If you were really sick, do you think it would help if someone cut open one of your veins and drained about a quart of blood out of you?
This was the preferred remedy of the medical establishment for at least 300 years. According to my history books, even the ancient Greeks may have practised it. They thought that sickness was caused by some kind of poison that got into your blood. The solution was to drain some of the blood out, so that new poison-free blood could take its place and dilute the effects of the poisons.
Now, you may wonder, how could so many people have been so stupid for so long? This remedy persisted well into the 19th century, in spite of absolutely no scientific proof that worked.
Now, I didn't say there was no "proof" of any kind, that it worked. They did have proof. And it makes for an interesting object lesson in the meaning of "proof".
This was the proof. Let's say fifty people got seriously sick, from some kind of virus. Doctor Bloodpan comes to visit his fifty patients, one by one. If it's a serious virus, given the circumstances of life in the 18th century, it wasn't unlikely that more than a few of these fifty were going to die. And people knew that. They were petrified of all diseases in a way that people nowadays are petrified of AIDS.
So Doctor Bloodpan goes around to all his patients and drains a quart of blood from each and tells the family that it's very serious and they must all pray. The family knows that a miracle is about as likely as a cure, so they do, fervently.
Well, Doctor Bloodpan is an incompetent idiot, so half his patients die. Does he go around announcing to all his patients that he is an incompetent idiot? No, of course not. He goes around and announces that he is a brilliant success: he has saved 25 lives! God be praised! And so he is.
Now, some skeptic comes along and says, "hey, what kind of idiot is this Doctor Bloodpan? If he would have just left most of these people alone, at least forty would have lived instead of just twenty-five." And the families of the survivors go, "What, are you nuts? Doctor Bloodpan is a genius! He saved my husband!" And the families of the dead go, "Well, life is tough."
Do you think it would be hard, under the circumstances, to convince people that Dr. Bloodpan is a hero? I don't think so. Human nature is funny. When someone dies, we instinctively think we might have been responsible. We don't often want to even raise the question, let alone make a public issue out of it. Would George Twentykids have lived if Dr. Bloodpan hadn't drained the life out of him? Mrs. Twentykids, who screamed at him and called him a worthless fool on the very day he became ill, says, "oh no. It was God's will."
We think we're so much smarter today. Well, consider this:
Many people, even today, are reluctant to call a doctor, probably for good reason. So when a person gets a virus, he waits and waits before seeking help. Inside his body, the virus is strongest in the first few days. Soon, his body's built-in defenses take over and anti-bodies form, attacking the virus. This is about the time the person feels worst, so he makes an appointment to see the doctor. The appointment is in a day or two. By the time he goes to the doctor, he is already getting better. Does the doctor say, "Hey, you're already getting better. Go home and have a nice nap."? Oh no. The doctor, thinking back fondly upon that excursion to the Bahamas paid for by some big pharmaceutical company, happily prescribes some drugs. The patient takes the drugs but his anti-bodies have already pretty well defeated the virus. A few days later, he feels great. He says, "boy, those drugs work fast!".
I have a feeling that a few hundred years from now, we will look upon surgery and drugs the way we look upon blood-letting today. As some absurd relic of superstition and ignorance.
