Robinson's 'medical' treatment after the Maxim fight

Not sure what kind of response you’re looking for here.

The doctor explained his reasoning (however flawed). What can anyone who wasn’t there (during his postfight examination) add?

 

Robinson said that he didn't really feel like himself for about 6 months.

Some fighters hit hard and it rattles you for a minute. Joey Maxim had that 6 month power.

 

I interpret this as fear that Robinson would die if he threw up.

 

Maybe it wasn't true.

 

The book isn't necessarily totally accurate.

 

Off the top of my head:
1. Robinson may have personally refused to be admitted to the hospital.
2. His condition may have been stable, but with nausea. Hence, if he ingested anything before the nausea subsided, it could have destabilized his condition by making him exert more energy and lose more fluid by throwing up.
3. At home IV's might not have been a thing back then. I do not know what standard practices were like that far back.
4. The ice makes sense because he wouldn't have been able to hold down NSAIDs.
5. There's a lot of folklore attached to that fight and it's hard to say exactly what happened.

 

From what I can tell, IV drips came into widespread use in the 1950s but I can’t find anything that specifically said they were used to introduce fluids to battle dehydration or heat exhaustion. It’s entirely possible that this particular application came later.

I’d like to see some reference/evidence that this was a common treatment for dehydration at the time.

Not easy to find much on the ‘net but Oral Rehydration Therapy (taking in of water with sugars and salts) was a huge breakthrough in the 1950s to treat cholera, which caused dehydration as one of its main often-fatal side effects.

I do know that I’ve read and been told that a person who is really dehydrated who drinks a lot of water almost always throws it up rather than absorbing it and cramping can also be an issue. Has to be ingested slowly.

I would suggest that two things are very possible here:

1) Using IVs to replace fluid as a way to treat dehydration wasn’t a primary or widespread method in use at the time

2) The author has incomplete information — the ice to his lips could have been for a short period fo time (at some point he started drinking and eating, right? — does the book tell us when that was?) to gradually introduce fluid before he started drinking and eating.

We do know that Robinson was put under a shower immediately after returning to his locker room, which was probably a major factor in his favor since it would have helped to cool his core.

For that matter, do we know if Rudy Goldstein, the referee who fell out mid-fight, was hospitalized and what his treatment was?

Medicine has come a long way. My father played high school football not too many years before the time of this fight in the Deep South and they would practice in the summer with no water and be given salt pills. In the early 1950s Bear Bryant took his Texas A&M team to drought-stricken Junction, Texas, for brutal practices in the summer heat. The doctor there treated players who passed out from the heat (including immersing one in a tub full of ice to save his life) and I haven’t seen any mention of use of IVs at that time.

I’d say you’re putting a lot of faith in a single account in a book, and that you’re also applying current medical standards to a different time. I’d be willing to bet 50 or 60 years from now they’ll look at some things we are doing medically (and otherwise, haha) and say, ‘How could they be so stupid?’

 

Not sure about that ? 82 wins 21 KOs . Mainly renowned for his stamina and durability I would have said.

 

So do a lot of medical practices when looked back at from far into the future.

Like I said, people used to go through 3-hour football practices in 100-degree heat with no water breaks and were given salt pills. You know why? Because that’s what medical experts thought at the time.

Leeches were used to treat people — they supposedly would drain the ‘bad’ blood out of the patient. Barbaric by our standards, of course, but that’s what they thought in those days.

I’m telling you, they’ll probably laugh at how we’re dealing with coronavirus 50 to 100 years from now. To them it will be ‘so obvious.’

You’re probably also talking about a different ethic in those times of the patient having more say than we give today — if a boxer is ordered to a hospital after a fight now, no argument, they go. Robinson left, with help, under his own power: that is to say, he wasn’t carried out of the ring and stretchered to his car. He said he didn’t want to go to the hospital. Today, his opinion wouldn’t matter — back then it did.

In fact, we already know enough about blows to the head and the effects of those that allowing boxing at all is barbaric. Yet here we are, right? You want to defend allowing two people to bash each other in the head for an extended period of time? And yet there’s a doctor at ringside every time. What does that say?

There’s a very good chance that down the road at some point boxing, MMA and combat sports will be banned outright. They will look back at today and ask how could we know about CTE and the effects of head trauma and allow it to go on. They’ll be asking it the same way you’re asking these questions. Yet I suspect we know more about this now than the doctor at the Robinson fight knew about how dehydration would be treated in the future. So answer that riddle for me.