This is pretty interesting about the Inca doctors, showing that they had an advanced medical tradition. The fact reasearches can determine success rates in earl

This is pretty interesting about the Inca doctors, showing that they had an advanced medical tradition. The fact reasearches can determine success rates in early periods compared to later periods,... That's quite an amazing discovery. But civil war doctors are not a good comparison standard.... If you go back 150 years, scientific/western medicine really sucked. They didn't do antiseptic surgery, and lots of patients died of infections from dirty doctor hands. When the patients did have infections, there were no antibiotics. They didn't know about germs. Etc. Meanwhile, they had thrown out all the non-scientific stuff. Witches brews containing antibiotics. Old time herbal medicines like willow bark (aspirin).. traditional healing existed alongside formal medicine for many generations, and the healers were probably more successful for a lot of it. It's only really after/during WW2, that the basics of modern medicine were really solid: antiseptic surgery, penecilin, vaccinations,.. it went from crappy beta version to the best medicine ever invented pretty quickly. For the first few hundred years, scientific medicine was the world leader in anatomy, dissection, making detailed drawings of bodies. Fundamental to the evidence but for curing people... I think the doctors were average and below, until some point in the 20th century, after centuries.