The Philippine-American War and the cocaine shortage in 1900s New York in The Knick
Clive Owen in The Knick: Not for the faint-hearted.
We’ve been enjoying Steven Soderbergh’s series The Knick, about the staff of the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York in the 1900s (In case you thought it was about one New York basketball player). Inasmuch as one can enjoy a series that is so brutal. The Knick stars Clive Owen as Dr. John Thackery, a brilliant surgeon who develops many ground-breaking techniques and is tireless in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. He’s also a cokehead, though it must be noted that cocaine was legal at the time and was used for medical procedures (and as an ingredient in Coca-Cola).
Towards the end of the first season, Dr. Thackery has a personal crisis: there’s a cocaine shortage in New York. The US is at war in the Philippines, and its cargo ships are under attack so shipments from China can’t reach America. (Wait, isn’t coca from South America?)
The Knick makes us happy to be living in the 21st century. Early 20th C medicine was positively medieval. How anyone survived the ministrations of doctors is beyond us.
Rating: Brutal, possibly great, enthusiastically recommended.
Warning: Lots of gore. You want fun gore, go watch The Strain. The gore here is grim and unforgiving.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 22nd, 2014 at 01:19
I love that show. I just hope that Thackery and Edwards get back to working on new surgical methods. The nun and Dr. Chickering should get more time too. I am a bit tired of the “Thackery, cocaine and the nurse” plot. And the hospital administrator should be back at the whorehouse.
October 22nd, 2014 at 03:44
Your Grace, medical breakthroughs were significant in the 19th century alone, including the rate of surgical survival. For examples, carbolic acid was made and paved way for effective anesthesia in some major and minor surgeries. Furthermore, Doctor Lister, inspired by this discovery, initiated and institutionalized sterilized surgical operations that significantly reduced post-surgical deaths. Vaccinations like rabies and small pox emerged, thanks to Louie Pasteur (who also debunked the myth of spontaneous generation that began with Aristotle by doing this “pasteurization” thing) for the former. I know some other parts of the world were not beneficiaries of these developments, but at least, these breakthroughs shifted “medieval” practices to the so-called “modern” medical ways, Your Grace.