3 ms·

Ah, were the Romans to have had antibiotics, eh?

• ghaff 2y ago
  Some health-related things are an area where important advances could probably have happened earlier in principle: germ theory of disease, importance of sanitation, some relatively simple advances like antibiotics... All seem doable in principle relative to inventing a lot of 19th century industrial revolution devices. ADDED: The Romans did apparently have some knowledge of antibiotics without presumably understanding the mechanisms or refining them. Per Wikipedia and other sources: "Antibiotics have been used since ancient times. Many civilizations used topical application of moldy bread, with many references to its beneficial effects arising from ancient Egypt, Nubia, China, Serbia, Greece, and Rome."
  • Bluestein 2y ago
    From the spinning wheel, to plentiful rags, to cotton paper, to the printing press.- > ADDED: The Romans did apparently have some knowledge of antibiotics Fascinating. Worth looking into.- Sometimes, all it took was one person noticing something (midwives who wash their hands post partum tend to have better outcomes, farmers near cows get less sick, or not at all ...) ... but, you raise another good point: First principles, the search for the facts. Benefits at scale come with, consistently, wanting to go from observation, to general principles, to particular application, to mass application ... ... and, maybe, it took rational thought and the scientific method to get there.-