Unhappy with today’s health care? Think of what it was like to be sick 200 years ago.
No stethoscopes, antibiotics, X-rays or vaccines. Bloodletting was a common treatment. If you had a heart attack or a stroke, doctors put you in bed and hoped for the best. If you needed surgery, you got a few shots of whiskey and a bullet to bite.
Into this medical dark age, two Boston doctors brought a beacon of light. They started what is now the New England Journal of Medicine with the idea that science should guide care — not whoever argued loudest or had the most persuasive theory.
The first 100 copies in January 1812 were delivered by horseback. Today, 2 million people read the journal online every month. It is the oldest continuously publishing medical journal in the world, and it has touched lives in more ways than you may know. Some examples:
_Stroke victims now get clot-busting medicine, not dark rooms to ride out their brain trauma, because a 1995 study in the journal proved its benefit.
_Heart attack patients have arteries unclogged without surgery, then go home on medicines that studies in the journal showed could prevent future attacks.
_Women with early stage breast cancer
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