stickmaker | JOHT 71: Unintended Consequences

The Joy of High Tech

Rodford Edmiston

Being the occasionally interesting ramblings of a major-league technophile.

Please note that while I am an engineer (BSCE) and do my research, I am not a professional in this field. Do not take anything here as gospel; check the facts I give. If you find a mistake, please let me know about it.

Unintended Consequences

This column took a *lot* of work and time. Less due to the total amount of research required than the wide variety of fields involved. It is therefore broken down into sections, one for each subtopic.

Warfare

The Civil War (or The War Between the States here in Kentucky or The War of Northern Aggression further south) produced unintended consequences in many areas. These included - but weren't limited to - the political, the medical, the financial and the economical. In the medical arena for this conflict nothing except for some medications and medical practices was completely new. Some techniques and medicines applied in the Civil War had been used in the War of 1812 in the US and the Napoleonic War in Europe, and those were only a bit different from what had been used in the Revolutionary War.

You can easily see the origins of the incremental changes in military technology and tactics, as well as in the practice of medicine. However, in part because it was a civil war, the Civil War brought many things to a new plateau, the way doctors worked on soldiers among them. One surprising factor which changed the way the Civil War was fought was then recent developments in what are usually considered non-military technologies.

Communication was a factor in this. Abraham Lincoln was arguably the best-informed national leader on current events to that time. He actually had a room at the Washington telegraph office, where copies of all military reports and dispatches from war correspondents were sent. He spent hours there most days during the War, reading messages and sending them. He knew what was going on, sometimes within minutes, usually within hours. Lincoln made informed decisions and set policies accordingly.

Lincoln was a technophile. He even held at least one patent. He had to override his own Secretary of War to buy the first repeating rifles issued to US troops: An early model of the lever-action Henry. Or, as the Rebs called it "That damn Yankee rifle you load on Sunday and shoot all week."

Early hydrogen balloons were used by the North to observe the enemy. Some even had a small telegraph set to relay what the observer saw to the handlers on the ground.

Railroads changed how troops and supplies were moved. Due to this, one of the main targets of Northern troops attacking in the South was the railroads. (Have you seen The Horse Soldiers with John Wayne and William Holden?)

Something else new for this conflict was the high percentage of the physically and mentally injured who survived the War. Due to then recent medical advances, more wounded veterans survived serious injuries and returned to the general population than in any previous war. Of course, even with the advances more soldiers still died from wound-related infections than the direct effects of their wounds. Those numbers combined being dwarfed by the casualties from contagious diseases.

One of the side effects of the "modern" medical practices used during the wars of this era included the unintended consequence of opiate addiction. For millennia, relief from pain was considered an unmitigated blessing. Even late in the Nineteenth Century the problem of drug addiction among soldiers was relatively minor, but it was new and received some attention. However, it was only one medical complication. These effects together greatly stimulated medical research; people wanted to know why what worked worked and what didn't didn't. As well as what could be done to remove or reduce the effects of these side effects of medical advances. Medical research became much more organized and pragmatic.

Perhaps connected with the higher survival rate of injured soldiers was an increased incidence of veterans "acting peculiar." There are many accounts of men returned from the Civil War changed, even when physically healthy. Often these individuals were incapable of handling their own affairs, including individuals who before the War had been successful businessmen or teachers. Whether wars during this period drove the development of psychotherapy is unknown, at least to me. However, many people noticed these "new" mental problems and sought both explanations and cures.

Other, subsequent wars around the world further spurred the research into treating the injuries and illnesses of soldiers. This was partly due to the high casualty rates caused by new weapons. (Supposedly, Roger Zelazny claimed in one of his stories that the physician most responsible for advances in wound treatment in the late 19th century was Dr. Richard J. Gatling. I don't recall seeing the line but can believe Zelazny wrote that or something like it.) Governments generally accepted and supported research into physical treatment of wounds and illnesses. Even the most hidebound leaders realized that the more fighting men they could keep fit or return to service after injury or illness, the better for their war efforts. (Even the British navy finally moved from considering scurvy a necessary toughening experience to taking measures to prevent it.) Recognizing the need to treat mental wounds has taken much longer.

