Fat and Blood

What I got from this text is that Mitchell is working on methods of rejuvenating weak people using rest, exercise, and feeding techniques. He studies mostly on women who are lacking proper nutrition or have medical issues. My first thoughts are that this man must be fairly intelligent because he is conducting research and scientific experiment on people. It also makes me pose the question, why has he decided to do such a study and then secondly why on women as opposed to men?

He has received letters questioning his work on women and asking to explain why he performed the treatments that he did. But even though people at the time questioned his work, since then others have published cases similar to his. Mitchell?s work has been widely used by physicians and has led to further improvements in medical knowledge. When he says that he was doing service to his profession by relating the original study to treatment options I completely agree with him. Even thought it might have been considered not ethically correct at the time, some of the medical knowledge we have today can be linked back to his work.

Dr. William however, claims that he cant find any solid evidence on the attack of the disease, which opens up a door for a possibility that all of Mitchell?s work isn?t exactly as beneficial and monumental as it was portrayed by Mitchell himself.  Another doctor comments on the fact that Mitchell was not the first one to come up with the idea of the study, but was the first one to merge the idea of the study and treatment together, which is still an achievement.

I feel like there is always room for controversy when dealing with the gaining of new knowledge or experimenting with new ideas, however without his work, we would not have some of the medical knowledge we have today.

Relating it back to this class, makes me question whether or not Dr. Mitchell is technically a ?medical madman? or not because he actually made medical progress that is useful today and doesn?t seem like he was in any sense mad or crazy."

Posted by Dr. Renzi on behalf of Emily Kiger