3 ms·
Right: if you go back two generous human lifespans there is almost nothing. I always have two specific lifespans in mind when I say this: my late father’s and
by bemusedthrow75 3y ago
Right: if you go back two generous human lifespans there is almost nothing.
I always have two specific lifespans in mind when I say this: my late father’s and that of a man he admired and studied under in his youth: Alexander Fleming. Go back before Fleming’s birth in 1881 and you are in the medical dark ages in some respects.
The NHS is really only a human lifespan old.
- currymj 3y agothere was a popular medical textbook, reprinted well into 1920s, that still recommended bloodletting. (and not in some sensible "did you know actually leeches are still useful for healing wounds?" way. just old school bloodletting.)
- jcims 3y agoI get what you're saying and it doesn't make a material difference, but a lifespan and a generation are quite different. My grandpa was born in 1928, when penicillin was discovered. There's a picture of him holding my brother's grandson. That's five generations in one lifespan, four of which could have been meaningfully impacted by the availability of a general antibiotic. Now are we going to start observing the influence of that on the human immune system in four generations? No. Forty? Maybe a little bump in the noise floor. Four hundred? Almost certainly yes.
- bemusedthrow75 3y agoYes, you're correct of course -- I'm just concurring that medicine is really really new.