Heroic Medicine

By Deane Barker • • tags: medicine •

This was an era of medicine in the 1700s and 1800s where physicians performed extreme treatments on their patients in an attempt to “shock” them out of whatever condition ailed them. Treatments such as bloodletting, purging, and sweating were common. These very likely caused more deaths than they prevented.

There is some evidence that George Washington was killed after several days of heroic medical procedures meant to cure what may have simply been the flu. Close to 50% of his blood was removed before he finally died.

Why I Looked It Up

A book about increases in life expectancy had an entire chapter on the history of heroic medicine. I encountered the word and put in on my list to look up, and ran across the definition a couple minutes later.

Links from this – Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer September 12, 2021
I love Steven Johnson. He’s one of my favorite authors. He writes mainly about the history of science and technology. This book is about the history of how we began to live longer. The average lifespan has gone up so much in the last couple of centuries, and what caused that? Here’s the list:...