Sun, 31 May 2009

Four Pills A Day

I was watching a rerun of Saturday Night Live not too long ago, featuring Steve Martin as the host. One of the sketches had Martin playing the title character, "Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber". A parade of people with various maladies were brought to him, and in each case, Theodoric impressed the crowd with his advanced knowledge of the healing arts: "Once we would have believed that this man's afflictions were caused by being cursed by a troll, or a witch. But now we know that it is instead caused by an imbalance of humors in the blood," for which the inevitable prescription was leeches and bloodletting. The audience roared as each hapless victim was led away to cut and bled.

A funny bit, but one that also got me thinking of the progress in medicine since Theodoric's day, and my own interactions with our health care system.

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Posted May 31, 2009 at 19:43 UTC, 3121 words,  [/rich]  Permalink