"Life is short, experience treacherous, judgment difficult," said Hypocrates, the Father of Medicine. two thousand years ago, no less than now, judgment was difficult, life short; the barber was the surgeon and major operations were equivalent to death warrants ! The physician, when he did not refer to the ancients, was still looking to chance experience for his knowledge; while 'Asiatic cholera' stalked the land. ( http://foressays.blogspot.com ) then it was that experience which began to be supplemented by experiment. Vesalius introduces dissection; Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood; Jenner banished the terrors of small-pox; Pasteur, experimental-chemist, turning to the study of micro-organisms, laid the foundation of Modern Medicine. Listen, applying the new knowledge to his work with the scalpel, founded modern aseptic surgery -- all in three hundred years and simply because men began to observe closely and with open minds, while they caused...