Polite Dissent

For those of you too young to remember (including me), Ben Casey was a medical television show that ran on ABC from 1961 to 1966. It starred Vince Edwards as Dr. Ben Casey, chief neurosurgery resident at the hospital “59 West”. Striking while the iron was hot, Dell published ten issues of a Ben Casey comic book from 1962 through 1965. Today’s story comes from the first issue of that title, published in June/July 1962.

Doctor Ben Casey is about to head out for a night on the town (his version of a night on the town, that is: a neurosurgery convention) when he is summoned to an emergency case. The police have discovered a man who was struck by the subway. The impact only caused superficial injuries, but witnesses report that the patient was acting strange before the accident, so he was brought to the hospital for evaluation.

Dr. Casey examines the patient and suspects that he has a hematoma which is causing an increase in intracranial pressure, leading to the bizarre behavior. Casey wants to proceed with surgery, but the patient refuses. In fact, he refuses treatment of any sort, and even refuses to give his name to the hospital staff. He becomes paranoid and then starts acting out violently. Casey decides his best option is to sedate the patient.

About this time, a blond shows up in the hospital and identifies the patient as Roy Thorne, her husband. She tells Dr. Casey that Roy is a construction worker and was injured on the job several days ago. He refused to seek medical treatment and he has been acting more paranoid and more violent with each passing day. She reports that he nearly strangled her this morning. Dr. Casey explains the diagnosis to Mrs. Thorne and has her sign a consent for the surgery. However, when he goes to prep the patient for surgery, Casey discovers that Roy has escaped the hospital.

Dr. Casey reasons that Roy will head for his apartment, so he gets the police to join him and Mrs. Thorne there. Sure enough, Roy shows up a few minutes later. His wife tries to slip him a sedative in a cup of coffee, but he doesn’t drink it. He accuses her of trying to kill him and threatens her with a broken bottle. The police and Casey rush in and secure and sedate Roy. He is rushed to the surgery and Dr. Casey is able to successfully drain the hematoma and relieve the pressure on the brain. When Roy wakes up he reports feeling the best he has in days and apologizes profusely to both the doctors and his wife. His patient cured, Dr. Casey once again heads out for a night out — at the neurosurgery convention.

I’m amazed at how every patient who goes to 59 West seems to end up on the Neurosurgery Service. I suspect that if you showed up there with an ingrown toenail, you’d be admitted under Neurosurgery and Dr. Casey would want to perform brain surgery. This patient is a good case in point — someone with “mental status changes” may end up a neurosurgery patient, but shouldn’t start out there.

Sadly, there is no Dr. Dan Dazzler back-up strip in this issue: he doesn’t show up until the second issue.

Previous Flashback Weeks

According to an article published today by the Associated Press, scientists at Berkeley are one step closer to being able to render objects invisible.

I’d just like to point out that if they’d been reading Action Comics back in 1988, they could have learned the secret a lot faster, and for only 5 dollars at that.

For those of you asking about the hospital bracelet in Final Crisis #3: yes, it is indeed labeled “Louis” instead of “Lois.”

Art error? Maybe it’s the wrong patient, just like that episode of House from last season. Or maybe Metropolis Memorial Hospital is really in St. Louis.

Many of the Daily Planet staff, including Lois Lane, have been seriously injured. Clark Kent is sitting by Lois’s side at the hospital while Jimmy Olsen visits.

A quick nitpick to start things off: due to privacy laws and regulations, you can’t put patient’s names on the doors anymore.

In this panel, Clark/Superman is talking to the injured Lois and mentions that his “heat vision is the only thing keeping her heart beating.” I’m not quite sure how that would work. Is his heat vision physically causing her heart to contract? How would it do that? Is his heat vision electrically stimulating the heart so that it beats, like a pacemaker? Again, can heat vision do that? We know she had a lot of shrapnel in her heart that Superman removed (Jimmy remarks as such), so maybe he used his heat vision to cauterize those wounds. But that shouldn’t be something he has to stand by her bedside and perform continually. Speaking of that, is Clark going to stand by Lois’s side making her heart beat for the rest of her life?   Tags: comics medicine superman clark kent lois lane heart hospital

Ad from the pages of Action Comics #617 (September 1988)

There’s a sad irony involved when you have to learn to be cool from an ad found in the back of a comic book.

(Plus it seems the first step of being cool is becoming Canadian.)

Batman #677 “Batman R.I.P.: Batman in the Underworld”
Grant Morrison, writer
Tony Daniel, penciler

Arch-villain Doctor Hurt is explaining his plan to his villainous colleagues:

Librium (generic name: chlordiazepoxide) is a drug in the benzodiazepine class — in other words, it’s from the same class of medication as Valium, Xanax, and Halcion. Like all drugs in this class, it acts as a relaxant, a sedative, and an anti-anxiety medication. Librium is a fairly old drug and is not in common use today.

I find Librium to be an interesting choice of drug for Doctor Hurt to use. As previously mentioned, it is a fairly old drug (in this case, “old” means about fifty years) and it was the first benzodiazepine discovered. Librium is not nearly as potent as later benzodiazepines, and it requires a dose that is roughly 20-50 times higher. This is going to make a big difference when dosing someone by sword cut — an unreliable method at best. It’s got to be a lot easier to get 0.5 MG of Xanax into a wound compared to 25 MG of Librium.

Librium has a very long half life, with some of its metabolites taking over a week to be broken down by the body. This can make it dangerous to use as a daily medication because these metabolites build up quickly. However, Librium’s long effect after a single dose may be just what the doctor is looking for in this situation.

Benzodiazepines are primarily used as relaxants and anti-anxiety agents in anxious patients, and sleep aids in insomniacs. They can also be used as muscle relaxants, to stop seizures, and to ease alcohol withdrawal. I know of no benefit to hypnosis or trigger phase induction offered by these medications, by I’m willing to explain this aspect away as “comic book science.” Of note, all benzodiazepines are habit forming and can become addictive so I tend to prescribe them with caution. Librium isn’t used that much anymore, having been supplanted by newer and safer medications.

So why did Doctor Hurt choose Librium? Why not use a more modern medication that doesn’t require such a hefty dose?

Is it the benzodiazepine he is most familiar with? Or maybe the only one he is familiar with?
Librium was developed in the late 1950s, coincidentally (I’m sure) the same time Batman #113 (featuring “Batman: The Superman of Planet-X“) was published – a story which seems to be playing a large role in the Batman R.I.P. storyline (for instance, it introduced the planet Zurr-En-Arrh and the Bat-Radia). Diazepam (Valium), the second benzodiazepine, didn’t emerge until 1963.

Does the long half-life of Librium offer some advantage to his plan?

Or I may be reading too much into a throwaway line — it certainly wouldn’t be the first time — but Librium seems such a odd choice, and to refer to it by brand name, that it caught my eye.

In memory of vacations past, this week’s public service ad celebrates the great state of Hawaii. This ad appeared in various DC comics published in April 1960, less than a year after Hawaii became a state (and you’ll notice that its population has more than doubled since then).

I just wish my high school had a beach that came all the way up to the football field. Though on second thought, given that I attended high school in the St Louis area, any beach would have had to be on the Mississippi River…and “beach” and “Mississippi River” are two concepts that do not go well together.

This PSA was once again scripted by Jack Schiff, with art by by Bernard Baily. This copy comes from The Brave and the Bold #29.

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