Then came the Great War (World War One/The First World War, which some were already calling it before it was even over) where many of these developments were first applied on a large scale. Railroads and steamships were used to move troops and equipment around. Telegraphs and early radios were used for military and civilian government communications. Balloons and aircraft (airships as well as airplanes) were used for reconnaissance, with latter - due to their greater maneuverability - being used for first attacks on enemy ground troops and civilian resources, then to attack such attackers, then to attack those attacking the attackers.

To elaborate further on the concept of arial combat, looking back I am amazed at the rapid development in both the technology of aircraft and the evolution of their use. At first, a few civilian aircraft adapted to military use and an even fewer for-purpose military aircraft were used to spy on the enemy, then to drop grenades and fire rifles. Then machine guns were added for better strafing. Then those planes and others were used to try and stop enemy planes. Then bigger planes dropped bigger bombs. They were opposed by dedicated fighters.

Early on the airships had a distinct advantage over the heavier-than-air craft, at least for long-range missions. This is not surprise to those who know that Count (Graf) Von Zeppelin was a military veteran. Airships were seen as so vital to the German war effort (others had them; just not as many or as advanced) that there were both Navy and Army Zeppelins. At first they bombed at will, including London. Then the defenders sent fighters against them, and soon armed their machine guns with incendiary bullets to ignite the hydrogen in the airships. The Germans developed high-altitude equipment - including ways to deliver oxygen to crew members, and out-climbed the planes. The planes got heated suits and oxygen, too. So the Germans developed their Super Height Climbers. The technological advantage swayed back and forth.

Disease was still a major factor in any war. The 1918 Influenza killed far more soldiers and civilians than the War itself (and greatly contributed to the War ending when it did). There were fewer soldiers, and fewer civilians to make the weapons.

Medical science continued to advance, and continued to improve survival rates. So many horribly injured men survived that society began struggling to deal with them as they returned to civilian life. For the first time, great efforts were expended on cosmetic improvements of war wounds, both surgical and prosthetic. Artists began working to develop presentable appliances for those missing eyes or jaws. Surgeons learned new techniques for not only restoring function but appearance.

While the development of cosmetic surgery has benefitted millions, it has also led to numerous abuses. (I will make no judgements about the late Michael Jackson.)

Polio

Polio has been around for thousands of years. There is an Egyptian stele (an inscribed and - originally - painted stone slab) dating from about the 15th century B.C.E. which depicts a young man with an atrophied leg, a trademark sign of polio. Though the effects were described in antiquity, attributing these to a specific disease does not seem to have occurred until the late Eighteenth Century, when British physician Michael Underwood called it a "debility of the lower extremities." There are actually many illnesses which produce similar effects, most caused by viruses (it is likely that Franklin Roosevelt was actually impaired by one of these other viruses, a relative of polio with similar effects but which normally affects adults, which Roosevelt was) but like polio until relatively recently they rarely caused serious problems. So why the change?

Before the 20th century polio primarily infected very young children, who were still partially protected by their mother's antibodies and whose bodies were developing rapidly, so they could easily recover from the damage the disease caused. They were able to resume their normal activities after recovering from the disease with little long term detrimental effect. Few noticed or made much of lower leg paralysis in a child who wasn't walking yet. To put it bluntly, polio was lost in the noise, unless you were or knew one of the rare cases where it caused a permanent disability.

Then polio suddenly began affecting thousands of children in the United States. At a time when we appeared to be conquering - through modern water treatment and vaccinations - ancient diseases which annually killed millions, suddenly here was a minor illness which was no longer minor.

