6 ms·

Fascinating stuff. I wonder what kind of theory of disease they were working under

praptak 6y ago
Probably the miasma theory. Bad vapours and stuff.
Someone 6y ago
I would guess miasma theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory: “The miasma theory (also called the miasmatic theory) is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Though miasma theory is typically associated with the spread of contagious diseases, some academics in the early nineteenth century suggested that the theory extended to other conditions as well, e.g. one could become obese by inhaling the odor of food.” I think that’s an educated guess in the basis that this was a wide-spread theory, and fits the experiment performed.
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago
  > a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Not far from the truth either, quite impressive for 1000 years ago.
  - gruez 6y ago
    It's very far from the truth imo. There are diseases that are airborne, but most aren't spread by rotting organic matter. It also ignores the other routes of infection (eg. food/water). The only thing it got right was "disease can spread through air". The magnitude of the effect is probably off too. AFAIK the miasma was thought to extend at least a few hundred feet (ie. encompassing entire neighborhoods), but I don't know of any disease that can spread that far through the air.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      How far the disease can spread would depend on sources and sinks, no? If you have a huge pile of infected dead bodies in a "bowl shaped terrain" with little wind, maybe that would do it? Add a temperature inversion* for good measure. https://i2.wp.com/www.naturphilosophie.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Normal_Conditions_versus_Temperature_Inversion_Diagram_UnderstoryWeather.jpg?ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/www.naturphilosophie.co.uk/wp-content/uplo...
      - gruez 6y ago
        >How far the disease can spread would depend on sources and sinks, no? By air alone? How far can it possibly spread? Can you get measles if you walked within 100ft of a mass grave? miasma theory would say yes, but I doubt that's actually the case. If you include other forms of transmission (eg. insects, animals, food/water), then it can definitely spread miles away, but this goes back to my original point of only being correct about disease being (loosely) correlated by distance. But even then it gets a bunch of stuff wrong. A rat with the bubonic plague stowed away on a ship can infect people hundreds of miles away, for instance. You could also live next to a mass grave and be fine as long as you have mesh windows and boiled your drinking water.
        im3w1l 6y ago
        It's a good point about other forms of transmission, but I think the air alone is an interesting question. What would be the limiting factor on how far it can spread? Do the particles deactivate after a while in the air? Or is it that the concentration is not high enough? Latter case, wind patterns would matter a lot. Surely, when authorities talk about diseases being able to spread x many feet, it ignores many factors and is meant to be an actionable simplification that works in a statistical sense.
- aitchnyu 6y ago
  Marcus Aurelius wrote about "disturbed air" around 160 AD, about the Antonine Plague that killed a significant portion of military and civilians. > For corruption of understanding is much more a plague than such a distemper and change of this environing atmosphere; for this is a plague to animals, as animate beings, that is a plague to men, as human beings.
aeoleonn 6y ago
I don't think it's too far fetched to assume that the Al-Adudi Hospital was founded based on an nascent sense of Germ Theory. Allow me to explain: To quote the wikipedia source: "hanging a piece of meat in several places for a few days and deciding in favor of the place where meat was found to be least infected." Infected definition = "contaminated with an infective agent (such as a bacterium or virus)." I think they could likely see some infective agents such as flies, maggots, and spoilage in meat, and translate this to their own flesh as analogous to meat. In terms of theory, my best guess is simply one of "meat goes bad when it is infected by parasites (i.e. maggots as well as perhaps stuff we do not/cannot see)" Note that per [1] "Basic forms of germ theory were proposed in the late Middle Ages by physicians including Ibn Sina in 1025" Whereas, from OP's source: "The Al-Adudi Hospital was founded in 981 by the then ruler of Baghdad, Adud al-Dawlah, and was also named after him" Given the proximity of those dates (981 vs 1025)-- the proposal of Germ Theory by Middle Eastern (specifically, Persian in the case of Ibn Sina) doctors, and the hospital's founding in the near Middle Eastern region of Turkey a few years decades earlier, and the prolific nature of science in the Medieval Islamic-sphere of influence/Middle Eastern world, I think it's a decently strong argument that the basis is very early germ theory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Note that per [1] "Basic forms of germ theory were proposed in the late Middle Ages by physicians including Ibn Sina in 1025" Note that also per [1] germ theory was stated pretty well in the first century BC: > The Roman statesman Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) wrote, in his Rerum rusticarum libri III (Three Books on Agriculture, 36 BC): "Precautions must also be taken in the neighborhood of swamps […] because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases." This doesn't really differ from the germ theory of disease as we understand it today.
  - marshmellman 6y ago
    Thanks, that’s fascinating.
k0stas 6y ago
The same theory of flight that birds use to fly, i.e., none. Some birds might notice they use less energy if they don't flap their wings and instead catch an updraft. I don't think they need a theory of pressure gradients to exploit this phenomenon. They just have to feel it in their bones. I know my response is glib, but no "theory of" is needed to do useful work. Humans can build intuitive understanding through personal experience, observation, and thinking. And they can pass some forms of this understanding via apprenticeship, laws, rules, organizational structures and cultural norms among other things.

