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"it slowly dawned on me that the landscape of science is maybe what interests people a great deal in science fiction."
- Gregory Benford
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| Shipboard Medical Treatment | ||
| An elaborate system to guard against infection in returning space explorers. |
| But the cureall alone was not enough for complete safety. Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment. Doctors are not reliable; they die. Therefore spaceways and interplanetary health law demanded that ship equipment for guarding against disease be totally mechanical in operation, rapid and efficient.
Somewhere near them, in a series of stalls which led around and around like a rabbit maze, Pat was being herded from stall to stall by peremptory mechanical voices, directed to soap and shower, ordered to insert his arm into a slot which took a sample of his blood, given solutions to drink, bathed in germicidal ultraviolet, shaken by sonic blasts, breathing air thick with sprays of germicidal mists, being directed to put his arms into other slots where they were anesthesized and injected with various immunizing solutions. Finally, he would be put in a room of high temperature and extreme dryness, and instructed to sit for half an hour while more fluids were dripped into his veins through long thin tubes. All legal spaceships were built for safety. No chance was taken of allowing a suspected carrier to bring an infection on board with him. |
| Technovelgy from Contagion,
by Katherine MacLean. Published by Galaxy Science Fiction in 1950 Additional resources -
|
Fans of Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain also describes a long series of treatments to decontaminate the human body; see electronic body analyzer and ultraflash for examples.
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More Ideas
and Technology from Contagion
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and Technology by Katherine MacLean
Tech news articles related to Contagion
Tech news articles related to works by Katherine MacLean
Shipboard Medical Treatment-related
news articles:
- Hundreds Of Covid-Catching AI Tools - None Help
| MouthPad Supports Head And Tongue Tracking |
| Drug Induces Hibernation-Like State In Humans |
| Drug To Regenerate Teeth In Humans |
| Illustrating Classic Heinlein With AI |
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'...they moved with the ease of dandelion puffs.'
'...some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre...'
'These pods were programmed to hang in space in a hexagonal grid pattern...'
'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.'
'We have decided that it shall be but one ship... it must contain everything needed to take us through the generations.'
'You’re the robopsychologist of the plant, so you’re to study the robot itself...'
