Best Of MetaFilter

Mmm. Sweat. by BitBoy (cc by)

Interesting dip into the details and deeper history on the adoption of ORT (oral rehydration therapy) by biogeo in the Dr Dilip Mahalanabis thread.

Burning paper offerings at Mandai Columbarium by Jnzl's Photos (cc by)

liminal_shadows on the Kafkaesque experience of trying to survive the paperless revolution in swift's post wanna go paperless?

Twenty-year old Malone Mukwende, a second-year medical student at St George’s, University of London is working to correct white bias in medical textbooks. The aim of this booklet is to educate students and essential allied health care professionals on the importance of recognising that certain clinical signs do not present the same on darker skin." Mind the Gap: A Handbook of Clinical Signs in Black and Brown Skin

What happened when someone in the Middle Ages got pink eye, or someone in Elizabethan England got athlete's foot or crotch rot? Did the infections just hang around forever? Was everyone just infected with this type of stuff? (It's pretty well-known that basically everyone had lice and fleas, I believe.)

In Ask Me: Minor infections in the days before anti-biotics or anti-fungals? Many good answers, and Jane the Brown brings the serious history again.

Saydee by Ranger Robb

Grab bag time!

Got a cold? Folk remedies from around the world.

What's that thing embedded in the street? Why, it's a recycled cotton gin part.

Thinking of buying a Gudetama, the egg with ennui? Be sure to check the butt.

Want an earworm? Comedy group All India Bakchod offers this song about social media creeps.

Want to be weepy for pets? Mefites share their old dog stories and old cat stories (comic by Mefi's own Narrative Priorities).

Pharmacy by Army Medicine (cc by)

There are many reasons, but the primary one is that the massive series of mergers and buyouts in the pharmaceutical industry over the past ten years has meant that companies have consolidated their manufacturing facilities. Where in the past you might have had six or seven companies manufacturing a certain drug in eight or ten factories around the country, you now have one or two companies making it at two or three sites. If one of those sites goes down do to equipment problems or regulatory shutdown for improper safety standards (that's what happened to Novartis -- they got hydrocodone in their Excedrin bottles, allegedly), that means the other sites (if any) can't keep up with the increased demand.

RockSteady explains why we're seeing more and more prescription drug shortages lately, and why it's a big problem.