Science Storytime
My Tuesday morning class, _Experience, Experiments, and the Soul_ taught by Ted Kaptchuk, is just as awesome as I'd hoped. Let me share a little bit of what I learned during today's lecture on the history of medicine and healing, on the birth of modern Western medicine.
Sometime during the early 1600s, in one of the first cafes in Pisa (coffee being rather new to Europe), the head of the medicine department at the local university was having a cuppa with a professor from a different department. During their conversation the head of medicine bemoaned the inability of his students to distinguish between people who are hot types and people who are cold types (Hippocratic medicine being the only medicine in Europe at the time). The professor responded, "Ah! I have just the device to help you and your students!" He lent the esteemed department head a strange contraption, a wide glass tube filled with water containing small containers filled with strange fluids, and told the head of medicine that if someone blew on the device it would declare how hot or cold they were. Elated, the head of medicine brought it to class the very next day. He chose a student who was known for wearing wool in the summer, a wan gentleman who was soft-spoken with a tendency to daydream - someone very Yin, very Cold. Then he chose a second student who was known for walking barefoot in the snow, a red-faced bear of a man who partied all night and loudly confronted professors with questions difficult and absurd every day - someone very Yang, very Hot. He had each of them come up and blow on the glass tube. Then the strangest thing happened: this contraption given to him by professor Galileo showed that both students had the exact same internal temperature. The cry of the department head was the first gasp of air of newborn modern Western medicine.
This is my favorite story from today's lecture (although there were better insights gained from other parts of the lecture). It totally goes up there with my favorite neuroscience story, which I will tell another time. I am entirely too happy to be in this class ;).
Sometime during the early 1600s, in one of the first cafes in Pisa (coffee being rather new to Europe), the head of the medicine department at the local university was having a cuppa with a professor from a different department. During their conversation the head of medicine bemoaned the inability of his students to distinguish between people who are hot types and people who are cold types (Hippocratic medicine being the only medicine in Europe at the time). The professor responded, "Ah! I have just the device to help you and your students!" He lent the esteemed department head a strange contraption, a wide glass tube filled with water containing small containers filled with strange fluids, and told the head of medicine that if someone blew on the device it would declare how hot or cold they were. Elated, the head of medicine brought it to class the very next day. He chose a student who was known for wearing wool in the summer, a wan gentleman who was soft-spoken with a tendency to daydream - someone very Yin, very Cold. Then he chose a second student who was known for walking barefoot in the snow, a red-faced bear of a man who partied all night and loudly confronted professors with questions difficult and absurd every day - someone very Yang, very Hot. He had each of them come up and blow on the glass tube. Then the strangest thing happened: this contraption given to him by professor Galileo showed that both students had the exact same internal temperature. The cry of the department head was the first gasp of air of newborn modern Western medicine.
This is my favorite story from today's lecture (although there were better insights gained from other parts of the lecture). It totally goes up there with my favorite neuroscience story, which I will tell another time. I am entirely too happy to be in this class ;).