From sci.chem Mon Dec 9 16:50:39 1996 From: "Eric Lucas" Newsgroups: sci.chem Subject: Re: Lab Accidents Along these same lines.... My grandfather used to tell a story about when he was in college. Was somewhat carelessly putting a glass tube through a hole in a cork (I don't think rubber stoppers were common just after WWI. Of course the glass snapped off and went clear through his hand between his middle and ring fingers. A couple of stitches on the entrance hole, a couple of stitches on the exit hole, and a tetanus shot fixed him up OK. However, years on, until the day he died, he would be hammering a nail while building something, not be paying attention, and look down to see blood all over his project. Turned out he had irreversibly severed the nerve that gives feeling to the two middle fingers on that hand, and he would accidentally smash it with the hammer without feeling it, and only notice it when he bled. He found it a bit amusing in a rueful sort of way. He also passed it on to me before I took chemistry, and I've always had a very healthy respect for glass tubing and glass rods. Eric Lucas Philip Clarke wrote in article > I remember sharing the lab (when I was a PhD student) with another PhD student > who was more interested in shopping than in research. I remember after she left > for her first postdoc job in Switzerland, my superviser said that he could > imagine that she would end up being a fashion designer. Anyway > one day she was putting plastic tubing on a condensor, when from across > the room I hear the breaking of glass, so I go over and have a look. > Sure enough she broke the flange of the condensor and cut herself, after a few > seconds it started to bleed copiously, thats when she screamed, not before. > (Cruelly I left the condensor with the bit of flesh embedded > on it, on her desk, for when she came back from hospital.)