placed not so long ago in disinfection of surfaces that were handled or touched by the “unwashed masses.” Is chromium plated steel or various alloys of stainless steel superior to copper/brass? Or just glove up?
David Foster – another interesting post!
@ Steve > “Ceterum … censeo Iran et islam esse delendam.”
Extra points for extending the iconic Latin phrase about Carthage
(and more popularly today, WordPress).
NOTE: Google Translate does not recognize nor allow selection of Latin.
I used this site:
https://www.translate.com/latin-english
“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” is often abbreviated as “Carthago delenda est” per Wikipedia.
@ Selfy – David Foster’s link is more than just interesting, it is vitally important in the LLM age.
As stated in the conclusion, the corruption of history by partisan Wikipedia editors is propagated throughout all the AI responses that depend on the on-line encyclopedia (IOW, all AI everywhere).
Although I can’t independently verify Mark’s assertions, we know that the leftist partisans at Wikipedia have been crafting the content there into biased propaganda for a long time. Of course, they deny it, but it is manifest if you scan through a few posts about things you know something about.
Wikipedia, like “60 Minutes,” survives (survived?) because of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Syndrome.
The post itself is by Jonathan, and consists of excerpts from a long Xweet thread by Mark Zlochin in Israel.
“See this…”
Not to mention this…(?)
Numbers 21:9
(For the backstory:
Numbers 21:4-9.)
AesopFan – I liked the phrase “knowledge poisoning,” in the article at David Foster’s site.
FWIW, from WSJ:
“The Fed has lost hundreds of billions of dollars due to its huge interest rate risk position. This costly risk was established under the then-chairman, Ben Bernanke, who assured Congress it would be temporary. It wasn’t. It was continued under the regimes of Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell and remains embedded in the Fed’s balance sheet today, almost 18 years after Mr. Bernanke’s original gamble.
The interest rate risk position is fundamentally simple. It consists of making long-term, fixed rate investments financed by floating rate funding: invest long, borrow short. It closely resembles the risk of a typical 1980s savings and loan. Because it took this risk, the Fed reported large net losses for the three calendar years 2023, 2024, and 2025, with the losses totaling the egregious sum of $211 billion.
This is more than four times the Fed’s total book capital of $46 billion, which means that its capital is gone, even though the Fed refuses to show any reduction in the capital on its financial statements. The Fed argues that it can on its own decide on a special accounting treatment for itself, different from everybody else, which it would never allow its regulated banks to follow.
In addition to the annual operating losses, the Fed has suffered as of March 31 mark-to-market losses of $857 billion. The Treasury securities the Fed owns are worth on the market $546 billion less than it paid for them. Its mortgage-backed securities are worth $311 billion less than it paid. The operating losses and mark-to-market losses together add up to more than $1 trillion and are 23 times the Fed’s reported book capital.”
But Not To Worry! Only paper losses!
Our Insect Overlords (The Federal Reserve).
This is why they blockef the investigation into the fed the possums and the judge did (leon,)
Greenspans behavior from 2004-06 was probably malpractive but hold my ale mug
Powell
Has the Fed staved off a depression or encouraged at least one compare 1893 before and 1929 after
Disclosure day continues to be a dissapointment