(July 5, 2023 at 2:44 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote:(July 5, 2023 at 2:35 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: I’m sure there’s lots of things I’ve heard of that you haven’t.
Boru
And I'm also sure I've heard a lot of things that you haven't. Yes, there were people way before Semmelweis who rejected blood-letting on the grounds that studies show that people who have been bled do not survive at a higher rate than people who haven't been, but their philosophy of following the evidence wasn't mainstream in medicine all until the end of the 19th century. Levy and other people objecting to Semmelweis'es findings were not following the evidence. Following the evidence would be to either accept the Semmelweis'es findings (as they are the best evidence available) or to attempt to make a better experiment.
Avicenna proposed evidence-based medicine (although it wasn’t called that) and wrote 40 books on the subject eight centuries before Semmelweis was a gleam in the milkman’s eye. Many physicians (notably van Helmont) were arguing against bloodletting as early as the 1600s. Controlled clinical trials were being conduct almost a hundred years before Semmelweis was born.
I’m not saying Semmelweis wasn’t right - he absolutely was and he was treated shabbily by his contemporaries. But to claim that his work ‘inspired’ EBM isn’t borne out by the facts.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
