How much does information change over the years?

ragingmomster, BSN, MSN, RN · Jan 24, 2005

Change and how...keep them to laugh at when you compare them to your new textbooks.

Best Wishes!!!

Antikigirl, ASN, RN · Jan 24, 2005

Well..here is my theory of my nursing books from 1998-2000...maybe this will help.

Either use them as supports for makeshift tables, or use them as dust magnets on a shelf to keep your nice nick nacks dust free! Personally, I use mine as fillers for storage boxes!

Someday in the year 3004 they will be collectors antiques! SO put them in your will! But till then...not worth all that much except for seeing them and going down memory lane and how you had to read them all!

begalli · Jan 24, 2005

I bought some old nursing books on ebay a couple of years ago. Very interesting reading!!

I know this is an extreme example, but in a section of one book (Medical Nursing by Hull, Wright and Eyl. copyright, 1940) it describes "special Methods of Examining the Circulatory System." There is a test to measure blood velocity, or the speed which blood is flowing.

The procedure, which was called the "arm to tongue" circulation time went like this:

The nurse injects saccharin into a vein at the elbow, and has the patient say "sweet" the instant he detects a sweet taste in his mouth. The interval of time (measured with a stop watch) between the injection and detection of the sweet taste is a measure of the time required for blood to flow from the arm, through the right "auricle" and ventricle, the lungs, back to the left side of the heart, and up to the capillaries of the tongue. This usually takes 10-15 seconds. Sometimes ether is injected to determine the "arm to lung" circulation time, which is determined by the time which elapses before the patient smells the ether.

It goes on to say that "recently" calcium gluconate was being used to measure the "arm to tongue" time, "the end result being a sensation of heat in the throat."

Yikes! This is a parameter expressing the pressure exerted by the blood on the vessel walls. Knowing this value in vascular medicine/surgery is important to establish the state of the vessels which directly relates to vascular diseases.

These days we use noninvasive Doppler Ultrasound.

I LOVE these books!

Quickbeam, BSN, RN · Jan 24, 2005

My basic text from nursing school in 1986 did not have HIV in it! ...

When I was a CNA in the mid-1970's, an RN showed me a patient and said that she had a very rare condition called Alzheimer's Disease...

Medicine and nursing change every year. The old books can be fun but less than accurate in very short order.

mishayla96 · Jan 24, 2005

OK so in other words it WAS a nice gesture but since I have not even taken them out of the trunk yet and tomorrow is garbage day, just haul them in the trash truck as it drives by? (just kidding :chuckle ). But don't take too much of what they say in them to heart? Thanks gang. When she gave them to me I knew just "who" to ask...

HappyNurse2005, RN · Jan 24, 2005

seriously, keep them. they will be funny to you later on. I had a peds handbook review thing that was about 10 years old that says that there is no vaccine for chicken pox.

mishayla96 · Jan 24, 2005

lol...that one was funny to me now--but only cuz I have 3 kids and know that there is a vaccine (varicella right? ) see... I already know somethin anyways :chuckle

Tweety, BSN, RN · Jan 24, 2005

Some things never change. It won't hurt to thumb through them and look at them. But dont' study them carefully. It might give you a general idea about things.

Good luck to you!