Sunday, January 12, 2014

New Future: Pharmacy Technician

Get excited. Handling Drugs.

I've been informed that my job requires a cool PTCB. So I'm pretty stoked to get, yet another, piece of fancy paper that states my name and will undoubtingly collect hordes of dust bunnies. So I cracked open this baby, to try and get a head start before classes begin. Check out all the cool things I learned today: 
1. A little Greek Mythology.
  • Pandora's Box - Zeus created, Pandora, and had her collect "gifts" for man. Zeus being Zeus, tricked her and basically the box contained disease and pestilence. Sweet.
  • Greek god of Medicine - Aesculapius (How do you even pronounce that?) was this bad-ass physician that kept a bunch of people alive. Pretty awesome dude, until it pissed off Pluto, because he wasn't getting enough people coming to the underworld. So what does Zeus do? At Pluto's request, Zeus strikes Aesculapius down with a lightning bolt. What a dick. To save face, Zeus pronounces him as "god of medicine" and Aesculapius' daughter, Panacea, becomes the goddess of medicinal herbs.  
2. Got in touch with Nature.
  • Two Greek physicians, Hippocrates and Dioscorides, wrote about the amazing ability of the white willow tree bark which the active ingredient is salicylic acid. This was the birth of the wonder drug we know as Aspirin. *except it's now acetylsalicylic acid
  • Malaria, a pretty crappy disease spread by my all time favorite thing to despise, mosquitoes. Luckily for us, this Peruvian Cinchona tree has the answer to that problem. The bark contains, Quinine, which the Spanish priests sent back to Europe, after most likely P&R'ing the Incas/Mayans/Aztec, which helped them cope with the deadly disease.  
  • Zoom back to 1884, where Carl Koller, who used the first local anesthetic, cocaine. Imagine going to the local dentist and them chalking up your mouth with cocaine before they amped up those drills. But now, since we all know, cocaine is quite harmful when abused,  procaine aka Novocain was created. 
3. Ancient Alchemists.
  • Ancient Sumerians (~4000 B.C.) - usually you only hear about this civilization when it comes to Ancient Aliens and Theories - but they allegedly used about 250 natural medicines which are still used today!   
  • Chinese Emperor Shen Nung (~3000 B.C.), ate random plants and natural materials to determine which were poisonous and which were beneficial. One of the first "trial and error drug testing" he believed to have 365 herbs for health treatments. Let's be honest, no Emperor is eating random plants. He's got a gang of servants that eat the plants, then they pray to Buddha that they don't get the short stick and eat the poisonous ones. 
  • Greatest Islamic physician, Avicenna (another sweet name, might I add), wrote a five volume encyclopedia. Each encyclopedia was a different discipline within medical healing. His work was so legit that it dominated European medical practices for centuries. 
  • Indians of Mexico were to have more than 1,200 drugs that were used for treatment. One herbal treatment which is still used today would be the the plant, Sarsaparilla. It's said to help with kidney and bladder ailments. 
They even included a 4 page timeline of "medical" high points through out history, dating way back to 4000 B.C. to present day. I'm thinking, how do you date some of this? Also, this timeline is pretty solid evidence that the human race has only been on earth for 6014 years.
The most interesting part -to me, and it may have only occurred to weird circumstances- was that I totally forgot about, Dolly the sheep. First mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. 
At the time, I was watching, The Island. <fun fact: this flick, caused me to get kicked out of my first movie theater.> Which, I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so if you plan on watching it. Stop reading, please. 
It basically is about an insurance policy that makes a "product" or clone of you so that you will have all organs/limbs readily available, if and when, your human body breaks down. Crazy idea, but then I looked at the dates and this movie came out a year before Dolly was even created.  
Sent me down a rabbit hole of, what has happened to that industry? Is that what they are doing a mile under New Mexico? Or has it shifted to become, stem cell research? I've seen where this man is actually growing a new nose on his forehead, to replace the one he lost. Or is the Zombie Apocalypse a repercussion of cloning gone bad?
-That last sentence is where I stopped. As it was comical at how terrible these ideas were becoming.-

Let's hope the next 18 chapters have some worthwhile information in them or else this will be quite a staggering 6 week feat. Until next time.



Cherrio