美國現代醫學簡史

A Brief History of Modern Medicine

https://changingaging.org/aging101/the-flexner-report/

通俗英語版，俺用了半小時仔細讀過。反複想了幾天，有點兒明白了為什麽早期在中國辦醫院的洋人對中醫的熱衷，而學了洋醫的國人卻堅決反對中醫。

自文藝複興以來，西方文明有了全麵的進步，醫學也是。各種流派雜存，各種理論和醫法層出不窮。直到二十世紀初，順勢療法，自然療法，水療法，甚至放血療法，仍深入人心，占據相當大的市場。

直到洛氏揮金、政客控局、學者出頭，才於二十世紀中葉醫統天下，奠定了以對症治療為主打的現代美國醫學的製度和格局。

全文不長，節選如下

Living life day to day it is easy to forget that ideas can change the world sometimes much faster and more profoundly than we expect. Before the Civil War, for example, John D. Rockefeller was just a boy and his father “Big Bill” Rockefeller was a quack physician selling bottles of creosote to cancer patients for 25 dollars apiece. The family, as might be expected, moved frequently.

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Before it was standardized, American medicine was home to a half a dozen competing philosophies and approaches. They were in open conflict with each other their practitioners routinely savaged others for their bungling and mistakes. Critics of “regular” physicians continue to cite the ill-treatment of “the Father of our Nation” as a reason to fear conventional medicine. “When George Washington lay dying, the country’s best physicians, from Harvard and Yale, proceeded to kill him by draining 3 QUARTS of blood, giving him several doses of Calomel (mercury sub-chloride) and covering his body with blisters.” Despite their obvious, and fearsome, ineffectiveness, the practice of the “regular” physician was the foundation upon which Rockefeller decided to build a new American medicine would be the foundation on which the standard medical practice would be built.

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Once relieved of its formerly beloved purgatives, leeches and lances, allopathy proved itself to be quite effective in addressing illnesses and injuries. It has given us laser eye surgery, titanium prosthetic hips, Viagra, heart transplants, cancer chemotherapy, Vioxx, insulin, the polio vaccine, Rogaine, coronary artery bypass surgery, MRIs and Thalidomide. Allopathy has proven both its power and the damage it can do when used less than skillfully. It deserves the central role it now plays in our health care system but, in 1910, it was just one of many different approaches to health and healing.

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Even Mark Twain felt compelled to weigh in on the issue of Homeopathy. Quoted in Harpers Magazine in 1890, he vouched for homeopathy and tweaked the nose of the medical establishment. “The introduction of homeopathy forced the old school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business.” Despite a concerted (many would call it vengeful) campaign to destroy homeopathy, it continued to grow. By 1900 there were 22 homeopathic medical schools giving this discipline a respectable share of all the medical colleges operating at that time. Then came Flexner. In 1923 only two of these schools remained in operation. By 1950 no homeopathic colleges remained in the U.S.

The battle had been joined, a standard imposed and medical education in America was, on the whole, vastly improved. Even though much was gained we should not lose sight of what was lost. Alternative and, potentially, complementary systems of medical thought are important to our health care system in the same way that a diversity of species strengthens an ecosystem. The extinction of a bird or mammal is a loss, profound and enduring. The approaches that were eliminated during the rise of allopathy (and others that have developed since then) can, as Twain pointed out, make the existing system better.

It is time to let Doc Rockefeller rest in peace and begin exploring a new broader scope of health and healing. There are and always have been multiple legitimate approaches to the problem of alleviating human suffering.

Monopoly is bad Medicine.

 

後注：該文不代表本人觀點