I tend to have a cynical view of modern medicine,particularly using medications where it is questionable if the chemicals are doing more harm than good. Are they really hoping to stumble upon cures,or are the big pharmacy companies simply lining their proportionally big pockets? Then a person takes a glance into the past at medical science and it seems apparent that medicine has been founded on the best guess theory. A Nobel prize in medicine was awarded in 1927 for the discovery of using malaria to treat neurosyphillis,which was a fatal disease at the time. My first thought was how did they come up with a disease to cure a disease? As it turns out it is just as reasonable approach as ingesting the chemicals that medicine uses in the treatments today where the long term effects are largely unknown. What they had observed that inspired the malaria "cure" was that some patients who developed high fevers would be cured of syphillis. With that observation came the idea of treating the syphillis by giving the patients malaria to produce the high fever. It might sound a little crazy,but at the time was considered acceptable risk as the malaria could in turn be treated with quinine. I'm not sure which I would prefer if given a choice...modern or old school? and are researchers any closer to having it all sorted out?
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