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This 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.
I don’t understand this side comment. What are you referring to? The supposed source (bats) came from an infested market in China, not the US
Fascinating 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…
Note that also per [1] germ theory was stated pretty well in the first century BC:
> The Roman statesman Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) wrote, in his Rerum rusticarum libri III (Three Books on Agriculture, 36 BC): "Precautions must also be taken in the neighborhood of swamps […] because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases."
This doesn't really differ from the germ theory of disease as we understand it today.
I 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?
That's some pretty awesome engineering thinking: don't have a theory to explain phenomena? No problem, still can do useful things without it!
+ the causes of disease are the same as the causes of meat rotting
+ that cause is localised in space, and stays there over time
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
https://i2.wp.com/www.naturphilosophie.co.uk/wp-content/uplo...
I wonder if you could find hospitals today by hanging meat (or some sensors) around cities. Just as factories can issue clouds of soot or other pollution, could hospitals be emitting clouds of bacteria?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Note that per [1] "Basic forms of germ theory were proposed in the late Middle Ages by physicians including Ibn Sina in 1025" Note that also per [1] germ theory was stated pretty well in the first century BC: > The Roman statesman Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) wrote, in his Rerum rusticarum libri III (Three Books on Agriculture, 36 BC): "Precautions must also be taken in the neighborhood of swamps […] because…
