January 09, 2019 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior on "quackeries"
Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior later went on
to win Harvard’s prestigious Bolyston Prize for his paper on the benefits of
using the stethoscope.
Yes, we are talking about the era when a
device which probably is the universal representative symbol of a medical
doctor was unfamiliar to most of the practitioners of the art and science.
Following his short stint as a professor of
anatomy and physiology at the Dartmouth medical school he gave a series of
three lectures that were devoted to the exposure of medical “quackeries”.
As a medical reformer even earlier he had
voiced his opinion on and against all sorts of alternative medicines but his
criticisms was neither deliberate nor focused nor serious.
From now on his tone against sham medicine
would be more careful, detailed with pronouncements made at the exact reasoning
and fallacies in each one of them.
The first lecture of his on the exposure of
medical quackeries was dedicated to “Astrology and Alchemy”.
(Just as a reminder let us not forget that
a mind as great as Newton dabbled in occult such as alchemy but he can be pardoned
simply for the reason that he did so in the late seventeenth century when
modernity was at the very threshold of being delivered from the womb of West
Europe.
He even considered himself as one of few
chosen mortals handpicked by God in the task of comprehension of Biblical
scripture no doubt arising from the cognitive acceptance of his own superior
intellect over others.
Hence those who practiced in alchemy and
occult during the times of Holmes Senior would have always had Newton as their
authority figure to back their claims.)
The second was dedicated to the “Medical
Delusions of the Past”.
The third was dedicated to Homeopathy.
Please see his choice of adjectives that he
used for homeopathy.
He described homeopathy as “the pretended
science” that was a “mingles mass of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition,
of imbecile credulity, and of artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in
practice.”
Quite a mouthful but it is perhaps the perfect
summary of all my bedtime stories on homeopathy in one pithy statement.
He did not stop with just these three lectures.
In 1842 Holmes published his lectures on
homeopathy in a form of treatise called “Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions”
that is now a classic.
This was perhaps one of the first major and
serious criticisms of homeopathy likening it with all other popular
tomfooleries such as astrology, palmistry that exploit the weaknesses and
credulity of human apes.
In it he also went on to describe the power
of the placebo effect and conveyed an important message that “real advances
were made only after years of work by highly trained men who cared little for
fame and money.”
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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