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The agony of balancing on two wheels and the grimaces of exertion from feverish pedaling were believed to have a devastating effect on women. They risked nervous breakdowns and facial disfigurement; Cycling is said to have led to “deviations from female ideals of beauty, making a good-looking woman appear masculine and an unremarkable woman extremely ugly,” according to a November 1908 New Zealand Geographic article.
This alleged medical condition was called bicycle face. The warnings were spread by a small group of doctors, journalists and women’s advocates as the bicycle gained widespread acceptance in the late 18th century.
Not enough of that. It was also believed that the pressure of the bicycle saddle on the woman’s stomach causes infertility and that cycling during pregnancy could lead to birth defects and problems with breastfeeding.
This is of course nonsense. But it is an example of how a few loud voices can cause great concern about health problems resulting from technological advances, a group of researchers writes in an article published in the New Zealand Medical Journal.
They also describe two other similar technology panics. How early telephone operators were warned that they were at risk of telephone tinnitus (symptoms included nervous hypersensitivity with buzzing in the ear, dizziness and neuralgic pain, according to an 1889 article in the British Medical Journal). And the strange diagnosis of railway spine (“railway spine”), which was said to have affected many early train travelers and was thought to have caused chronic pain and other ailments.
The researchers believe there is a pattern in how these pseudomedical diagnoses have become accepted by (at least some of the) public. A few alarmists who, often with the authority of a doctor, issued exaggerated warnings, and the newspapers happily picked up on them and spread them among the population.
Patterns repeat themselves to this daysay the researchers. They point out that new technological advances are still accompanied by medical misinformation; For example, cell phones and Wi-Fi networks can cause radiation sickness, people can be hypersensitive to signals from 5G towers, and there are countless, very different symptoms said to be caused by living near wind turbines.
But today, of course, thanks to social media, myths spread faster and it no longer requires the same degree of doctorate or the weight of a publication to have an impact. How should these modern equivalents of bicycle faces be treated?
The researchers behind the article call for compassion. They believe that doctors should acknowledge, not dismiss, their patients’ concerns, even if they are unfounded. But at the same time, they can use historical examples such as the bicycle face to illustrate how much fear has always been faced in the face of new, difficult-to-understand phenomena.
They also invite you to increased collaboration between healthcare providers, researchers and social media companies and suggests that informative videos from credible sources should be prioritized in the search results of those seeking medical information.
But on one point I wonder whether the researchers are right when they dismiss one diagnosis as made up: bicycle madness. It is described as a chronic psychosis that causes an unnatural obsession with cycling, leading to an increased willingness to take risks. I don’t know what it was like in the 19th century, but I think I’ve almost been hit by Lycra-clad cycling maniacs once or twice in modern times.
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