3 ms·
I wonder if Takaki would have had more success if he marketed his solution in the terminology of the dominant paradigm. For example: "Barley seems to contain so
by kijin 12y ago
I wonder if Takaki would have had more success if he marketed his solution in the terminology of the dominant paradigm. For example: "Barley seems to contain some kind of chemical that kills the germs that cause beriberi."
- nitrogen 12y agoThat's not just a change in terminology, that would be lying. Please don't do that when marketing anything, least of all medical things.
- kijin 12y agoIt would be lying if Takaki knew that beriberi wasn't caused by germs. But back in the 1870s, he didn't know that. He only knew that something in barley was helping to prevent beriberi, and he was in fact mistaken about what that something was. (He thought it was proteins when it was actually vitamin B1.) So the Antibiotic Barley Theory could have been a reasonable hypothesis. Vitamin C is named "ascorbic" (i.e. anti-scurvy) acid because the people who discovered it were looking for a substance that prevented scurvy, no matter what the mechanism of action. The mechanism of action was only known for sure after the substance was identified.