I will be in Paris (France) April 2-6 (already evening of the 1st, actually). Get in touch if you want to get coffee and chat science.
Links of the Week
The history of oral rehydration therapy. It’s interesting how even in this very low tech solution, studying basic physiology played a role:
In the summer of 1966, a scientist called David Sachar asked a cholera patient to swallow a thin plastic tube that ran all the way through his digestive system, down into his intestine. The idea was to figure out whether Phillips’ “poisoned pump” hypothesis was correct. If the apparatus registered a jump in negative charge it meant that Phillips’ hypothesis was mistaken and cholera patients actually were capable of absorbing sodium through the lining of their intestine. As soon as Sachar added sugar to the solution, the reading on his meter jumped. It was obvious right away that the patient was able to absorb sodium.”