Nothing new under the su.., p.25
Nothing New Under the Sun, page 25
“I can’t wait for the race to start,” Bashir could barely hide his excitement. Hassan Al-Suleiman, the Sultan of Syria, assigned this special mission to him and he was not going to disappoint his Sultan.
Bashir had just passed the halfway mark, leaving another 21 kilometers to go. He crossed the halfway point in exactly 42 minutes; the second man would only reach that point in 63 minutes - 21 minutes behind Bashir.
The sports commentators were dumbfounded. They sensed that something was going on. No human being could do this. No one in history had even come close to this pace over that distance. In Saudi Arabia, journalists and commentators knew how to choose their words very carefully, and they kept on singing the praises of Bashir Mohammed and his wonderful performance. When they looked at each other, however, they were shaking their heads and whispering behind their hands that something very strange was playing out right in front of their eyes.
The Pakistani doctor sitting close to the screen blinked his eyes. He was sure he saw Bashir cough. Checking the monitors, he noted that the runner’s heart rate was slightly up from a few seconds ago, but the oxygen levels remained constant. Must be my imagination.
Not a minute later, they all observed Bashir coughing twice in short succession. They looked at each other. “How much more time before the effects of the injection wear off?” The Pakistani asked the Bulgarian.
“He should last another hour at least. He should be able to finish with ease.”
About three kilometers from the finish line, the TV cameras flicked back to the rest of the athletes. They looked tortured, the pain and anguish clearly visible on their faces and bodies. Many were bent over, sweat streaming from their faces and bodies, their muscles cramping. The cameras flipped back to the leading runner, only two kilometers from the finish line, on his way to smashing the world marathon record by 40 minutes.
Bashir’s world record would never be recognized. It was a fun event, and there were no Olympic officials to record and verify his time.
As the scientists watched, Bashir crossed the 41-kilometer mark, coughing again. The monitors showed an increased heart rate, rapidly dropping oxygen levels, and he was sweating more than at any other time during the race. It looked as if his skin has turned pale.
As the finish line came into view, Bashir closed his eyes. Not far to go. The Sultan will be very happy. I am going to be a hero when I get back.
He coughed again and wiped his mouth with the back of his right hand. When he took his hand away, he noticed the streaks of bright red blood. What the hell? Where is that coming from?
He dashed across the finish line and raised his arms in victory. The crowds were screaming their excitement. Bashir felt dizzy; his ears were ringing, and the people and buildings started to spin. He started coughing again, and everything went dark around him. He didn’t see or feel it, but one of the TV cameras and a few hundred spectators caught a glimpse of the blood streaming from his mouth.
“Well, now we know it works!” the Bulgarian shouted excitedly as he opened the back door of the van and scrambled out with his two colleagues to collect Bashir from the ground and carry him to the van, away from the prying eyes.
TV crews, journalists, and spectators descended on the van – all of them screaming and shouting questions and comments. What is going on? Who is this man? Where did he train? What is wrong with him? Why is he bleeding?
As the van doors closed, the Chinese man put the van into gear and drove out of the crowd. The tinted windows helped to protect them from curious stares. They were not allowed to answer any questions. They had to get Bashir out of there, to a private and secure location quickly. They had many tests to run on him, and he didn’t look all too well.
As they left, someone from the crowd yelled, “You have drugged that man! There is no way any man can run like that without drugs!”
“How do you feel?” the Pakistani asked when Bashir moaned and started opening his eyes.
Bashir coughed again, and more blood spat out of his mouth. He held his stomach. “Incredible race … never got tired, ran flat-out the whole time …” he stuttered as he whispered into the Pakistani’s ear.
All of a sudden, Bashir’s body went into a spasm. He pulled his knees up and started vomiting.
“The side effect is kicking in fully now,” the Bulgarian commented.
Bashir struggled to raise his upper body from the floor and fought to speak. “You said … no side effects!” His face was contorted and ashen, his eyes were rolling, and he was struggling to breathe.
The Pakistani tried to display a sympathetic look. “Sorry Bashir, something went wrong. It was not supposed to happen. The pressure within the capillaries in your lungs has increased, and they are bursting open.”
“You bastards! You knew! You …” he fell back to the floor, gave one more cough and stopped breathing. He was dead.
The Pakistani smiled. “The trial was a success, although it’s a pity the patient died.”
“What a glorious death for a brave warrior!” The Bulgarian chuckled to the amusement of his two colleagues.
***
Three days after the race. Washington D.C., USA.
An important looking man in a charcoal business suit lifted his glass filled with very expensive whiskey. “God underestimated man. There are no limits to man’s capacity. Within the next two years, we will prove that.”
His two guests raised their glasses. “Hear, hear!” they replied enthusiastically and drank a toast to their host’s words.
“We will have to keep on monitoring those researchers out there and pass on all the information we can get to our guys over in Saudi.” The man in the suit said.
They all raised their glasses in acknowledgment and toasted again.