The polio outbreak was an unintended consequence of the treatment of drinking and - especially - waste water. This was caused by lots of things making life cleaner for all, but specifically through water being chlorinated. To reiterate, the most significant factor was sewage treatment, not drinking water treatment. Poliomyelitis, formed from the Greek words meaning "inflammation of the gray matter," is caused by an intestinal virus. Excreted in feces, the virus passes from person to person through infected water, including in swimming pools, lakes and the like. It can also be transmitted more directly by someone who is contaminated and fails to wash their hands after changing diapers or using the bathroom and then handles other people's food, water or dishwater. Polio virus is durable. It can survive up to two months outside the body. However, chlorine is especially effective against the polio virus.

Cleaner water and better hygiene meant that instead of getting polio when they were under 3 - when they would have little trouble with it and gain lifelong immunity from the exposure as well as probably completely recover from the effects - people were first getting it in their early teens or later, when it caused significantly nastier effects. This is similar to chicken pox, which is mainly annoying to most five year olds but can be very serious if you catch it much later than that.

Note that millions of lives were saved and millions more kept from permanent disability by modern water quality measures. The polio outbreak was an unintended side effect, and compared to the benefits of water treatment a minor one. However, while diphtheria and cholera were old enemies now in retreat, the sudden surge of polio was frightening and mysterious.

Horse Dung

People have a nostalgic view of the pre-automobile city. They seem to think that adopting cars, trucks and busses made the environment of large cities worse, at least as far as pollution was concerned. However, removing horses and oxen from city streets also removed their dung. By 1900 animal waste in major cities was a huge problem. Automobiles removed that problem. Of course, doing so also removed much of the need for street sweepers (at that time these were literally people who were employed to sweep the streets; not the later machines) so not everyone was happy with the reduction of dung.

Tetraethyl Lead

Henry Ford had to actually reduce the compression ratio - and thus the power output - of the Model T engine during the car's long production run because so much of the gasoline sold in the United States in the early part of the Twentieth Century was of such poor quality. The answer was tetraethyl lead, usually referred to as ethyl. This was a potent anti-knock additive for gasoline. Of course, using this meant automobiles spewed toxic lead compounds into the air. Even at the time of adoption this was opposed, with things like grain alcohol being recommended instead. However, politics and publicity campaigns carried the day, and we had to put up with decades of lead poisoning our air, our water and our children. Ironically, one of the major proponents of tetraethyl lead - who went so far as to wash his hands in it at a publicity event - eventually died of what appeared to be side effects of lead poisoning.

Lead exposure affects brain development of infants and children in specific and clearly identifiable ways. These alterations in brain structure are closely connected with alterations in behavior; unfavorable alterations. Adult brains - and behavior - are also adversely affected by exposure to lead, but the young are far more susceptible, since their brains are still developing. The argument can be made that a half-century or so of increasing violent crime in the early and middle Twentieth Century was at least partly due to leaded gasoline. Once tetraethyl lead was banned there was a twenty-year lag, then a decline in crime as the infants now not exposed to lead grew to maturity without it affecting their brains. Naturally, there are many other factors involved, even in just lead exposure. Banning lead in paints (many lead compounds taste sweet; see below about Roman sapa) was another major contributor in reducing blood lead levels in infants and children.

On a side note, the development of 100 octane racing gasoline in the US and Britain helped us win World War II. Germany had to contend with fuel in the 80 to 90 octane range. There was an enormous effort put into developing "super fuels" (mainly gasoline with better octane ratings; note that octane itself was the standard of measurement for detonation resistance, but that substances with octane ratings over 100 were not only possible but invented and tested) during the war. As a rule, though, each nation went to war with what had been developed by and for civilians.

Omelettes vs. Photographs

You'd think that except for the toxins involved in making and processing of photographic negatives and prints there would be no side effects to the growing popularity of photography in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. However, the most popular method for making photographic paper prints during this period involved egg albumin as a fixative. So many people were making so many photographs - in part due to Kodak's Brownie (You press the button; we do the rest.) - that there was actually a shortage of eggs for eating!

