Al-Adudi Hospital
en.wikipedia.org
Al-Adudi Hospital
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Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#2I know they say scientific progress is not linear but boy how cool would it have been if a Joseph Lister was around at that time there. We would have discovered germs much earlier. Maybe even avoided the plague?
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#3Fascinating stuff. I wonder what kind of theory of disease they were working under
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#4Fascinating stuff. I wonder what kind of theory of disease they were working under
Probably the miasma theory. Bad vapours and stuff.
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#5I know they say scientific progress is not linear but boy how cool would it have been if a Joseph Lister was around at that time there. We would have discovered germs much earlier. Maybe even avoided the plague?
Then he would not have had access to the body of knowledge accrued by others to build upon his theory of infection. He would probably have made some scientific progress - provided the circumstances did not make him a brick layer instead - but not the same as what he did 900 years in the future.
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#6Fascinating stuff. I wonder what kind of theory of disease they were working under
I would guess miasma theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory:
“The miasma theory (also called the miasmatic theory) is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Though miasma theory is typically associated with the spread of contagious diseases, some academics in the early nineteenth century suggested that the theory extended to other conditions as well, e.g. one could become obese by inhaling the odor of food.”
I think that’s an educated guess in the basis that this was a wide-spread theory, and fits the experiment performed.
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#7Fascinating stuff. I wonder what kind of theory of disease they were working under
I would guess miasma theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory : “The miasma theory (also called the miasmatic theory) is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from ro…
> a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter.
Not far from the truth either, quite impressive for 1000 years ago.
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#8This is a interesting because, while they may not have understood the science behind why the meat spoiled less, there may have been utility in this fact (if that location naturally had less bacteria). I wish the U.S. had performed this much thought with regard to COVID.
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess miasma theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory : “The miasma theory (also called the miasmatic theory) is an obsolete medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma (μίασμα, Ancient Greek for "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from ro…
> a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Not far from the truth either, quite impressive for 1000 years ago.
It's very far from the truth imo. There are diseases that are airborne, but most aren't spread by rotting organic matter. It also ignores the other routes of infection (eg. food/water). The only thing it got right was "disease can spread through air". The magnitude of the effect is probably off too. AFAIK the miasma was thought to extend at least a few hundred feet (ie. encompassing entire neighborhoods), but I don't know of any disease that can spread that far through the air.
Re: Al-Adudi Hospital
#10Fascinating stuff. I wonder what kind of theory of disease they were working under
I don't think it's too far fetched to assume that the Al-Adudi Hospital was founded based on an nascent sense of Germ Theory. Allow me to explain:
To quote the wikipedia source: "hanging a piece of meat in several places for a few days and deciding in favor of the place where meat was found to be least infected." Infected definition = "contaminated with an infective agent (such as a bacterium or virus)."
I think they could likely see some infective agents such as flies, maggots, and spoilage in meat, and translate this to their own flesh as analogous to meat. In terms of theory, my best guess is simply one of "meat goes bad when it is infected by parasites (i.e. maggots as well as perhaps stuff we do not/cannot see)"
Note that per [1] "Basic forms of germ theory were proposed in the late Middle Ages by physicians including Ibn Sina in 1025"
Whereas, from OP's source: "The Al-Adudi Hospital was founded in 981 by the then ruler of Baghdad, Adud al-Dawlah, and was also named after him"
Given the proximity of those dates (981 vs 1025)-- the proposal of Germ Theory by Middle Eastern (specifically, Persian in the case of Ibn Sina) doctors, and the hospital's founding in the near Middle Eastern region of Turkey a few years decades earlier, and the prolific nature of science in the Medieval Islamic-sphere of influence/Middle Eastern world, I think it's a decently strong argument that the basis is very early germ theory.