We had a much more relaxed day today, starting with a hike to a waterfall. Our informal conversations while walking covered a brief history of medicine which made me ponder the roots of values we strive for today in medicine. Its a wonder how we went from a time when hospitals were viewed as places to die violently to places where people feel comfortable seeking help. It is obvious from statistics presented during this week that medical errors are still a major presence in this system, but clearly we have developed a level of institutional confidence that we are helping people most of the time. I do think this is true and not simply hubris. Its a wonder how we got here, given the malignant cultures that modern medicine has developed through. In some ways, we not so far away from a time when medicine was still in a rapid pace of discovery, and physicians were routinely attempting to make medical advances on their own to create change in the diseased and dying landscape they lived in.