Ironically, the albumin method was the least stable of the commonly used photographic print processes from that period. Which means the majority of photos surviving from then show stains and other flaws typical of the deterioration experienced by albumin stabilized prints.

A Few Tidbits

This is already pretty long and there's a lot more which could be included. I'll just briefly hit some high points from here on.

An oversupply of long-distance fiber optic cables installed in the 1980s gave us relatively fast Internet data rates across most of the USA. This contributed to the decline of the long distance phone companies the cables were installed to serve. Connected to this was the ease of connectivity costing us much of our privacy.

There were some unexpected environmental effects when folks switched from soaps to phosphate based detergents. Effects such as algae blooms. There was another bloom when they switched from phosphates to nitrates. The main solution to the algae bloom issue wasn't so much changing the ingredients as it was educating the public that they didn't need as much detergent as they had soap. There's some evidence the vendors started selling a weaker mixture of detergent as well, increasing profit and helping the environment with one move.

People could commute into cities by rail before automobiles, but they had to cluster around train stations, and have their amenities (food and other daily needs) available locally near their homes. Cars allowed people to live in housing-only developments (Levittowns) with few or no stores.

I am a fan of the old comic strip Toonerville Folks which was centered around an interurban trolley which shuttled the people of the community of Toonerville to and from the train station. (The alternate title for the strip was The Toonerville Trolley Which Meets All Trains.) There are collections of these strips and I recommend reading them. Not only are they genuinely warm and humorous, but the way the stories changed through the decades reflects the way automobiles and highways changed American life. (Creator, writer and artist of the strip Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville, Kentucky and started his career as a reporter and part-time cartoonist for the Louisville Herald.) Just be aware that both Fox and his strip were products of their time.

Something not broadly talked about in the past was the radical changes in sexual mores as new technologies was introduced. With automobiles teenagers could quickly and easily put enough distance between themselves and their parents to do far more experimenting. (We're currently going thru another such set of changes, where the "mystery" of sex is pretty much eliminated by the internet. Except that the Internet - and porn in general - may lead kids to have unrealistic ideas of what sex even is.) Interestingly, the adoption of automobiles reduced some opportunities for teen sex, while increasing the consequences of drinking. A young couple could engage in mating much more comfortably in the back of a wagon than the back seat of a car. A drunk didn't need to bother guiding his horse, and in fact could be safely passed out on the seat of his buggy while the horse(s) took him home or simply stopped somewhere and patiently waited.

The improvements in medical care for serious injuries developed to treat military casualties had benefits far beyond use in warfare. Automobile accidents brought the sorts of trauma formerly seen almost solely in soldiers, miners and some types of factory workers - who were mostly poor but healthy young men - to all genders, social classes and ages.

Then there's the well-known - though probably erroneous - connection between the removal of stray cats to prevent them being used as familiars by witches then leading to the outbreaks of rat-carried plagues. Later investigations have shown that the fleas most responsible for spreading the plagues (including the Plague) probably weren't rodent fleas.

The ancient Romans loved their sweets, but the discoveries of bee space and sugar cane and sugar beets would not be made until centuries after the Empire's fall. Honey was a rare and expensive commodity back then (because without bee space and removable frames you have to find and destroy wild hives) and sugarcane was unknown in most of the world. What the Romans did have was sapa! This was grape juice boiled down to a thick, sweet syrup. Unfortunately, the sweetest sapa was that boiled down in lead cauldrons. You see, boiling acidic grape juice in lead vessels produced lead acetate. Also known as sugar of lead.

What contribution this made to the fall of the Roman Empire is arguable. However, since the most wealthy Romans typically bought and consumed the most sapa...

There you have only a few examples of how human actions through history had unforseen consequences. Not all were bad, and not all those which were bad were completely bad. Many of these effects could have been foreseen (lead was already known to be toxic in Roman times) but others required knowledge which was only learned from studying the results of the earlier actions. So, be careful. Just don't be too careful, or nothing will ever get done. Which can also have unforseen - and very unpleasant - consequences. :-)