The Ghost Map — Steven Johnson presentation
Steven Johnson’s TED talk on the outbreak and John Snow’s wonderful persistence in discovering the cause of cholera.
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Medicine
The Semmelweis case
From Part 3 of Stephen Hicks’s Philosophy of Education course, in which he discusses Ignaz Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause of puerperal fever, with special focus on the cognitive methods Semmelweis used. Clips 1-3: Previous: Reason–a developmental story.Next: The “Juliet is the sun” metaphor.Return to the Philosophy of Education page.Return to the StephenHicks.org main page.
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Eugenics [Section 16 of Nietzsche and the Nazis]
[This is Section 16 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 16. Eugenics Nazi education and censorship attempted to control people’s minds. The Nazis also controlled the bodies of their citizens as much as possible. Milder controls involved new public-health measures such as an aggressive campaign against smoking: the Nazis banned smoking in certain public places, ran
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Anatomy and philosophy
Following up on The Knife Man and John Hunter, the great 18th-century anatomist and surgeon. In Hunter’s era surgery was brutal, in large part due to surgeons’ ignorance of anatomy, and in that earlier post I wondered why there was still such ignorance given that the 1700s were two centuries after Andreas Vesalius and a
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Why life in America is 40 times better than in 1900
A follow up to my post on Why life is 255 times better now than in 1800. Some warm-up indicators: By 1900 the U.S. had recently become the wealthiest economy in the world, slightly surpassing Australia and Great Britain, and it had become twice as wealthy as France and Germany and four times as wealthy
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In class: Semmelweis as epistemological hero
Prior to the discovery of germ theory and antiseptic, women frequently died of puerperal fever in the maternity ward at the University of Vienna Hospital. Enter Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian-born physician working at the Vienna hospital, one of the world’s leading medical establishments. Carl Hempel’s account of Semmelweis’s false starts, failed hypotheses, and eventual success
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We have to consider sacrificing Maryland
I think we have to consider sacrificing Maryland. Some of my best friends are Marylanders. Nothing personal, guys, but this healthcare thing is important, and there’s only one way to break the impasse: hard scientific experimenting. Here is the plan. We isolate Maryland and turn it into a giant test case. We send in a
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The four healthcare debates
Like many of you, I am engaged with thinking through the healthcare proposals and debates and am occasionally frustrated with the scattered focus and the talking past the other guy’s position. So, as a start, I propose a clarification of the questions involved. As I see it, the overall healthcare discussion is a four-dimensional debate:
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