Chapter 36
Little mythical golden birds
Earlier in the evening, Carter went to the cellar and got a bottle of Napa Valley, Cardinale 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, which he opened and left to breathe. He and Mackenzie curled up in each other’s arms on the sofa in front of the fireplace, Liam fast asleep after the day’s outdoor activities.
Mackenzie held out her glass for a refill. “I’ve finally caught up with the information the team translated for me before we arrived. Every day I’ve been finding new things in those translations. It’s been very exciting. I just can’t believe that all this information is available, but so few want to read it.”
“Story of my life Mackie, I have always said it’s all out there waiting to be uncovered. We just have to go out, lift the veil and see it. But as you know, it’s hard to change your mind, and it’s very hard to admit that you’ve been wrong.”
“Yeah, that’s so true. I have firsthand experience.”
Carter smiled. “Well, maybe in your case it was a bit different. Will and I didn’t give you much of a chance did we?”
“Yes, there is that of course, but it still took an effort to admit I'd been barking up the wrong tree. Can I show you what I have discovered, or unveiled as you said, so far?”
“Oh yes,” he smiled. “I was going to ask had you not offered to do so.”
Carter relished the way Mackenzie’s eyes lit up as she pulled her laptop closer and opened it.
“I've organized the information into a few main categories. You see here: medical care and programs, dentistry, surgical instruments and surgery. Under each of them, I’ve stored the related information I got from the team.”
“I’m eager to see what you have there.”
“Okay. Let’s start with medical care and programs.”
Carter took a sip of his wine, picked up the laptop, and started reading. “The Chinese in 300 B.C. already had government medical aid. Doctors received their compensation from the government and medical aid was free to all?”
Mackenzie nodded.
“Well, I suggest you send that to Congress and tell them to get their act together. What they have been struggling to do for decades can’t be that difficult, considering it was done more than 2,500 years ago already.”
“Good idea. They might just learn something in the process.” She laughed.
Carter kept on reading about Chinese pharmacologists, specialist doctors, and veterinarians dating back to hundreds of years B.C.
Excavations at the Great Pyramid in Egypt showed workers received excellent medical care. There was a man who lived for 14 years after a leg amputation; another survived brain surgery. Skeletons found onsite showed broken arms bound with wooden splints. The Egyptians had contraceptive jelly and urine pregnancy tests and could determine the gender of an unborn child. In Alexandria, they had a college of medicine to train surgeons and GP’s.
In India 4,000 years ago, they had immunization and inoculation programs. Two thousand years ago, they had a pharmaceutical encyclopedia listing over 500 herbal drugs and drug prescriptions with instructions, such as take before going to bed, or take twice a day.
“So they didn’t have the ‘take two and call me in the morning’ prescription back then?” He quipped.
“No.” She laughed. “Well, not as far as I can find.”
Carter shook his head. “I think its gross negligence to be as deliberately ill-informed and self-centered as our medical scientists are. I am getting the impression they don’t want to hear about these things.”
“Carter, what you have seen so far is minor. Wait ‘til you read the rest of what I’ve found, especially in the surgery folder. And as you know, I’ve just begun to scratch the surface.”
Carter opened the dentistry folder and read about discoveries of a type of cement filling in tooth cavities found in Egypt. In other parts of the world, discoveries were made of crowns and cement fillings in cavities that were still holding after 1,500 years - even gold inlays, caps, and artificial teeth.
“Those are all techniques and procedures which we claim to have discovered quite recently,” she remarked. “If you ask me, I would say we rediscovered them.”
“It is indeed as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes,” Carter contemplated as he quoted. ‘That which has been is what will be. That which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun’.
“I have to agree with Solomon, especially if one looks at all this medical stuff and what you have unearthed in Cusco and Egypt already.”
“Okay let me see what else you have here,” and he turned his attention to reading about surgical instruments found by archeologists.
He started reading aloud. “’Obsidian instruments, a thousand times sharper than modern day platinum surgical blades - so sharp they do not bruise the cells.’ I wonder if Obsidian instruments could transform surgery, especially today’s cosmetic and plastic surgery. What do you think?”
“Definitely, but as you know, to persuade physicians to start using them will be another battle.”
Carter continued reading about discoveries at Pompeii, Italy, where they found adhesives, tourniquets, forceps, gauze, absorbent cotton bandages, plaster of Paris, and a whole raft of surgical instruments made as well as anything used today. Even surgical screws as delicate and capable as anything we have now.
He was shaking his head in amazement when he read about the discovery of more than 100 different surgical instruments in India, dating back to 500 B.C. that included curved needles for sutures.
In Egypt, they found instruments equaling those of modern times such as forceps, scalpels, and clamps. Discoveries in other countries around the world brought evidence of artificial nourishment by tubes and life-support systems.
He shook his head. “Mackie, this is mind-blowing stuff you have here.”
“Well, I have you and Will to thank for all the pleasure I am getting out of this research. It’s still early days, but it appears to me that ancient medical practice was much, much more than herbs and witchdoctors. I get the impression that advanced medical science existed worldwide at some stage in the distant past, and we are only now re-learning it, and I can’t help but add, the hard way.”
