Background:

Traditional societies in Middle Ages Europe had a somewhat different idea about the nature of illnesses and medicine, which included a theory that the body’s health was regulated by “four humours” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism, also see Fig. 1), a lack of awareness of bacteria or other microorganisms, and a freeform approach to medical treatment.

The Issue:

Strangely, there has never been a revival of “Traditional Western Medicine”—it’s as if the entire medical establishment has been content to ignore this traditional method of treatment, despite it being practiced for hundreds of years!

Proposal:

Treatments that actively cause harm or are ineffective are sometimes difficult to get approved, but this is not always an insurmountable obstacle in health care.

In this particular case, we will sidestep the issue entirely by declaring that that it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of any treatment, and revive these old methods accordingly.

The plan:

• Revive the concept of the four humours, and attribute all diseases to an imbalance of one or more of these humours.
• Re-introduce random bloodletting as a treatment.
• Suppress any attempts at benchmarking the efficacy of these treatments.
• Doctors should all wear bird-beaked plague masks (even if the patient doesn’t have the plague, but ESPECIALLY if the patient does have the plague).

See the promotional images in Figure 2 for an example of what a Traditional Western Medicine revival might look like!

PROS: Adds new health care options for people who are tired of expensive and impersonal modern medicine.

CONS: Might cause a shortage of mercury for thermometers, if all doctors are buying it up to use in medieval-inspired treatments.