Alchemy

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

as you begin to approach, what is it? 108* F? and your brain begins to boil it's not so good.

So there are times when it is also good to reduce your bodies temp lest it burn itself out.

I'm aware of that, I have been told that, when I was a few years old, I kept getting acute bronchitis and the first thing they did at the hospital, each time, was throw me into a tub and dump iced water all over me!

However, I thought that remark was meant referred to more ordinary fevers.

Originally Posted by KickAssClown

The body regulates itself rather well, except for when it is messed with by some outside agent (you, your friends, the germs, virai, dust, pollen, etc...) then it needs some other outside agent to help it regulate. (medicine, a doctor, another kind of germ, water, etc...)

Uhm, in most cases, the fever is the body regulating itself albeit according to need. The higher temp is part of the defence, so I don't call it an exception to regulating ability. There are of course cases where something goes wrong with the system or where the temperature rise is excessive.

Anyway, it is well known that blood letting can be mildly beneficial in many cases and any good student of a good medicine faculty can tell you why, I said myself that the argument had its appeal, meaning there were reasons behind it. I don't see the point in saying things that may come across as justifying the excessive use of it in the past, or along the lines of "So, they were right after all." and "They were wiser, today's dumb doctors don't know their arms from their arses." and so on. Medicine is still very empirical but is based on ever increasing understanding of physiology. Apothecary is still practiced, with the boost of greater knowledge of the whys and wherefores, but also with the addition of pharmaceutical synthesis.

Alchemy is just the old name of chemistry and the term now used to distinguish the ancient practice from the more modern one, the empirical one from the one based on understanding of atoms and molecules etc.

[ughaibu]

Phlebotomy for iron accumulation in liver disease: http://www.liversociety.org/html/iro...ochromato.html

[KickAssClown]

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

There are of course cases where something goes wrong with the system or where the temperature rise is excessive.

That was the situational modifier I was referring to.

I don't see the point in saying things that may come across as justifying the excessive use of it in the past, or along the lines of "So, they were right after all." and "They were wiser, today's dumb doctors don't know their arms from their arses." and so on. Medicine is still very empirical but is based on ever increasing understanding of physiology.

then it needs some other outside agent to help it regulate. (medicine, a doctor, another kind of germ, water, etc...)

I actually believe, for the most part, in modern medicine. I'm not saying alchemy is terribly good for treating illness, only that it yeilded some interesting insights into people and the nature of medicine.

I often play devil's advocate and enjoy spinning things into new perspectives. It helps open peoples eyes.

By definition, Alchemy would now be known better as Nuclear physics. The science of transforming one element into another.

It was a basis, it is a history, and it like it's interests has transformed from lead into gold.

*No hostility, sarcasism, or any kind of negative connotation is intended.*

[HydrogenBond]

What constitutes science, a logical understanding of nature or some black box empirical approach, where the black box stays shut. The alchemists were at least trying to open the black box and look inside. They had little precident to work from and had to create on the fly. What is interesting, if they kept the black box closed, didn't try to explain anything, but used statistics it would be called the beginning of science.