From the high ground of history, we look back on ancient practices and — with an unearned sense of moral superiority — feel grateful to live in the present.
Take bloodletting.
For thousands of years, physicians from ancient Greece to Renaissance Europe deliberately bled their patients, sometimes to the point of fainting or even death. This was all in an effort to purge them of “bad humours,” which they believed to be the source of human illness.
Bloodletting provided a dramatic display of “doing something” to help the patient. Of course, we now know that it did nothing to address the underlying causes of disease, and in many cases, made symptoms worse.
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