Month: June 2022

Enlarge / British troops moving to the trenches east of Ypres in October 1917. A new book by historian Lindsey Fitzharris explores the stories of those soldiers who suffered severe facial injuries, and the pioneering surgeon who rebuilt their faces: Harold Gillies. (credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In August 1917, a World War I British soldier named John Glubb was hit in the face by a shell. He recalled blood pouring out in "torrents" and feeling something akin to a chicken bone moving around his left cheek. It turned out to be half of his jaw, broken off by the impact.

Glubb wasn't the only unfortunate WWI soldier to suffer a disfiguring facial injury. Shells filled with shrapnel were designed to inflict as much damage as possible, and the need to peer over the parapets of trenches to assess the battlefield or fire a shot meant a greater risk of getting hit in the face by bits of flying metal. Unlike losing a limb, these soldiers faced great social and professional stigmas when they returned home from the front because of their disfigurement. They were usually reduced to taking night shifts and relegated to special blue benches when out in public—a warning to others to avert their eyes.

Fortunately for these men, a New Zealand-born surgeon named Harold Gillies devoted his life to developing innovative techniques for reconstructing faces after witnessing the carnage firsthand during his service at the front. Once home, he set up a special ward for soldiers with facial wounds at the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot, eventually convincing his superiors that a dedicated hospital was warranted. He's often referred to as the "father of plastic surgery" because of his pioneering work at The Queen's Hospital (later renamed Queen Mary's Hospital) at Frognal House in Sidcup.

Enlarge / Members of the public queue outside a pharmacy to receive COVID-19 antigen tests in Paris on January 6, 2022. (credit: Getty | LUDOVIC MARIN)

Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are on the rise in the European Union, spurring officials there to warn that a surge of COVID-19 cases will likely follow in the coming weeks.

In an alert Monday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control cautioned that various factors would influence how bad the expected BA.4/BA.5 wave will be. Those factors include the extent of vaccination and past infection in the population, as well as timing since those events because protection from both wanes over time.

BA.4 and BA.5 are clumped together because they share the same mutations in the genetic coding for their spike proteins, though they have differing mutations elsewhere in their genome. Both have a transmission advantage over the initial omicron subvariant, BA.1, as well as subvariants BA.2 and BA.2.12.1.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Major cryptocurrencies suffered big losses on Monday. As I write this, bitcoin is down 14 percent over the last 24 hours, while ether is down 16 percent. Other major cryptocurrencies—including solana, dogecoin, and litecoin—are also down by double digits, according to CoinMarketCap.

The cryptocurrency crash is part of a broader market sell-off. The S&P 500 stock market index fell almost 4 percent on Monday amid fears of faster interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. High interest rates put downward pressure on all assets, including stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Another big factor that may have spooked cryptocurrency traders was the Monday announcement by crypto lender Celsius that it was suspending withdrawals. The company said this was the result of "extreme market conditions."