Comment by _mbr6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _mbr6 | Hacker News Reader

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You're making some very, very broad, blanket statements about vast swaths of human experience and recorded wisdom (hint: that usually doesn't work out so well - nuance is our friend!).

But, to play along, in attempt to affirm or deny this - let's start with what you mean by "those texts". Which texts, specifically, are you referring to, when you say that they contain absolutely zero applicable content to the care of modern humans? (Where I'm paraphrasing your statement: "There is no medical wisdom in any of the old texts (from any culture) that are relevant in 2018").

edit:

you know what? I'll help you out with a single counterexample to your statement, so that we can move on:

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-34451386

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou#Malaria

To summarize, the plant Artemesia Annua was recorded approximately 2500 years ago in traditional Chinese medical herbal texts as being an effective treatment for the disease known as malaria. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology was awarded to the chemist who used this specific information from these texts to aid in the discovery of a compound that is now the defacto treatment for this disease.

There's plenty more examples like this; I will end my confrontation of your current system of beliefs here. The rest of this form of work is completely up to you!

>You're making some very, very broad, blanket statements about vast swaths of human experience and recorded wisdom (hint: that usually doesn't work out so well - nuance is our friend!).

I don't know about you, but when I read about applying dung into my wounds, I kinda lose interest in the remaining 4000 pages, and also happily forgo the 'ward off evil spirits' bonus that it brings.

>Which texts, specifically, are you referring to, when you say that they contain absolutely zero applicable content to the care of modern humans? (Where I'm paraphrasing your statement: "There is no medical wisdom in any of the old texts (from any culture) that are relevant in 2018").

Your paraphrasing is out of context. I am speaking about medical knowledge. Our knowledge has improved, but our flaws still remain. In other non-medical contexts, a lot of things would still apply.

Back to your counter point.

>the plant Artemesia Annua was recorded approximately 2500 years ago in traditional Chinese medical herbal texts as being an effective treatment for the disease known as malaria. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology was awarded to the chemist who used this specific information from these texts to aid in the discovery of a compound that is now the defacto treatment for this disease.

While that maybe be what is being reported it is not even close to the truth. The texts don't say "here's how to treat malaria". They don't even know what malaria actually is or how it works or anything about it. Traditional medicine applied a 'throw shit to the wall' approach (common in ancient times) to treat fevers using hundreds of different herbs. None of these actually worked, because there was no knowledge of what was causing those fevers (parasite/virus/disease etc). This is also why we don't treat malaria by giving someone a cup of herbal tea - it doesn't work.

What was a world record for a marathon a hundred years ago is barely the qualifying time for the Boston marathon in 2018. So yeah, The Chinese, Egyptians, Indians, etc all had their own world records. Its time to let them go. I prefer to take my medical science from the time when we know the most about the human body, not when we knew the least. You can make your own choice.

Knowledge is everywhere, science doesn't tell you to be narrow minded. If you deny human kind's past experiences, you would just end up reinventing the wheel. It is always hard to find the reason behind anything as it requires us to find the pattern first. Call it symptoms in medical science. Human kind has been doing it since its inception. Ancient texts are just there to help you out. Remember that there were no technological advancements as of today, still our ancestors had found reasons and solutions (cures in medical science) to many problems. You do not need to really trust anything, but what I am saying is that you cannot also simply deny it.

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