Week 5: The History of Bias: The early years

 Medicine is a very humane practice. In fact, that is how scientists mark the first civilization starting: by a healed femur found in a skeleton of one of the first humans. Someone took the time to care for another person, who due to the broken femur, was essentially a deadweight. They did this instead of focusing on their own survival which was previously needed in order to stay alive. In order to be able to do this, they needed to have a working support group, meaning: a civilization. Medicine is a humane thing, and as such is reflected by the society of humans. When there is a problem or popular bias in the society, the same will be reflected in the practice. This means that bias in medicine started with globalization. This is because in order for people for form widespread bias against others, they would have to come into contact with each other often. This really started happening during globalization and colonization in the 1400's. Medicine previously was meant to heal the people in someone's village and was not a widespread thing as people were often far apart in small groups. This caused a lot of variation in medicine, as people were using their surroundings and had different tools and plants available to them. Uniformity in medicine started happening particularly in the medieval era as the different kingdoms and conquering's started to spread. Different doctors spread and shared their information within these groups when contact was friendly, causing advancements. However, Europeans and the Spanish also were partakers in conquest. They exterminated native groups, and with them, their medicine and their knowledge. The forced uniformity and medicine was included as part of this. For example, when Spanish conquerors met the Aztecs of Mexico, they found their medicine and knowledge. The Spanish considered their sciences to be offending to the catholic church and destroyed their written works. The Calderas of today only know pieces of plant knowledge the survivors had passed down through generations. Another example is when European colonizers came to America. They destroyed Natives and forced them to assimilate, causing Native medical knowledge to be lost as well. This was happening across the globe for a long time, as European conquest and control over the world lasted from 1492 to 1914 and spread incredibly far. This destruction of medical knowledge has caused racism to be implemented in the roots of medicine, as there was a forced lack of anything other than the white perspective for the majority of the world. This made bias in medicine even more difficult to overcome, as it imbedded in the very beginnings of the practice. 

Sources:

How A 15,000-Year-Old Human Bone Could Help You Through The Corona crisis, by Remy Blumenfeld, Published March 21, 2020 in Forbes

Preserving Curanderismo in the Borderland, The Humanities Collaborative, April 2021

How Europe Conquered the World, by Phillip T. Hoffman in Foreign Affairs on October 7th, 2015