“Yes, that's surely the case. We will probably never know it all, but we can be pretty confident about the wealth of medical knowledge and skill that existed before us. This information sketches an entirely different picture of the practice of medicine millennia ago than what we have always been led to believe.”
“Wouldn’t it be great to find a site somewhere that will reveal all this information in detail?”
“Yes, like the medical version of Cusco or the City of Lights. However, I can’t help but think what an uphill battle is awaiting the one who will try and convince the FDA that some ancient medicine could actually be beneficial for us today.”
“I guess we will have to cross that bridge when we come to it. But it's definitely not going to be easy.”
Carter refilled their glasses, sat down, pulled Mackenzie closer to him, and started reading the next folder.
His eyes almost immediately caught an article published in the National Enquirer on September 10, 1972. William Dick and Henry Gris wrote about a delicate head surgery performed 3,500 years ago, at Ishtikunny, near Lake Sevan in Armenia.
Professor Adronik Jgaharian, anthropologist and director of operative surgery at the Erivan Medical Institute in Soviet Armenia, performed the examination and reported his findings in the article.
Apparently, surgeons removed bone splinters from a woman’s brain after a blow to the head that punctured her skull and fractured the inner layers of the cranial bone. They did it by cutting a larger hole around the puncture, removed the splinters penetrating the brain and she lived for another 15 to 18 years.
“How challenging would surgery like that be for us today?” he asked.
“I emailed the article to the Dean with that same question. He was stunned to learn about this and commented that even by modern standards, the operation would be considered extremely challenging.”
“Ishtikunny, Lake Sevan in Armenia?” Carter mumbled. “That’s a place we will have to visit for a look-see. What do you think?”
“Life with you is never going to be boring Carter Devereux. Of course we will have to go!”
“Just let me know when we have to start packing. I’ve never been there; I like to see new places, especially new old ones.”
“Okay. What you’ve read so far is background information. The stuff that has me really excited is in the surgical folders.”
“Do you think you are getting closer to finding something about respirocytes?”
“I haven’t found anything explicitly describing it yet, but considering ancient Egyptians had a plasma generator, and some civilizations were doing blood transfusions, I’m sure I’m heading in the right direction.”
She flipped to the next document and pointed to it.
“In Peru, a carving was found that shows pregnant women donating blood to organ transplant recipients. It had me wondering if there could possibly be a yet undiscovered substance, such as a hormone, produced by pregnant women, which could prevent the body’s immune system rejection response.”
“That’s a fascinating thought.”
“You will see there is evidence of open-heart surgery about 1700 years ago. There were lung, kidney, and liver operations - even organ transplants. In Peru and China 400 B.C., it looks like they had the ability to perform heart transplants.”
“What! A heart transplant?”
“Yes, there are images showing how a heart was taken out of the patient and a new heart implanted while tubes were feeding him with infusions.”
“If I’m not mistaken the first heart transplant …” Carter hesitated for a moment, “in our time, was performed in South Africa in the late sixties.”
“Let me see.” Mackenzie took the laptop and found the file. “Yes, it was December 3, 1967, by Professor Christiaan Barnard, performed at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The patient’s name was Louis Washkansky – he lived for 18 days after the operation.”
“And let me guess, at the time it was heralded as the biggest medical achievement in human history?”
“Verbatim, from one of the articles here.” She laughed. “Listen to this. In Peru, the discovery of stone carvings from the pre-Inca era, led Dr. E. Stanton Moxey, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, to believe that open-heart surgery was a known procedure to the medical community of that civilization. Here’s what he said, ‘In the photographs of stone carvings depicting heart surgery, the detail is clear, the seven blood vessels coming from the heart are faithfully copied. The whole thing looks like a cardiac operation, and the surgeons seem to be using techniques that fit with our modern knowledge’”.
“Nonetheless, the world’s scientists of today are flattering themselves with the idea that never before has there been such a smart lot of masterminds. To me, it sounds more like pride capped with ignorance,” Carter said, shaking his head.
“The thing that excites me the most about all these bits and pieces of information from old documents, clay tablets, and pictures on cave walls from across the world, is the feeling that there are many more sources somewhere, waiting to be discovered. It’s as if the authors of those bits and pieces were intentionally leaving clues and pointers to a time before their own, a time when much more knowledge existed.”
“That’s the essence of archeology Mackie. You sometimes have to run after the sniff of an old oil rag - bits and pieces left for us by our ancestors long ago.
“Many great discoveries have been made from what was once believed to be myths. Just think about the myth of the lost golden gardens. Jacob found that little golden bird and it led us to Cusco and the mythical golden gardens.
“Troy was always believed to be a mythical place, a flight of fantasy of the Greek writer, Homer. Nevertheless, a German businessman, Heinrich Schliemann didn’t want to believe it was a myth and hunted down every clue he could find. His reward was the discovery of the city of Troy in northwest Turkey in 1869. Today it’s on UNESCO’s listing of World Heritage Sites.”
