1: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations. On Friday, I share something about myself or what we are working on at PCI.
There have been two distinct eras in medical history, Peter Attia tells us in his powerful book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.
The first era, Peter calls “Medicine 1.0,” which began with the ancient Greeks around 400 B.C. and continued until the mid-1800s.
Peter writes: “Its conclusions were based on direct observation and abetted more or less by pure guesswork, some of which was on target and some not so much.”
The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates “advocated walking for exercise, for example, and opined that ‘in food, excellent medicine can be found; in food, bad medicine can be found,’ which still holds up.”
Yet other other Medicine 1.0 “treatments” were just plain wrong.
“Did your head hurt? You’d be a candidate for having a hole drilled in your skull,” writes Peter.
“Strange sores on your private parts? Try not to scream while your doctor dabs some toxic mercury on your genitals.
“And then, of course, there was the millennia-old standby of bloodletting, which was generally the very last thing that a sick or wounded person needed.”
This was the way medicine was practiced for more than two thousand years.
The good news is by the middle of the 18th century, a new era of medicine was dawning, which would become, in Peter’s words: “A defining feature of our civilization, a scientific war machine that has eradicated deadly diseases such as polio and smallpox,”
We’ll discuss this incredible transformation more next week.
I’m getting ready to participate in an online program Peter is offering. I look forward to sharing some of the learnings in upcoming RiseWithDrew posts.
More next week!
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Reflection: Take a moment to be grateful for modern medicine!
Action: Discuss with a friend or colleague.
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