13 replies to this topic

[stocks]

Before about 1910, a doctor's visit would tend to do more harm than good.

The medical profession had become wedded to irrational and unjustifiable assumptions, There are only three fantasy technologies that lasted
for many centuries: alchemy, astrology, and Hippocratic medicine (bloodletting, etc.).

Bloodletting is the withdrawal of often small quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were regarded as "humors" that had to remain in proper balance to maintain health. It was the most common medical practice performed by physicians from antiquity until the late 19th century, a span of almost 2,000 years

The benefits of bloodletting only began to be seriously questioned in the second half of the 1800s. While many physicians in England at the time had lost faith in the general value of bloodletting, some still considered it beneficial in some circumstances, for instance to "clear out" infected or weakened blood or its ability to "cause hæmorrhages to cease"—as evidenced in a call for a "fair trial for blood-letting as a remedy" in 1871.[11] Bloodletting persisted into the 20th century and was even recommended by Sir William Osler in the 1923 edition of his textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine.[12]

One reason for the continued popularity of bloodletting (and purging) was that, while anatomical knowledge, surgical and diagnostic skills increased tremendously in Europe from the 17th century, the key to curing disease remained elusive, and the underlying belief was that it was better to give any treatment than nothing at all. The psychological benefit of bloodletting to the patient (a placebo effect) may sometimes have outweighed the physiological problems it caused. Bloodletting slowly lost favour during the 19th century, but a number of other ineffective or harmful treatments were available as placebos—mesmerism, various processes involving the new technology of electricity, many potions, tonics, and elixirs


http://en.wikipedia....ki/Bloodletting


“The Harvard biochemist L.J. Henderson [1878-1942] was supposed to have remarked ‘that it was only sometime between 1910 and 1912… that a random patient, with a random disease, consulting a doctor chosen at random, had, for the first time in the history of mankind, a better than 50-50 chance of profiting from the encounter.’”

Edited by stocks, 02 December 2012 - 01:43 PM.

[Rogerdodger]

Bloodletting is highly effective for reducing high blood pressure.

It can also be a permanent remedy for migraine headaches if properly done.

The origin of the red and white barber pole is associated with the service of bloodletting and was historically a representation of bloody bandages wrapped around a pole. During medieval times, barbers performed surgery on customers, as well as tooth extractions. The original pole had a brass wash basin at the top (representing the vessel in which leeches were kept) and bottom (representing the basin that received the blood). The pole itself represents the staff that the patient gripped during the procedure to encourage blood flow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber's_pole

I guess you could say it was Barbaric!

Edited by Rogerdodger, 03 December 2012 - 12:15 AM.

[stocks]

I guess you could say it was Barbaric!

For 2000 years it wasn't barbaric, it was health-care.
Who raised their voice against this practice? Very few.

More about the barber's pole

Though the bloodletting was often recommended by physicians, it was carried out by barbers. This division of labour led to the distinction between physicians and surgeons. The red-and-white-striped pole of the barbershop, still in use today, is derived from this practice: the red represents the blood being drawn, the white represents the tourniquet used, and the pole itself represents the stick squeezed in the patient's hand to dilate the veins.

Bloodletting killed George Washington

Bloodletting was also popular in the young United States of America, where Benjamin Rush (a signatory of the Declaration of Independence) saw the state of the arteries as the key to disease, recommending levels of bloodletting that were high even for the time. George Washington asked to be bled heavily after he developed a throat infection from weather exposure. Within a ten hour period, a total of 124-126 ounces (3.75 liters) of blood was withdrawn prior to his death from a throat infection in 1799.[17]


http://en.wikipedia....ki/Bloodletting

[stocks]

What finally ended 2000 years of bloodletting? -- The microscope and statistical evidence.

Why did it take so long? -- Doctors were determined that no scientific discovery would alter their traditional therapies of bleeding, purging, and vomiting.

The key obstacle to medical progress was not economic self-interest nor was it some insuperable intellectual obstacle; it was the cultural identity of the medical profession, an identity transmitted through the texts of Hippocrates and Galen, and symbolized by the leech, the lancet, and the tourniquet

Chronology:

1674 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek views and describes micro-organisms through a microscope.

