Without being overly condescending, you do realise that most of the things that have been done throughout history, along with many we still do, are the result of cultural practice and have no evidence base whatsoever?
Whilst 1956 seems to be a fairly late date to stop what would seem in the surface to be a counter intuitive practice, 80 years earlier blood letting was still in vogue
I don't understand though. Someone else brought up trepanation, but pre-modern humans lived in environment where they banged there head around a lot and it may have led to better outcomes for some people to get a hole in their skull so they retained it as a cultural practice. Why would a bunch of people decide, up until 1950 or so, that it was a good idea to rub snow into your feet when they were frostbitten just because it was some practice with no strong basis in reality. The alternative is doing nothing, so what would this do that would at least make people think it was working? Because it had to look like it was working, even if it really wasn't.
We didn’t bother recording deaths because unless you were rich it didn’t matter. It still doesn’t. Who died in South Sudan today? We don’t know. We will never know.
It’s stupidly false to project modern standard into ancient cultures. Even the concept of cartography is anthropologically new.
Most people trepanned with pre-modern medicine in the regions quoted below did not die, "It is a well-documented procedure in Oceania and Africa well into the twentieth century, with an estimated survival of more than 90%. There is good documentation of the tools used and of the antiseptic precautions regularly taken by witch doctors." [0]
And by that logic we know that these procedures must've worked since they didn't kill all the people the were used on, hence they were passed down for generations and survived to the modern era for us to scrutinize!
Now was it just chance or did they actually have something effective to them? There are a number of modern medicines derived from traditional practices[1], not to mentioned thousands of documented medicinal herbs that are understudied and difficult to cultivate (like the Monotropa Uniflora [2] for example). But we help ourselves little by fulling ignoring the possibility of their effectiveness. In any case, its not as if any of our medical practices we employ today does not have its source in traditional medicine, its just we can critically engage with those practices and attempt to develop something out of them with evidence-based trials. But a paradigm shift in thinking about medical practice won't happen if one always makes the same assumptions about what works and what makes people healthy. Examining these traditional/folk practices can help us do so.
For every traditional medicine that was proven there are more that were disproven. The paradigm shift wasn’t in the 1950s but in the Age of Enlightenment. The discovery was the scientific method.
The point about trepanning wasn’t that it was deadly but that it is wrong. It doesn’t help the underlying problems. The answer to why people keep doing it is desperation and the immune system works, which means most illnesses work themselves out, including after the ineffective intervention.
If the complication was a subdural hematoma then similar procedures are still the standard of care today, and certainly we wouldn't be drilling to people's skulls as treatment if our ancestors never did anything similar.
>The discovery was the scientific method.
The "scientific method" is for use in objective science like measuring the speed of light. Until the patient dies, medical care is subjective. Its like with this recent election, telling a bunch of people that the "economy is good" doesn't matter if they themselves don't feel that way. In just the same way, 60 or 70 years ago someone from a developed country could've come into the undeveloped world and removed cancerous tumors by using surgical procedures that left someone with permanent disabilities, but maybe their witch doctor would've used some strange treatment that looked crazy and stupid but actually triggered a global immune response that not only removed the cancer but left the patient with a better outcome since they suffered no permanent side effects from the treatment, one which would be considered "more advanced" by today's standards, but wasn't even considered by the developed world back then. That one might claim something is "objectively" fact is only possible subjectively, and the hubris of believing that your subjective stance, even when accompanied by evidence, is absolutely true, will lead you to discount almost anything that stands outside of it as "unscientific." But you yourself cannot possibly die in your own experience, even though death is the condition of possibility for true objectivity, so until you reach that moment which never comes, you are constantly grappling with this dialectical approach to the world that constantly reshapes and reformulates itself in relation to all the experiences, feelings, and memories that you have.
>The answer to why people keep doing it is desperation and the immune system works, which means most illnesses work themselves out, including after the ineffective intervention.
It's true, but as I said most medical practices today are still derived from pre-modern medicine, even if they have been improved upon. One could make the same argument for much of what we do, since measuring outcomes won't always be able to differentiate between patients who get better on their own and those who improve with the treatment, since most treatments besides pills are impossible to test in a double blind study (you don't see double-blind studies for heart surgery techniques, for instance). Doctors do a lot based on their feelings about whats up and what they think works, far more than you are probably comfortable with, simply because there is no alternative besides constant self-criticism and research. That's why case studies are so important in the medical field, since they offer a subjective approach to the objective circumstance using objective tools that are determined subjectively.
people still pray to personal gods to this day, expecting them to prioritise their petty little lives while others are suffering/dying of things that could be trivially solved with a bit of knowledge and technology.
Praying to gods has a correlation with better medical outcomes, thats why they have chapels in hospitals. Same thing with visits from friends and families. Its not like everything can be solved by "advancing" technology.
