Automated Inspiration

In the 19th century, doctors might have prescribed mercury for mood swings and arsenic for asthma. It might not have occurred to them to wash their hands before your surgery. They weren't trying to kill you, of course--they just didn't know any better. These early doctors had valuable data scribbled in their notebooks, but each held only one piece in a grand jigsaw puzzle. Without modern tools for sharing and analyzing information--as well as a science for making sense of that data--there wasn't much to stop superstition from influencing what could be seen through a keyhole of observable facts.