A Full Recovery

We rescued this carpet a long time ago, abandoned because of a burnt patch, presumably. Today, at long last, decided we had somewhere to put it down, so Mike shook it out and then decided to sand off the burnt pile, which he then filled in with a red marker. 

That led to a total tidying up of the other room, sorting kitchen stuff and books that have long been unavailable under canvas. Satisfying, but very dusty, and not at all what we'd planned for the day. Oh well.

Gratefuls:
- that lunch on Sunday is going ahead, as COVID test came back negative
- an amazing storm, and no-one hurt, though trees were uprooted in town and a chimney blew off
- organizing my books, makes me happy to remember what I have and be able to lay my hands on them

The Body, ch8 - The Chemistry Department - all about organs like the spleen, and hormones, fascinating stuff, like p179...
One of the very first to attempt an operation on a gallbladder was he great but odd American surgeon William Halsted... In 1882, while still a young doctor, Halsted conducted one of the first surgical removals of a gall bladder, on his own mother, on a kitchen table in their family home in upstate New York. What made this all the more remarkable was that there was no certainty at this time that someone could survive without a gall bladder. Whether Mrs Halsted was quite aware of this as her son pressed a handkerchief of chloroform to her face is not recorded. At all events, she made a full recovery. (In an unfortunate irony, the pioneer Halsted would die following gall bladder surgery on himself forty years later, by which time such surgery had become commonplace.)


PS  And the American election result drags on...