The article you've linked describes multiple medical benefits of prayer. By "they don't work", do you mean "the observed benefits are explicable without divine intervention"?
Having the confidence to believe that you are able to do something almost certainly makes it more likely that you'll do it. Its bullshit but it probably works unless its for basically impossible things. You can manifest a promotion if you believe in yourself and work hard (and have an idea that your boss maybe likes you). People are also not so bad at predicting things, you aren't going to manifest something that you have no hope is actually going to happen. But of course with something like a lottery ticket its stupid.
Oh I'm all for people having confidence in themselves. That's what religion is all about (except for the population control aspect).
If someone uses religion (or manifesting) to go down the path of "god helps those that help themselves", all the power to them! (as long as they don't make me believe in it)
I really am talking about people like that one radio moderator I was thinking of when making the comment: was "manifesting" all day yesterday so that someone would win the x-thousand dollars in the contest on their show this morning. Was "manifesting" getting tickets for Taylor Swif as well recently. Stuff like that. Like you said, all just manifesting "lottery ticket" type stuff. Magical thinking basically. Just "sit around and manifest and it'll happen". That's the :facepalm: stuff.
Word games. They don’t have an “evidence base” that are up to our standards. They might have an “evidence base” in the sense that it worked for past generation and folklore now says that it should be done.
A lot of things come from somewhere and are not arbitrary. That’s all that’s being asked here.
I think most (but not all) such things actually did work, and were based on real evidence, we just don’t have easy access to that evidence and context anymore. It is quite likely that modern people are just arrogantly dismissing something they don’t understand.
Whenever we get the inkling to belittle our ancestors, we need to remember that we are nowhere as capable as they were.
Men today cannot build the Great Pyramids of Giza or invent Greek Fire, Roman Concrete, or Damascus Steel like the men of millenia past have.
Our only solace lies in the brutal fact that we invented the internet with which we can shitpost someone on the other side of the world. That is one thing our ancestors did not have and our successors will never surpass.
I agree with your general point that we are in no way inherently superior to our ancestors, but Roman concrete, Damacus steel, and Greek fire are inferior to what we have today to accomplish the same things.
You might look into it to see if there’s something special about butter versus other oils/fats that may make butter specifically good for burns, but I understand that as keeping the air off of the burn, similarly to how oxygen tents work.
Today we apply petroleum jelly (Vaseline, Neosporin, etc.) over skin to help it heal, but butter is basically going to do the same thing of keeping in moisture.
I think the reasoning with topical coatings for burns is actually something to do with avoiding gases touching the burned area, which is why they use oxygen tents for people with severe burns over a large area. Petroleum jelly and other similar products block the air from touching the burn also.
I find that oils such as petroleum jelly or olive oil do provide pain relief for burns. I can only speculate as to the method of action, but I’m clearly not the only one. Apparently even air movement or contact can cause pain to burns due to the exposure of the dermis, and possibly other reasons.
> Also, oxygen's a gas.
Yeah, I think it must be carbon dioxide or some other gas that is naturally occurring in the atmosphere that causes the painful sensation, otherwise they wouldn’t use specifically oxygen?
"HBOT helps wound healing by bringing oxygen-rich plasma to tissue starved for oxygen. Wound injuries damage the body's blood vessels, They release fluid that leaks into the tissues and causes swelling. This swelling deprives the damaged cells of oxygen, and tissue starts to die. HBOT reduces swelling while flooding the tissues with oxygen. The higher pressure in the chamber increases the amount of oxygen in the blood. HBOT aims to break the cycle of swelling, oxygen starvation, and tissue death.
HBOT prevents "reperfusion injury." This is the severe tissue damage that happens when the blood supply returns to the tissues after they have been deprived of oxygen. Blood flow can be interrupted by a crush injury, for instance. If this happens, a series of events inside the damaged cells leads to the release of harmful oxygen radicals. These molecules can do damage to tissues that can't be reversed. They cause the blood vessels to clamp up and stop blood flow. HBOT encourages the body's oxygen radical scavengers to seek out the problem molecules and let healing continue.
HBOT helps block the action of harmful bacteria and strengthens the body's immune system. HBOT can disable the toxins of certain bacteria. It also increases oxygen concentration in the tissues. This helps them resist infection. And the therapy improves the ability of white blood cells to find and destroy invaders.
HBOT encourages the formation of new collagen and new skin cells. It does so by encouraging new blood vessels to grow. It also stimulates cells to make certain substances, like vascular endothelial growth factor. These attract and stimulate endothelial cells needed for healing."
That explains why they use oxygen tents, but it doesn’t really explain why oils/fats on burns provide pain relief. The little I was able to determine was that the exposed inflamed dermis is extremely sensitive to touch/pressure even of just air or air currents, but I don’t know why this is the case.
