Why Past European Society Failed Science

 

A society less concerned with class distinction, classics finery and bon mots, in the 18th and 19th centuries, in the form of by-rote memorization of rhetorical history may have well succeeded to resolve other, perhaps more urgent problems. 

Perhaps, the poets, writers and philosophers who sat around spouting their classical knowledge would have enjoyed better personal health and added longevity, had their thought and energy been re-directed to a grand plan for improving medicine. 
 
Questions were rampant for alert citizens to ask. Considerations about potential grand plans and achievement prizes for societal improvements could have been formulated. They were easily discernible for all to ponder. Especially with serious health issues and their so-obvious concern


A number of prospective inquiries could have been developed in those years. Some of the question that needed solutions included the following: 
 
1: Religious restrictions curtailed the investigative uses of autopsies, as a means of evaluating medical practice. Still, by 1761, Giovanni Morgagni's publication described results of over 700 autopsies, which disputed humor and energy theories. As bodies were becoming legally available, why didn't the medical profession adjust stale, centuries-old thinking with new objectives?
2: Perhaps, the over-riding problem of society would have been a solution to the scourge of venereal disease. This had created an entire industry of medical quacks in Britain by the 1700s, where one in five London women were estimated to be prostitutes, catering to upper and lower-class clientele. The remedies were poor and often dangerous, but legitimate inquiries could have achieved more worthwhile progress.
3: In many respects, midwives appeared to know more about disease-preventing cleanliness than did doctors of those days. In fact, they did a better job at reducing the incidence of widespread childbirth (puerperal) infection. Why did it take so long to determine that midwives provided more sanitary conditions than hospital physicians who were attending diseased patients and also dissecting cadavers while delivering children?
4: Why did so many simple limb amputees suffer from gangrene, when it became clear that the persistent use of filthy surgical tools were probably the reason? There was more than ample evidence to get medical surgeons.

There was plenty of evidence during the American Civil War that the unsanitary conditions under which surgeons operated had much to do with the mortal infections suffered by wounded soldiers. (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments and @BusinessNewshole tweets.)