1692-1830 The microscope is abandoned as a tool of science and medical research.

Medical time stood still or even went backwards for 140 years between Hooke’s 1692 complaint that microscopy had been virtually abandoned and 1830, shortly before Schwann formulated the germ theory of putrefaction.

1830 The microscope becomes a recognized tool for research.

1857 Joseph Dietl and Hughes Bennett produce statistical evidence comparing treatment with bloodletting with no treatment and show that no treatment was preferable to traditional treatment.

1865 Antiseptic surgery and the germ theory of disease begins with Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister. Bloodletting's days are numbered.

1925 Bloodletting finally ends completely.


Wootton, David (2006-06-22). Bad Medicine : Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates (Kindle Locations 395-398). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Edited by stocks, 20 December 2012 - 07:05 PM.

[stocks]

What finally ended 2000 years of bloodletting? -- The microscope and statistical evidence.

Why did it take so long? -- Doctors were determined that no scientific discovery would alter their traditional therapies of bleeding, purging, and vomiting.

The key obstacle to medical progress was not economic self-interest nor was it some insuperable intellectual obstacle; it was the cultural identity of the medical profession, an identity transmitted through the texts of Hippocrates and Galen, and symbolized by the leech, the lancet, and the tourniquet

Chronology:

1865 Antiseptic surgery and the germ theory of disease begins with Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister. Bloodletting's days are numbered.

1925 Bloodletting finally ends completely.

Wootton, David (2006-06-22). Bad Medicine : Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates (Kindle Locations 395-398). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

1865-1925 It took 2 generations for doctors to let go of bloodletting.

How come everyone knows about Galileo and the Catholic church, but no one knows about 2000 years of useless bloodletting therapy?

In 1875 an English doctor, W. Mitchell Clarke, wrote ‘we are most decidedly living in one of the periods when the lancet is carried idly in its silver case; no one bleeds; and yet from the way in which I find my friends retain their lancets, and keep them from rusting, I cannot help thinking they look forward to a time when they will employ them again’.

Similarly in 1903 Robert Reyburn, an American, was asking ‘Have we not lost something of value to our science in our entire abandonment of the practice of venesection?’

Heinrich Stern, publishing The Theory and Practice of Bloodletting in New York in 1915 declared that ‘like a phoenix, the fabulous bird, bloodletting has outlasted the centuries and has risen, rejuvenated, and with new vigor, from the ashes of fire which threatened its destruction’—he thought bloodletting a useful treatment for drunkenness and homosexuality. Others recommended it for typhoid, influenza, jaundice, arthritis, eczema, and epilepsy.

Wootton, David (2006-06-22). Bad Medicine : Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates (Kindle Locations 3723-3725). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

[salsabob]

Given that this is a makin-money board, when I saw the topic "bloodletting" I thought you were talking about the insanity of decreasing federal deficit spending (i.e., demand) in an anemic economy. Well, let's just hope it doesn't take 2000 years for economy bloodletters to be seen as being as numbskulled as their historic counterparts in the health arena!

[Rogerdodger]

an anemic economy

didn't exist until the government figured out how use the FED and Treasury to bleed the citizens.

The Sheriff of Nottingham would be proud.

[salsabob]

an anemic economy

didn't exist until the government figured out how use the FED and Treasury to bleed the citizens.

The Sheriff of Nottingham would be proud.

Yes, federal taxing is part of the bleeding - i.e., raising taxes reduces federal deficit spending. We're seeing that now with returning the payroll taxes back to 6.2%.

Let's make a deal -

Let's keep federal taxes where they are at or even moderately reduce them. But also keep federal spending where it’s at or moderately increase it. However, index both to the CPI - if CPI goes up, taxes go up and spending goes down proportionately – make it automatic and turn it over to the technocrats (Congress still has to decide who gets what with more or less spending – that’s ugly politics but the only better alternative is me being king. )

We've just solved 2/3 of what ails the economy and 95% of what everybody fights over.

