Interesting times indeed. I think the early history of medicines takes away from your observation though. In the 19th and early 20th century people didn't know

Interesting times indeed. I think the early history of medicines takes away from your observation though. In the 19th and early 20th century people didn't know why medicines worked, they just did. The whole "try a bunch of things on mice, pick the best ones and try them on pigs, and then the best of those and try a few on people" kind of thing. In many ways the mice were a stand in for these models, at the time scientists didn't understand nearly as much about how mice worked (early mice models were pretty crude by today's standards) but they knew they were a close enough analog to the "real thing" that the information provided by mouse studies was usefully translated into things that might help/harm humans. So when you're tools can produce outputs that you find useful, you can then use those tools to develop your understanding and insights. As a tool, this is quite good.