Glass In Medicine
Okay, so we’re a little obsessed with glass. Beyond the traditional uses of glass in building and structure though, there are many surprising places that glass is essential to everyday life that we don’t normally think about. The screen of the computer that you are using to read this blog, for example. When you go to the doctor’s office or a hospital, you think of glass windows, or maybe the cylinders that hold the cotton balls and swabs. Yet glass was essential to the development of medicine.
Test tubes are made of glass. Petri dishes are often made of glass. The lenses of microscopes are made of glass. From beakers to pipettes, titrating devices, distillation devices, extractors, crucibles, funnels, jars, slides, most of the equipment used in a laboratory is made of glass. The shields that doctors wear over their faces in surgery and special lenses they use in delicate surgeries, are made of treated glass. Every major (and minor) medical advancement was made possible because of glass.
Medicines and tinctures were developed for use with darkly hued glass bottles. Only recently have plastic bottles begun replacing them. Laboratory equipment is
almost exclusively made from glass because plastic melts when exposed to high temperatures and open flames, nor can it be properly sanitized because it is more porous and the chemicals and bacteria can and will cling to the surface of the plastic.
Incubators are made with glass, not just the kind that hold precious infants, but also the kind that warm, steam, and process those test tubes and petri dishes full of bacteria, viruses, DNA, RNA, and other biological material. Without those sterile, uncontaminated environments due to glass, we would not have the medicines and treatments that are available to us today.
The other kind of incubator, the one that does hold newborns, and the radiant warmers that they are placed in immediately after birth, are also made of glass. From possible creation in a test tube to birth, our children are protected by glass. As they grow and suffer the common ailments of childhood, they are treated and cured because of glass. As we age and require more medical care, it is possible due to glass. Every aspect of our health care is somehow dependent on glass, from the laboratories to the surgical centers to recovery rooms and back to the pharmacies.
Aside from window glass repair of residential and commercial buildings, we at Glass King are always open to other ways glass is used in our world. We are keenly appreciative of the debt that modern science owes to glass. Window installation and broken windows keep us busy during the day, but we are ever mindful of the amazing breakthroughs that were born from glass.
