A healthy dose of skepticism won’t hurt..

Greek philosophers Hippocrates (460 BC – 370 BC), Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) and Galen (129 AD - 210AD) thought human body was made of four fluids that they called humors ‒ blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. For over two thousand years people didn’t find any humor in that idea. Medical Science during that long period believed any sickness was due to imbalance of these four fluids.

Blood was believed to be exclusively produced by liver, and excess of blood was the main perceived reason behind cold and cough. Therefore, when first American President George Washington complained of sore throat and chest congestion in December of 1799, the doctors recommended bloodletting, the common medical intervention for cold at that time. After pints of blood were removed from his body, George Washington died, due to, some speculate, blood loss.

Afterwards, Medical Science progressed, but not fast enough. So, when Abraham Lincoln was shot and gravely wounded by confederate spy and famous actor John Wilkes Booth in April of 1865, there was no IV drop, no assisted ventilation or no steroid to treat cerebral swelling. His doctors had to use the best medicine available at that time – mummy powder. Till middle of twentieth century American pharmaceutical companies like Merck used to sell bottled powders made from mummified body parts collected from ancient Egypt. These powders were widely believed to have therapeutic values to cure almost any disease.

Later on, in early twentieth century, German pharmaceutical companies created a marvelous medicine to suppress coughs from diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia. This medicine, created by chemically altering morphine, soon became a rage in the western world. Patients liked it so much that they implored their physicians to prescribe it in large dosages. The cough suppressant was named Heroin; large drug companies like Bayer sold it in large quantities for quite some time, before, sadly, it became banned. Many similar opioids-based drugs are still prescribed and sold to treat chronic pains ‒ a hotly debated topic in many countries.

Medical Science, like all other spheres of science, progressed by disconfirming the previously accepted principles and practices. Most scientific beliefs of previous generations were found to be un-scientific at a later time.

In 1936 Portuguese neuropsychiatrist Antonio Moniz developed a type of neurological surgery called lobotomy that involved severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex or lobe ‒ he was awarded Nobel Prize in 1949 for his contribution. Moniz’s American disciple, surgeon Walter Freeman created the industrial version of the procedure, popularly called Icepick Lobotomy. Freeman literally inserted two icepicks, often together by both hands, through the thin bones of the eye-sockets of suspected schizophrenic patients, and moved them to sever the pre-frontal lobes of their brains, in order to cure them from their craziness. He performed those procedures with just local anesthesia, mostly without any sterilizations or disinfectants, which used to be thought as wastage of time by most doctors and surgeons till very recently. Icepicks were later replaced by finer instruments, but the practice continued till 1970s. Over fifty thousand lobotomies were performed in United States alone, ten thousand of them were the icepick version, another fifty thousand in the UK. At one point it was so popular that Freeman went around in his van he called lobotomobile (allegedly) across United States performing his wonderful procedures for the greater good of humanity. Lobotomy was even performed on American president John F Kennedy’s own sister. But that was before Walter Freeman was banished by society and his medical license was revoked. Thankfully this unsafe and cruel procedure is banned in most countries now.

The point is..

In 2020 humanity is facing a big challenge from a mysterious and infectious flu affecting and killing many people across the globe. You can rest assured that many will recommend may solutions and procedures to save us from this malevolence, and most probably we will have no other option but to follow some of these recommendations as we don’t know any better.

But we should at least remember that most of the advances in medicine happened either by trial and error (e.g. aspirin and most other drugs), or by pure accidents (e.g. penicillin, birth control pill, Viagra etc.).

It is often joked that pharmaceutical companies today are better at inventing new disease for existing medicine than inventing new medicine for existing disease.

Just remember, even today, aspirin is the most researched medicine in the world as the medical science continues to find newer and more useful use of the miracle-drug by trial and error.

Don’t be surprised if the future generations get surprised by the medical science and practice of our time as we get surprised by the science and practice of our ancestors.

Saptarshi Bhattacharyya

Make Better Decisions

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