From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon 09 Jun 2003 - 02:59:11 GMT
>From: "rhiggins7" <rhiggins7@cox.net>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: never wanting to grow up
>Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 04:18:55 -0400
>
>
> > Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 19:28:46 -0400
> > From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@rogers.com>
> > Subject: Re: never wanting to grow up
> >
> >
> > "Culturgen" is a term predating "meme" which means the same thing. A
> > culturgen is an element of culture that is passed on, like patterns of
> > decoration on pottery or the means of making pots, chipping rocks to
>make
> > tools or ways to make shoes. These culturgens or memes are no real
>problem
> > to explain because they are useful to learn, but they do require being
> > passed down as elements of culture. That makes them memes.
> >
> > "Bleeding" as a medical practice was harmful in virtually all cases, but
>it
> > too was a meme that was passed down from generation to generation. As a
> > meme it did not induce behavior to teach others to bleed people.
> >
>I disagree with this last statement. For one thing, Bleeding was a
>technology which was part of greater set of technologies as you called it
>"Medical practice"(or least it evolved into our current concept of
>medicine). I feel I'm pretty safe to say that a substantial portion of
>Medicine during that era did harm in some fashion of another and most of
>the rest did extremely little if any thing. But despite its harmfulness,
>the evidence would seem to show very strongly that Bleeding not only did
>"induce behavior to teach others to bleed people" it actually induce
>behavior to teach others to let others be bled. Bleeding lasted several
>hundreds of years (I'm not sure exactly how far it goes back but I suspect
>thousands of years) and continued at least up to the American Revolution (I
>heard somewhere that some General died due to bleeding) so it had the
>longevity. The way it induces behavior to teach others to bleed people was
>primarily through early medical training in schools and through
>apprenticeship. And it "induce behavior to teach others to let others be
>bled" either through acceptance of authority (trust in doctors) or as part
>of some other mechanism like a placebo effect. A couple of notes, as far
>as I know bleeding was more a last resort type healing and then mostly for
>the well to do, which would probably mean that those that died were seen as
>dying any way so any that lived proved that it worked. More importantly,
>despite what we want to believe there was no real way of knowing that it
>didn't work: no general understanding of anatomy and biology so they
>couldn't see that it was inherently unhealthy; there was not scientific
>method so they could not disprove; and, it fit the best (common) medical
>model of the day so it shouldn't be questioned. Memes like all knowledge
>is very context sensitive.
>
>
[sarcasm mode on]
Yeah I could see how fortunate it has been that barbaric practices like
bleeding, especially using leeches in this practice, have ceased being a
part of the modern medical repertoire. I'd hate to think that a doctor in
our enlightened times would succumb to the "meme" of attaching a leech to a
patient, especially after the patient's finger has been surgically
reattached and restored circulation becomes a necessity [sarcasm mode off]
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