fandomhigh | Myth Into History, Week 11: Give Credit Where It's Due [Thurs/1st Period, Danger Shop]

The Danger Shop was set up to look like the interior of a cramped, dusty temple today, with chairs set up in a circle around the altar.

"Don't set foot outside," Janice said lightly once everyone was seated, as she passed out handouts to everyone. "It's a war zone out there. You're in the healing temple of Asclepius, right in the heart of the ongoing war between the Mitoans and Thessalians. And you're here today to find out where a few of the medical techniques we still use today came from."

She pointed at the altar with her well-chewed cigar. "See, the priests of Asclepius believed they had to put their patients on this altar and pray for the knowledge and skill to heal whatever wounds they had to heal." The roll of Janice's eyes said very clearly what she thought of that idea. "Only problem is, well -- war zone. One altar. And a hell of a lot of patients. What do you do? Common sense says that you sort out who needs treatment the most and take care of them first, right? That's what we know as triage. Then there was the amputation of ruined limbs to prevent gangrene from setting in. Again, common sense, at least under more primitive conditions. And Caesarean-section delivery of babies -- what, would you want to give birth to a centaur the natural way?"

"This is the thing," Janice continued. "All of these techniques were blasphemy to the priests of Asclepius, at least until this war, when a young novice recorded these revolutionary techniques and wrote a treatise on medicine as being something completely separate from philosophy and religion. His name, by the way, was Hippocrates. And an early version of the Hippocratic Corpus mentions a mysterious warrior woman who came to this temple and taught him these things. Give you one guess who that was."

She waved a hand around the temple. "Set up at various stations in here, you'll find perfectly ordinary items that could be used for first aid in wartime conditions. Don't try and think about how sterile they might or might not be. Just see if you can figure out what you could do with them, if you had to use them to treat war wounds."

[OOC: Class Info Post. I'll try and ping in as much as I can today, but I'm still playing catchup at work. I demand to know why I can't get paid to RP. ;) OCD is up! Clues to the activity in the episode transcript. Mwahaha.]

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"Is anyone aware of how completely unsanitary this is?" asked Janet.

"Un-sani-what now?" Joxer asked.

"Unsanitary," said Janet. "Filthy. Though I suppose that if you're concerned with reinflating a lung or performing an emergency tracheotomy, you're worrying about the patient's life first, and infection control later."

"Plus, you know, it's not like we had running water," Joxer pointed out.

"Please tell me you at least boiled the water to sterilize it before using it?" asked Janet, sounding faintly hopeful.

"You think a man does that sort of work?" Joxer said.

"I would think that anyone who didn't want to die of dysentery or parasitic infestation would take the time and care to boil their own water," said Janet, her eyes narrowing as she turned to look at Joxer. "And I also think that if you start spouting one more word to me containing even a hint of sexism, you're going to be a very unhappy person."

"Sexism?" Joxer was confused. "I wasn't trying to hit on you. I have a girlfriend, you know."

"Yes. So do I." Janet's smile tightened. "Sexism has nothing to do with attraction to someone. It's the idea that someone is inferior due to their gender."

"Who said anything about being inferior? I just said that men didn't do a lot of the water boiling, that's all. Different jobs do not mean different enablements," Joxer said.

"No, you said, 'you think a man does that sort of work,' and you used a disdainful tone. Sexism also includes categorizing jobs solely by gender. Why wouldn't a man do that sort of work?"

OOC: Disclaimer - Janet's not actually tonemodding. Just interpreting. Or, y'know, misinterpreting. *is possibly being overcautious*

"Because it's a woman's job!" Joxer said. "I wouldn't want to take jobs away from a woman, because, well, they should have jobs, right? That's part of that whole women's liberation thing."

[ooc: Oh, don't worry. Joxer lives to get himself in this sort of trouble :-D]

"That's possibly the most pathetic excuse for laziness I've heard in my entire life," said Janet. "Not to mention that defining jobs that way deprives men and women of a full range of choices."

Joxer blinked. "I didn't say that!"

Janice was watching this exchange from off on one side, trying desperately to keep a scowl on her face to hide her amusement.

Janet might not have realized it, but she just earned herself a ton of extra credit for this class.

Janet had no idea that she'd earned extra credit. None. She was too busy scowling at Joxer.

"That may not be what you said, but you implied it," said Janet. "Unless you'd like to tell me what you really meant?"

"Apparently Xena hadn't gotten around to inventing sterilizing stuff yet." Billy said dryly.

"I was also talking about what could be transmitted in the here and now," said Janet. She tried not to roll her eyes too obviously. ~~Who're we kidding? She so rolled them obviously.~~ "But I'm sure you're right. I wouldn't place a bet on whether or not Xena's responsible for discovering germ theory too."

"Can you get germs from stuff created in here?"

"I think we're supposed to ignore that aspect, for the sake of the assignment. Not that that makes this less gross," Sam said.

"Actually, I don't find it gross at all. Just unsanitary." Janet grinned. "Or maybe I should say that the gross stuff is the fun stuff."

Sam snickered. "I think you might just be a lot more fit for this kind of thing than I am."

"I very nearly took Bio this semester, just on the off chance that there would be dissections," said Janet. "Unfortunately, it didn't quite fit on my schedule."

Myth Into History, Week 11: Give Credit Where It's Due [Thurs/1st Period, Danger Shop]

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