History of medicine

Quacks, Mountebanks, Big Pharma

July 6, 2024 — July 6, 2024

academe
agents
collective knowledge
economics
faster pussycat
game theory
health
how do science
incentive mechanisms
information provenance
institutions
mind
networks
sociology
wonk
Figure 1

The most visceral case study of the history and philosophy of science For thousands of years, physicians have been an esteemed profession, and yet they have only been a net benefit to their patients for the last hundred years, by some estimates. What does that say about our connection to effectiveness? About prestige? About our ability to evaluate the effectiveness of our institutions? About the influence of literal skin in the metaphorical game?

1 Case Study: Airborne transmission

The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill (Randall et al. 2021).

2 Incoming

3 Medicalisation

See medicalisation.

4 Incoming

  • Ben Krauss, The strange history of osteopathic medicine

  • Kelsey Piper, Scientific fraud solutions: Should research misconduct be illegal?

    That is, the policy which Poldermans had recommended using falsified data, adopted in Europe on the basis of his research, was actually dramatically increasing the odds people would die in surgery.

    Millions of surgeries were conducted across the US and Europe during the years from 2009 to 2013 when those misguided guidelines were in place. One provocative analysis from cardiologists Graham Cole and Darrel Francis estimated that there were 800,000 deaths compared to if the best practices had been established five years sooner.

5 References

Abdel-Halim. 2011. “Experimental Medicine 1000 Years Ago.” Urology Annals.
Brown. 1979. “The Health Care Crisis in Historical Perspective.” Canadian Journal of Public Health / Revue Canadienne de Sante’e Publique.
Claridge, and Fabian. 2005. “History and Development of Evidence-Based Medicine.” World Journal of Surgery.
Connolly. 2017. “A Dynamic Equilibrium: Doctors and Patients in Seventeenth-Century England.”
Doyal, and Pennell. 1979. The Political Economy of Health.
Hansson. 2015. “Experiments Before Science. What Science Learned from Technological Experiments.” In The Role of Technology in Science: Philosophical Perspectives.
Pickstone. 1993. “Ways of Knowing: Towards a Historical Sociology of Science, Technology and Medicine.” The British Journal for the History of Science.
Randall, Ewing, Marr, et al. 2021. “How Did We Get Here: What Are Droplets and Aerosols and How Far Do They Go? A Historical Perspective on the Transmission of Respiratory Infectious Diseases.” Interface Focus.
Shoja, Rashidi, Tubbs, et al. 2011. “Legacy of Avicenna and Evidence-Based Medicine.” International Journal of Cardiology.
Sokol. 2006. “How the Doctor’s Nose Has Shortened over Time; a Historical Overview of the Truth-Telling Debate in the Doctor-Patient Relationship.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Sturdy, and Cooter. 1998. “Science, Scientific Management, and the Transformation of Medicine in Britain c. 1870–1950.” History of Science.
Tybjerg. 2022. “Scale in the History of Medicine.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.
Waitzkin. 1985. “Information Giving in Medical Care.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Warner. 1995. “The History of Science and the Sciences of Medicine.” Osiris.
Willis. 1993. “The Historical Sociology of Healthcare.” In Health Research in Practice: Political, Ethical and Methodological Issues.
Zarvandi, and Sadeghi. 2019. “Exploring the Roots of Clinical Trial Methodology in Medieval Islamic Medicine.” Clinical Trials.