Our not-too-distant past is decorated with artefacts: strategies that became popular for perfectly tenable reasons, had a Warholian 15?min of (perfectly justified) fame and then, as new perspectives developed were consigned to the museums of (spectacles rose- tinted) folklore or (spectacles replaced by blinkers) closed chapters ‘we’d rather not discuss’. There is also, though, another, third, group: those practices that have evolved and improved as a result of a recognition of limitations and evolution. In geological terms at least, it wasn’t that long (mid 1980s) since I was a medical student when the roll call of popular interventions included the mist tent in croup. This involved creating a fog in which 1?year-old children became not only detached from their parents but distressed by their treatment in a polythene tent draped over their cot (figure 1). Figure 1 The mist tent for croup. Gomez: Archives 1968. Other practices in use at that time or shortly after included the use of the lateral neck X-ray in children with suspected epiglottitis.
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