THE ELUSIVE RED M&M

In preparing a display on Poison Prevention for the 1st - 3rd graders at my grandson's school, I was pairing up different medicines with candy "look-a-likes". The kids will be asked, "Which one is the candy and which one is the poison/medicine/"bad" stuff?" I went out to three different stores and purchased about $20 worth of candy (it's a rough job). I have Good 'n Plenty, Hot Tamles, Smarties, Sweetarts, Skittles, Tic Tacs, Mike & Ike, Harbro Gold-Bears, Lemonhead, Hershey bar, and MMs. 

I went to the hospital pharmacy, where I work occasionally, and with the Director's permission, attempted to match up as many of the candies with similar looking tablets and capsules. I was successful with all but three or four of the candies (I'll just have to eat those I suppose). I took the candies and medicines home, got out my zip-lock bags and began matching them all up. 

For one of the medicines I needed two red M&Ms (plain, no peanuts). I opened the 3.4 oz, $1.00 bag of M&Ms and poured a few out in my hand but didn't see any red ones at first glance so I dumped the entire bag on the dining room table. After searching through the pile I found ONE red M&M. Why was there only one red M&M in my package? This both frustrated and baffled me so I did some research. How many of each color should there be in a bag? 

But first, an aside. A little extra bit of trivia I picked up when researching. It seems that red has always been the favorite color M&M for the past umpteen years. But in 1976, because of a study associating FDC #2 red food dye with cancer, the red M&Ms were discontinued -- even though FDC #2 was NOT used to color the red M&Ms. The company was afraid the public might assume that the harmful dye was used. As a result, orange M&Ms were introduced to replace the red ones. However, in 1987, after an eleven-year absence, the red M&Ms were reintroduced and the orange ones were allowed to continue.

Now, back to the M&M color distribution question. How do they decide how many of each color goes into a bag? Well, a guy named Josh Madison (joshmadison.com) wondered the same thing. He found that Mars (M&M manufacturer) claims the color distribution is as follows:

Red 13%
Brown 14%
Green 16%
Orange 20%
Yellow 14%
Blue 24%

Josh went out and purchased a retail box (48 packages, 1.69 oz. each) of M&Ms, dumped them all out, divided the colors, and counted. There was a total of 2,620 M&Ms with the color distribution as follows:

Red (369) 14.20%
Brown (371) 14.16%
Green (483) 18.44%
Orange (544) 20.76%
Yellow (369) 14.08%
Blue (481) 18.36%

Josh concluded that these numbers were close enough for him. So I counted the M&Ms in my one bag. I had 115. I divided out the colors and counted each one. In addition to the ONE red M%M there were eight browns, thirty-six greens, eighteen orange, twenty-one yellow, and thirty-one blue. A total of one hundred and fifteen M&Ms. Was the color distribution in my bag of M&Ms on target? After counting and calculating, this is how my M&M colors were distributed:

Red 0.9%
Brown 6.8%
Green 32.3%
Orange 15.6%
Yellow 18.4%
Blue 27.0%

Not even close! It looks like I may have to sue Mars to get my second red M&M. Why is it that I never seem to have the time to get anything done?

Civil War Amputations

Today we visited the Chimbarazo Medical Museum and the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond.  The Medical Museum was small but very interesting, which I’m sure was due to the fact that Carol Ann and I are both pharmacists and I have worked for much of our careers in hospitals.  I am not going to bore you with any tedious descriptions as I have in my descriptions of battles in previous postings.  But, I do want to mention a few things that you should find quite interesting.

Of five Civil War surgical kits on display, there was one thing they all had in common. A bone saw.  As I mentioned yesterday, a soldier shot in the arm or leg with a .56 or .58 caliber bullet would probably require amputation.  The sooner the amputation was performed, the more likely was the patient to survive.   A good surgeon could amputate a limb in less than 10 minutes.  Survival rates were higher when the amputations were performed within 24 hours of the wound.  Amazingly, nearly 75% of amputees survived.

By the end of the war the Union had 11,000 physicians, the Confederacy about 4,000.  Most of them, North and South, had never even seen a bullet wound prior to the war.  They had to learn quickly as gunshots accounted for 94% of the recorded battle wounds.  Of wounds to the extremities, there were approximately 30,000 amputations in the Union army and almost the same number in the Confederate army. 

NOW.  On a lighter note.  As we were driving back to the RV park this afternoon we found ourselves the fifth or sixth car in line behind a large dump truck.  The road was curvy and we were forced to follow the truck for several miles.  From our position in the “parade” we could see an orange sign with black lettering on the back of the truck.  However, we were too far back to read it.  Finally, we came to a long straight section of highway and followed all of the cars in front of us around the truck.  As we passed the truck I read the sign.  It said, “WORKING VEHICLE.  DO NOT FOLLOW.” What are you supposed to do?

Tomorrow we are leaving the Richmond area for Lynchburg (VA, not TN) and Appomattox Court House, where Gen. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Grant.