• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Trek Medicine

Honestly, I always chuckled at the fact that they can hypo spray people for pretty much any affliction.

“Tooth decay?” <psssffft> “Solved!”

“Pink eye?” <psssffft> “Solved!”

“Horrible goiter?” <psssffft> “Solved!”

Star-Trek-The-Original-Series-Dr-McCoy-s-Hypospray-Mk-II-2.jpg
 
I can send it there, since this can definitely be GTD, but I think the mods there will have to merge the threads. Moderators of GTD, if you please…?
 
The true miracle is that the 1980s doctors were able to figure all this out in a matter of minutes.

To be fair, the only person in STIV who says the woman has a new kidney is the woman herself. It's basically her revival tent healing.

But if we accept the claim at face value, how did the doctors ascertain her health in just minutes? They ran no tests. They hadn't rolled her into an exam room. Technologies like CAT scan and MRI were rare: my dad worked in a large urban hospital as a radiologist in the 1980s, and imaging devices were mobile units they had access to every once in a while. Even so, they require extensive preparation.

How were the doctors able to determine a fully functioning kidney, new or otherwise, unless they were themselves from the future?

(Yes, yes the needs of the plot.)
 
And the hypospray is never loaded or programmed just applied directly to the patient.
I would have suggested something like targeted nanotechnology but that episode where Wesley sets them loose on the ship seemed to suggest that they were relatively unfamiliar tech.
More ‘magic’ I suppose.
 
To be fair, the only person in STIV who says the woman has a new kidney is the woman herself. It's basically her revival tent healing.

But if we accept the claim at face value, how did the doctors ascertain her health in just minutes?

Well, for starters, she was lying prone on a gurney, weak and ill, with an oxygen tent nearby and tubes in her nose. Later, she's sitting up in a wheelchair, waving enthusiastically, with no need for oxygen (they wouldn't have removed it otherwise).

And I suppose when she says new, she means that her old kidneys work like new. If you've been sick for a while, you know what it feels like, and when that changes for the better, you'll notice.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top