Long before the Crusades, Islamic scholars had begun scientifically to investigate how medicines and physicians could cure man of diseases and better our ability to treat wounds. Few realize that the world’s first serious works on medicine came out of the Middle East; translated into Latin, they were used in European universities throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. (Today a rare copy of the Latin translation of the Islamic Canon of Medicine still resides at the University of Texas Health Care Center in San Antonio.) Fewer still remember that hospitals for the sick came out of the Islamic Golden Age.
Roughly 800 years later, young Henry Ford grew up seriously distrusting physicians. His disbelief in their abilities started when his mother died during childbirth; correctly or not, Ford blamed Dr. Duffield for her passing. Then shortly after his wife Clara had their son, Edsel, she underwent an operation that left her incapable of having any more children. And then, as Ford’s personal wealth grew, he realized that his family’s medical bills seemed to be rising at the same rate as his income.
Although it had been 900 years since the start of the scientific age of medicine, the average lifespan of an American male when Ford launched his first car company was still less than 60 years.
Illness and Wound Care, Not Healthcare