In Clio I Trust

What first attracted me to history was the ability to trace humanity’s path throughout the ages, and thus get a greater appreciation of how we ended up in our current situation. As much as the study of history is often chided by numerophiles the world over, it lies at the essence of human existence and attempts to answer our deepest questions. Perhaps the greatest question of all time, “what is the origin or life and how did we get here,” is at its core a historical question. In order to accurately answer it we might require science, but it a science of the past. Suffice it to say I have always thought that history has a great deal to teach us, and is a worthy component of the study of any subject.

Before reading Clio in the Clinic by Jaqueline Duffin, my interpretation of adding historical study to all disciplines was along the lines of approaching the study of that discipline from a historical perspective. It was not, as the contributors of Clio in the Clinic chose, the application of a historian’s techniques and practices to the practice of medicine. Having become aware of this alternate interdisciplinary approach as it applied to medical practice, I realized that I had been a proponent of it for years, only in a slightly different context. One of my favourite professors—who grew up in Communist Poland and frequently related his misadventures (perhaps why I enjoyed his lectures so much)—told us one day that students who graduated with history degrees were often recruited by the KGB and the secret police. Turns out the wily commies appreciated the transferable skills of a historian: research, attention to detail, and above all,  the innate practice to always account for the source of the information.

Each article in Duffin’s book points to a different attribute that history had taught him or her, and illustrates how the application of this attribute to the medical practice resulted in better patient care. Often this came from the practitioner's belief in the past as a valuable source of information, both with regard to patient histories, but also through the examination of diseases that has long ago ceased to make the faintest of blips on a physician's radar. As I was reading through the various case stories I realized that these were the types of doctors I would want to be my health care providers; then I realized that it was their thoroughness, attention to detail, analytical skills--in short those qualities they shared with historians--that so appealed to me with respect to their clinical ability. And thus I realized that I trust historians: I trust their ability to dig to the bottom of a pile of evidence for the truth, I trust their inherent objectivity, and I trust their unique ability to admit error when they are wrong. Part of this is probably a sense of pride for my former discipline, but at least some of it comes from the knowledge that history is a good teacher, whether we listen to her or not, and that the lessons she has to teach us are as never ending as time itself.