Probably the miasma theory. Bad vapours and stuff.

I would guess miasma theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory: “The miasma theory (also called the miasmatic theory) is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Though miasma theory is typically associated with the spread of contagious diseases, some academics in the early nineteenth century suggested that the theory extended to other conditions as well, e.g. one could become obese by inhaling the odor of food.” I think that’s an educated guess in the basis that this was a wide-spread theory, and fits the experiment performed.

Zenbit_UX 6y ago
> a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Not far from the truth either, quite impressive for 1000 years ago.
- gruez 6y ago
  It's very far from the truth imo. There are diseases that are airborne, but most aren't spread by rotting organic matter. It also ignores the other routes of infection (eg. food/water). The only thing it got right was "disease can spread through air". The magnitude of the effect is probably off too. AFAIK the miasma was thought to extend at least a few hundred feet (ie. encompassing entire neighborhoods), but I don't know of any disease that can spread that far through the air.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    How far the disease can spread would depend on sources and sinks, no? If you have a huge pile of infected dead bodies in a "bowl shaped terrain" with little wind, maybe that would do it? Add a temperature inversion* for good measure. https://i2.wp.com/www.naturphilosophie.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Normal_Conditions_versus_Temperature_Inversion_Diagram_UnderstoryWeather.jpg?ssl=1 https://i2.wp.com/www.naturphilosophie.co.uk/wp-content/uplo...
    - gruez 6y ago
      >How far the disease can spread would depend on sources and sinks, no? By air alone? How far can it possibly spread? Can you get measles if you walked within 100ft of a mass grave? miasma theory would say yes, but I doubt that's actually the case. If you include other forms of transmission (eg. insects, animals, food/water), then it can definitely spread miles away, but this goes back to my original point of only being correct about disease being (loosely) correlated by distance. But even then it gets a bunch of stuff wrong. A rat with the bubonic plague stowed away on a ship can infect people hundreds of miles away, for instance. You could also live next to a mass grave and be fine as long as you have mesh windows and boiled your drinking water.
      - im3w1l 6y ago
        It's a good point about other forms of transmission, but I think the air alone is an interesting question. What would be the limiting factor on how far it can spread? Do the particles deactivate after a while in the air? Or is it that the concentration is not high enough? Latter case, wind patterns would matter a lot. Surely, when authorities talk about diseases being able to spread x many feet, it ignores many factors and is meant to be an actionable simplification that works in a statistical sense.
aitchnyu 6y ago
Marcus Aurelius wrote about "disturbed air" around 160 AD, about the Antonine Plague that killed a significant portion of military and civilians. > For corruption of understanding is much more a plague than such a distemper and change of this environing atmosphere; for this is a plague to animals, as animate beings, that is a plague to men, as human beings.

aeoleonn 6y ago

I don't think it's too far fetched to assume that the Al-Adudi Hospital was founded based on an nascent sense of Germ Theory. Allow me to explain: To quote the wikipedia source: "hanging a piece of meat in several places for a few days and deciding in favor of the place where meat was found to be least infected." Infected definition = "contaminated with an infective agent (such as a bacterium or virus)." I think they could likely see some infective agents such as flies, maggots, and spoilage in meat, and translate this to their own flesh as analogous to meat. In terms of theory, my best guess is simply one of "meat goes bad when it is infected by parasites (i.e. maggots as well as perhaps stuff we do not/cannot see)" Note that per [1] "Basic forms of germ theory were proposed in the late Middle Ages by physicians including Ibn Sina in 1025" Whereas, from OP's source: "The Al-Adudi Hospital was founded in 981 by the then ruler of Baghdad, Adud al-Dawlah, and was also named after him" Given the proximity of those dates (981 vs 1025)-- the proposal of Germ Theory by Middle Eastern (specifically, Persian in the case of Ibn Sina) doctors, and the hospital's founding in the near Middle Eastern region of Turkey a few years decades earlier, and the prolific nature of science in the Medieval Islamic-sphere of influence/Middle Eastern world, I think it's a decently strong argument that the basis is very early germ theory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> Note that per [1] "Basic forms of germ theory were proposed in the late Middle Ages by physicians including Ibn Sina in 1025" Note that also per [1] germ theory was stated pretty well in the first century BC: > The Roman statesman Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) wrote, in his Rerum rusticarum libri III (Three Books on Agriculture, 36 BC): "Precautions must also be taken in the neighborhood of swamps […] because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases." This doesn't really differ from the germ theory of disease as we understand it today.
- marshmellman 6y ago
  Thanks, that’s fascinating.

k0stas 6y ago

The same theory of flight that birds use to fly, i.e., none. Some birds might notice they use less energy if they don't flap their wings and instead catch an updraft. I don't think they need a theory of pressure gradients to exploit this phenomenon. They just have to feel it in their bones. I know my response is glib, but no "theory of" is needed to do useful work. Humans can build intuitive understanding through personal experience, observation, and thinking. And they can pass some forms of this understanding via apprenticeship, laws, rules, organizational structures and cultural norms among other things.