linkedin post 2018-04-01 04:39:21
SO ENDS this history of medicine portrait of the heuristic approach to problem solving. Society faced a severe public health threat from smallpox that killed millions. Physicians had little to go on but educated guesses, without the benefit of theory. The germ theory was only accepted in 1880; viruses were not isolated until 1892. Animal studies of diseases were not fully established until the later work of Koch and Pasteur, and preclinical vaccine testing was not required until the 20th century. While the ethics of these early studies has been severely criticized, today the world is free of the scourge of smallpox. View in LinkedIn