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Why has medicine been so slow to improve over the centuries?

27 November 2021

9:00 AM

27 November 2021

9:00 AM

Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery and War Transformed Medicine Jim Downs

Belknap, pp.320, 23.95

Medicine was founded by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. Doctors continued to study the Hippocratic texts into the 19th century, and many of the therapies, such as bleeding, purgatives and enemas, continued to be practised into the 20th. The standard Hippocratic account of disease was that it resulted from an imbalance of humours within the body.

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