Personal view
Does history repeat itself in medicine?
G C CookWellcome Trust
Centre for the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London NW1
2BE, UK
Correspondence to: Dr Cook
Submitted 26 September
2000;
Accepted 2 October 2000
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
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Introduction |
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"The longer you can look back, the further you can look forward" Winston Churchill (1944)
The majority of major discoveries in medicine are unique. Two examples are: William Harvey's (1578-1657) description of the circulation of the blood, published in Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus in 1628,1 and the contributions leading up to the enunciation of the "germ theory" of disease; Louis Pasteur (1822-95),2 Robert Koch (1843-1910),3 and Joseph (later Lord) Lister (1827-1912)4 were largely instrumental in its elucidation. But the underlying idea(s) behind numerous lesser discoveries, which have not attained such a high profile, is often repetitive. Significant lessons for future medical practice can therefore ensue.
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An organism is not necessarily causatively related to a disease entity |
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I cite two outstanding examples at the present time to illustrate
this point. A spiral organism which has become definitively designated
Helicobacter pylori was demonstrated in the
presence of gastritis and peptic ulceration in 1984.5
Since then, this organism
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[Abstract] [Full Text] -
ABDUL-AZIZ, L A S
(2001). Does history repeat itself in medicine?. Postgrad. Med. J.
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