--- On Fri, 7/18/08, Gilbert Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Did I read you right, that the Greeks like Hippocrates or > Galen were not practicing and teaching what they (and we) > call "scientific medicine"? (see below) >
Gilbert, Yes, you read me right. Their medicine was pre-scientific. They practiced Aristotlean philosophy and common sense. The scientific method was not fully developed until the 13th century A.D. when Roger Bacon described it, although the Arabs were using its precursor as early as the 8th century. It was first applied in a systematic and comprehensive manner by Galileo in the 16th century. It was first introduced into medicine by Semmelweis and Pasteur in the 19th century. Modern medicine did not become fully scientific in the sense of using the evidence-based approach until the second half of the 20th century. In fact, surgery started relying on this approach only in the 1980s and 1990s. As far as your nonsense about scientific fads is concerned, perhaps you are referring to some pre-scientific or pseudoscientific opinions and impressions. Real science does not have fads. It only has hypotheses that become established principles or have to be modified based on objective evidence. BTW, I noticed that you were not able to defend your moral equivalence of inquisition and medicine, with anything you wrote in your latest post in the "Evaluating the past" thread you created for that purpose. Cheers, Santosh
