Mon, 21 Aug 2006

'Mint' pain killer takes leaf out of ancient medical texts

Hmmm, here's an interesting thought. It used to be that science operated on the premise that "old wives tales" or commonly accepted wisdom was correct until proven wrong: this is the attitude that led to the bacterial theory of disease, for example. Or to discarding the "ether" that permeated everything.

And this worked quite well - the world is not flat, after all, and once proven was readily accepted.

It strikes me that nowadays the paradigm is reversed: ancient knowledge is considered bullshit until proven. And this new application works, too - see the article linked below. But it also had the unintended side effect of cutting us off from the knowledge of the past by forcing an affirmative proof, rather than a negative one. It effectively takes away some of the height from the shoulders of the giants that science and technology stands upon, because in most cases it's far easier to prove that a thing is not true than it is to prove the positive. And I have to wonder how much knowledge we're missing on account of this subtle shift.

A new synthetic treatment inspired by ancient Greek and Chinese remedies could offer pain relief to millions of patients with arthritis and nerve damage, a new University of Edinburgh study suggests.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

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