Monday Madness: Who tried it first?



Feelin hot, hot, hot

Have you ever looked at something and wondered who invented that and who tried it first?  I have kind of a personal story that goes along with it to illustrate what I'm talking about.  I went to Belize a couple years back on a dive trip with a couple of friends.  I think they may have brought me just as insect repellent because the sand fleas and mosquitoes all love me and leave everyone else alone.  So by the third day I stopped counting at about 100 on my legs and was trying to figure out how to stop the itching.  I don't know why but my friend and I thought, well maybe lime juice would help.  And, it did.  Weird stuff.  Being a science person, I thought cool, let's try more.

So we expanded the thought to something even hotter and more acidic, the habanero pepper.  (Except for the ghost pepper, it's the hottest one there is.)  After dinner, we cut it up and rubbed it over the bites on my legs.  Yup, it stopped the itching!  One small side affect though.  It burned so bad I could barely put my diveskin and dive boots on the next day!  It was a true dumb and dumber moment in my life.  Lime juice, good thing, habanero pepper, not so good thing.  If I had the time and resources I could have taken the knowledge I gained and developed an itch relief cream from limes...I still might do it.

Point is, that's the process of discovery.  You see a problem and try to find the solution.  Just some musings here: A caveman has a headache.  His buddy hits him with a club and knocks him out. Problem solved.  Then Dolf  wakes up and decides he would like a less painful remedy.  So he sees a plant leaf and eats it, then breaks out in a rash.  Lesson learned.  He sees another plant and eats it, then vomits.  Another fail.  Still undaunted, the third plant works and the headache is gone.  Score another point for science.

Did you know that some corals have been proven to help with cancer?  I mean, who thought of that?  Brilliant!  Why cancer...did they try it on say diverticulitis first?  I'm not even going to think about what happened with the whole Viagra/Cialis thing...holy cow, that's some sheer desperation there.  But it's all quite fascinating.  And here's a shout out to the volunteers for the trials (that Viagra one took some guts for sure).  Someone steps forward and says I have this problem, bring it on.  An unselfish gesture for the betterment of humanity.

Thomas Eddison said: 

"I have not failed 1,000 times.  I have
successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb."

I don't know about you, but I'm extremely glad he didn't give up.  So here's to all those people who have a problem, come up with a theory, try it out (maybe over and over again) until they got it right for all of us.  It's amazing the genuis of the human mind with some divine inspiration.  (I don't know that lime juice was inspiration, but hey, it worked!)  Later Mates!