Canada's premiere creationist IDiot begins by, apparently, trying to make a point by quoting:
The history of medicine begins with Hippocrates in the fifth century BC. Yet until the invention of antibiotics in the 1940s doctors, in general, did their patients more harm than good.
In other words, for 2400 years patients believed doctors were doing good; for 2300 years they were wrong.
Um ... all right, Denyse, I'm assuming you're going somewhere with this ... ah, there it is:
We know how to write histories of discovery and progress, but not how to write histories of stasis, of delay, of digression. We know how to write about the delight of discovery, but not about attachment to the old and resistance to the new...
Strangely, traditional medical practices — bloodletting, purging, inducing vomiting — had continued even while people's understanding of how the body worked underwent radical alteration. The new theories were set to work to justify old practices.
So ... what we're doing here is mocking the concept of, um, people who, faced with new knowledge and new scientific discoveries, tried desperately to re-interpret that knowledge to still be compatible with a long-standing, primitive, superstitious, scientifically illiterate worldview. Is that what we're mocking here, Denyse? No, seriously, do you really want to go down that road?
I'm just asking.