03-03-2009, 04:21 PM
Quote:So, like with eastern herbal remedies, just because it sounds crazy doesn't mean there is not some truth awaiting a scientific explanation. They did the best they could considering that a functional cellular level microscope wasn't invented until the 1600's.
Yeah, and they, just like eastern herbal medicine, get an E for effort, but an F by any scientific measure. In the vast majority of cases, this stuff doesn't do anything; in a tiny number of cases, it has a small, but relatively trivial effect. Scientific testing continues, usually at the behest of people who really want these things to be true, but the usual result is either complete failure, or no statistically significant success. It would be silly and ahistorical to hold medieval doctors' lack of knowledge against them, but even sillier to pretend that their innefective treatments work simply because, at one point centuries ago, they were thought to work by mystic german nuns. Hildegaard von Bingen is one of history's strangest and most interesting characters, but her medical advice was bunk.
My point remains, just because medicine (and medical institutions) have religious roots, doesn't mean that modern, scientific medicine conducted under state auspices has any obligation whatsoever to accommodate religion into its practices. Hospitals are entirely different entities, governed by entirely different concepts now than they were even 200 years ago, let alone 800 years ago, and this is overwhelmingly for the best, at least if we value our health more than our religion.
-Jester