I never quite understood what Vera was doing with the sleeping pills. At first, I thought she was going to take them all at once to commit suicide. But then they mentioned that she needed 30 more and the topic shifted to money. So was she going to sell them?
shareI think your first assumption was right, you need just enough dosage to commit suicide other wise you'll just be in a coma for a long long time.
shareAs already said, she was collecting enough to make sure she could commit suicide. It'll become clearer in episode 5 because... stuff happens. And that's all I'm gonna say. :-P
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Peter Outerbridge
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that scene was very sad...I guess back then, they didnt have the medicine to treat scepsis (sp?). is that like a staff infection? [goes to wikipedia]
shareIt's spelled sepsis. :-) What it is, is basically a systemic infection across the body, very often in the blood. Basically, your body is being flooded with bacteria and they're just too great in number for your immune system to fight off the infection by itself.
And, yes, back then they didn't have the kind of treatment for sepsis they have now. Infections (bacterial, not viral) are usually treated with antibiotics. Those are drugs that kill the bacterium but not the human cells. Penicillin is one of them, but nowadays we have a wide spectrum of different antibiotics, some of them only targeting certain groups of bacteria. Actually, I wrote a review for episode 1x04 a while back (http://pouterbridge.tumblr.com/post/29538265056/what-have-we-learned-f rom), and there was an educational side note that said:
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Penicillin and other antibiotics is something we take for granted these days. Not so in the 1940’s, however. As the show aptly mentions, penicillin wasn’t widely used in patients at the time. With the show’s first season being set in 1941, James indeed had to have powerful connections to get it, because it wasn’t until June ’42 that Merck & Co produced enough of the drug to be used on a wider patient population in the United States. Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming is said to have discovered penicillin in 1928. The active ingredient is derived from the penicillium fungus and has the ability to kill certain bacteria, among them those that cause syphilis. Especially in light of World War II, the discovery of penicillin was revolutionary and saved the lives of many wounded soldiers that would otherwise have died of infection. Even now, some seventy years later, penicillin is still used in clinical practice to treat bacterial infections, although many types of bacteria are now resistant.
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So, yes, once Archie's infection progressed to the stage of sepsis, there wasn't really much hope for him in those days. Aren't you glad we're living in the 21st century? ;-)
Also just an additional tidbit of information. Antibiotics are only useful for treating bacterial infections. They don't do jack-sh** for viruses. There are anti-viral drugs out there, but they're not quite as effective as antibiotics and are usually only used in case of more severe viral infections. You wouldn't normally give a patient with a simple cold antiviral medications. I could go into plenty of biological details as to why that is, but I'm probably already on information sharing overload as it is. Yep, I'm a science geek. Shoot me.
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Peter Outerbridge
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why would anybody shoot you TJ? It's the science geeks that will fix global warming and find the cure for cancer one day. Thanks for that bit of history. I pride myself on being a World War II historian, but there is still a lot about the War that I need to learn about. Bomb Girls is shedding new light for me on what was going on with the Home Front. Even though the show takes place in Canada and America hadn't entered yet, you still get that "We're all in this together" vibe from the characters.
Love the show and already cant wait for the 2nd season.
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