- 11 hours ago
- 3 min read
In April 2012, DREAM bantamweight champ Kenji Osawa posted a remarkable picture on his blog. He’d suffered a bad break below the knee in 2011 and had a bunch of metal put in to help the bone heal. In April, he finally had it all taken out.
The picture was of the shin-length metal rod and the bolts that held it in place. I guess the point was to show what it takes to heal a bad injury. But looking at that pile of metal beside his limb made me think how grim an injury like that would have been before the advent of modern medicine.
Before titanium rods, a splintered shinbone meant permanent disability. A hundred years ago, a guy with an injury like Osawa’s might have spent the rest of his life hobbling around on crutches—or bedridden.
Doctors and professional bonesetters could offer some help, but the catastrophic injuries sometimes suffered in matches and fight training were a challenge that the medicine of 1912 couldn’t conquer.
THINGS WOULD BE EVEN WORSE
Things would be even worse if it was an internal injury.
Imagine a guy who sustained a bunch of head hits and wound up with bleeding in the brain. A hundred years ago, neurology was in its infancy—so much so that psychologists considered the brain a mysterious “black box” and concerned themselves only with inputs and outputs.
Neurologists back then would have had a hard time getting the basic diagnosis right. And even if they did, treating bleeding in the brain would have been problematic. X-ray imaging was little more than 15 years old. Drilling holes in a patient’s skull to relieve life-threatening pressure would have been extremely difficult to get right.
Today, neurologists have a much clearer idea of how the brain works and how to diagnose injury. And neurosurgeons have MRI and other advanced radiography to help them confirm diagnoses like intracranial hematoma. If they have to drill holes, they have precision surgical instruments to do it with.
This may seem far removed from the martial arts as most people practice them, but it’s not. Consider: When heavyweight champ Joe Lewis was at his peak, he beat challenger Ed Daniels with a second-round knockout.
According to Sports Illustrated, Daniels “almost became the first U.S. kickboxing fatality.” Lewis’ punches caused bleeding in Daniels’ brain, which put him in a coma and necessitated emergency medical intervention. Luckily, he survived. Had the match taken place in 1912 instead of 1980, his chances would have been much lower.
PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT
Probably the most important difference between now and a century ago is the discovery and widespread use of antibiotics. Before that, common bacterial infections could be fatal.
In fact, more soldiers died from infections than from combat wounds. But you didn’t have to be a soldier to be afflicted. Infections caused by bugs like Staphylococcus aureus, which are still common in contact sports, used to be fatal 80 percent of the time.
To put that in perspective, peruse the list titled “Top 10 Staph Infections in MMA History” that’s been passed around the net for a year or so. It includes some of the biggest names in MMA, along with some stomach-turning photos of how bad infections can be.
Although some of them had close calls, all the fighters on the list are alive and well. A hundred years ago, eight of them would have been dead because of that common bacteria.
It’s also worth emphasizing that all this career-saving and sometimes life-saving surgery would be impossible without antibiotics. Surgery is dangerous under even the best circumstances, but without something to stave off infection, cutting into a person can be as much, if not more, dangerous than the problem it’s meant to solve.
Imagine how impossible a career in fighting would be without the twin blessings of antibiotics and surgery. Imagine what would have happened to K-1 and karate champion Nicholas Pettas when he broke his shinbone so badly it was bent at a right angle. Or Cal Worsham, whose ribs were broken in the octagon and ended up damaging his heart. Imagine what would have happened to all the Ed Daniels of the martial arts.
IT’S HARD TO OVERSTATE
It’s hard to overstate how much modern medicine has changed our lives. From cradle to grave, we benefit from medicines, medical expertise, and diagnostic machines that were the stuff of science fiction a century ago.
Our lives are longer and our general health is better than at any time in history. This allows us to lead more active lives and indulge in more risks than our ancestors ever could. Nowhere is this more evident than in the art and sport of fighting.