Let's go get a beer and celebrate!

[Rogerdodger]

So back to bloodletting: If "It took 2 generations for doctors to let go of bloodletting", how long will it take to stop the mindless, endless government bleeding of our children's future?


From “Wastebook 2012”

• Free bus rides for Super Bowl attendees who were able to pay $3,000 for a game ticket!– $142,419

• A covered bridge in Ohio that is not used by cars or tied to any walking or bike trail will be rehabilitated with federal funds $520,000

• Pet shampoo company fetches more than half a million dollars – (NE) $505,000

• Tax loopholes for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) – professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits ($91 million in taxes)

• Moroccan pottery classes (part of a $27 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development)

• Efforts to promote caviar consumption and production ($300,000)

• Robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel” (part of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation)

• Promotion of specialty shampoo and other beauty products for cats and dogs ($505,000)

• Corporate welfare for the world’s largest snack food producer, PepsiCo Inc. ($1.3 million)

• Government-funded study on how golfers might benefit from using their imagination, envisioning the hole is bigger than it actually is ($350,000)

• “Prom Week,” a video game that allows taxpayers to relive prom night ($516,000)

• Oklahoma’s layover boondoggle, a scarcely used airport in Oklahoma receiving nearly half-a-million in taxpayer dollars only to transfer funds elsewhere in the state ($450,000)

• The 2012 Alabama Watermelon Queen tour paid for in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “to promote the consumption of Alabama’s watermelon through appearances of the Alabama Watermelon Queen at various events and locations” ($25,000)

• No laughing matter, a cartoon school with very few students receives real taxpayer money – (VT) $255,000

• Science research dollars go to "boring" musical about biodiversity and climate change – (NY) $445,444

View a complete list and summary of Wastebook 2012 projects: here

Edited by Rogerdodger, 01 March 2013 - 01:09 AM.

[salsabob]

So back to bloodletting: If "It took 2 generations for doctors to let go of bloodletting", how long will it take to stop the mindless, endless government bleeding of our children's future?


From “Wastebook 2012”

• Free bus rides for Super Bowl attendees who were able to pay $3,000 for a game ticket!– $142,419

• A covered bridge in Ohio that is not used by cars or tied to any walking or bike trail will be rehabilitated with federal funds $520,000

• Pet shampoo company fetches more than half a million dollars – (NE) $505,000

• Tax loopholes for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) – professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits ($91 million in taxes)

• Moroccan pottery classes (part of a $27 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development)

• Efforts to promote caviar consumption and production ($300,000)

• Robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel” (part of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation)

• Promotion of specialty shampoo and other beauty products for cats and dogs ($505,000)

• Corporate welfare for the world’s largest snack food producer, PepsiCo Inc. ($1.3 million)

• Government-funded study on how golfers might benefit from using their imagination, envisioning the hole is bigger than it actually is ($350,000)

• “Prom Week,” a video game that allows taxpayers to relive prom night ($516,000)

• Oklahoma’s layover boondoggle, a scarcely used airport in Oklahoma receiving nearly half-a-million in taxpayer dollars only to transfer funds elsewhere in the state ($450,000)

• The 2012 Alabama Watermelon Queen tour paid for in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “to promote the consumption of Alabama’s watermelon through appearances of the Alabama Watermelon Queen at various events and locations” ($25,000)

• No laughing matter, a cartoon school with very few students receives real taxpayer money – (VT) $255,000

• Science research dollars go to "boring" musical about biodiversity and climate change – (NY) $445,444

View a complete list and summary of Wastebook 2012 projects: here

Those are fun anecdotes, but explain to me how that federal spending "bleeds our children's future." Is there a time machine where we go to the future and break open their piggy banks?

You know, WW2 was really, really expensive - have you seen any guys from the 1940s wonderng around breaking kids' piggy banks?

I'm really interested in how you think this notion of 'future stealing' actually works in the real world.

Edited by salsabob, 05 March 2013 - 12:52 PM.