Some oil has cooling properties. I suppose that is what can provide relief. With my second degree burns this year, I surely enjoyed cooling it, but with ice water.
Ice water would also block air exposure, wouldn’t it?
I’ve also had some larger burns and immersed them in ice water for the immediate treatment, but after the first day or so, I found that petroleum jelly based topical ointments were easier to apply and maintain, as the burn was on the bottom of my foot, which was a distinctly horrible place to have a burn.
My burns were on the hands, which is not so nice either.
But air exposure was happening most of the time, the way I cooled my burns, so it definitely was the cooling, that did help in my case.
(A wet towel with ice in it)
And I learned to not mess with the wounds at all. I think the last time I had a burn, I opened the the blister to get the fluid pressure out. Bad idea, this time I left it and it healed way faster. It healed so good, that after my first night of pain and cooling, I did not had to do anything with it, except giving it a rest.
Ouch, I bet that hurt! I think hands have some of the highest concentrations of nerve endings. The feet were pretty rough, and the callous constricted the blister and limited the expansion of the skin, so lancing the blister was necessary to prevent injury from the blister popping and the blister skin not covering the wound properly.
I stepped on flaming plastic barefoot and fortunately was able to almost immediately immerse the foot in water, which caused the plastic to fuse to my foot for a few hours until the ice water was able to reduce the swelling. Then my foot shrank away from the mostly rigid plastic mass. It was a pretty horrible experience all around considering the small surface area of the burn, and part of the reason why I don’t like walking around barefoot generally, if I had to guess, as it happened when I was around 5 years old. My folks would later be volunteer firefighters and first responders, and I learned a lot of field first aid skills by proxy and through my own shenanigans. I’m glad I’ve never needed to be hospitalized for serious injury, though apparently not for lack of trying.
Yeah. Maybe someone who got rubbed with snow got randomly better completely unrelated to the treatment and then superstition run wild with that coincidence.
Or maybe people understood initially that you should do the rubbing next to a fire. And then the rubbing only has positive efect because it lets the person administering it feel when the heat is too much, and naturally adjusts the distance to prevent burns or injury from too fast warming up.
Or maybe someone told people to do it because they thought it might help and never bothered to check if it does anything or not.
Or maybe people did know it does nothing but there was no other option and doing something about the injury felt better than doing nothing.
Maybe it was doing mechanically nothing but the care and personal touch had a beneficial effect due to placebo.
Maybe it made the injury worse, thus more likely that they amputated and paradoxically that saved the injured from worse outcomes like gangrene.
There is so many other possibility than “if they did it it must have worked”. Who knows.
> rapid rewarming from open campfires or other sources of dry heat caused so much devastation.....Dry heat from ....open fires....cannot be controlled. Excessively high temperatures are usually produced, resulting in a combined burn and frostbite, a devasting injury that leads to far greater tissue loss.
Sounds like it was an overreaction to applying excessive heat to the frostbitten tissue.
(Clean) leeches are actually pretty handy sometimes.
Bloodletting is standard of care for hemochromotosis; you can use leeches for that, but just drawing blood is probably more efficient; some blood banks will let you donate it, some say no because the donation isn't supposed to be of benefit to the donor.
Certainly, a lot of conditions where bloodletting was used don't warrant it, but it's not altogther bad.
I don't think there's a good use case for a lobotomy, though.
Electroconvulsive therapy is about as effective as bloodletting. There are conditions for which bloodletting is an effective treatment, such as iron overload. But in most people, and under most circumstances, losing meaningful quantities of blood leads to long-term injury and/or death. Likewise, electrocuting the nervous system often causes permanent disability and/or death, and is a fairly effective torture method.
Lobotomy, too, can be an effective treatment for epilepsy. But I'm sure we can all agree that certain people in the past were way too quick to resort to it. (The Soviet Union banned it in the 1950s, on human rights grounds.) Likewise, I'm rather worried by the high incidence of involuntary (read: forced, non-consensual) electroconvulsive therapy. 10% is way too high, and I've seen numbers higher than that…
I don't think its smart to act like we are somehow at the pinnacle of human knowledge and nothing we've done before can be more effective than what we know works now.
> don't think its smart to act like we are somehow at the pinnacle of human knowledge and nothing we've done before can be more effective than what we know works now
Sure. Population growth is exponential. Deifying ancient knowledge is over-attributing knowledge to when we had little in both knowledge per person and persons per se.
Sanctifying traditional medicine means you’re out of ideas. You aren’t bad. But move on.
Still deifying traditional practice. Trepanation doesn’t do anything for seizures. Was commonly prescribed for them. We stopped doing that after discovering what caused them. The list goes on and on.
