The Day The Universe Changed (1985)

Episode 7. What the Doctor Ordered: Social Impacts of New Medical Knowledge (5/5)

Not only has medical science allowed humans to live longer, healthier lives, it has also led to the identification of people as numbers and statistics. Episode 7 of James Burke's ground-breaking series "The Day The Universe Changed" explores the evolution of Western Scientific thought starting from the fall of Rome. "What the Doctor Ordered" examines modern medicine, beginning in late 18th-century France. Included: the British cholera epidemic in the 19th century; the use of ether as an anesthetic in the 19th century; the findings of German bacteriologist Robert Koch. James Burke is the host. Looks at the rise of modern medicine and public health and their relationship to statistics which doctors have learned to apply to diseases, cures, and epidemics. Explains that as medicine became increasingly a science, patients increasingly became statistics.

The Day the Universe Changed (subtitled "A Personal View by James Burke") is a British documentary television series produced by and starring science historian James Burke, originally broadcast in 1985. It was released in DVD form in 2009. A companion book of the same title, also written by Burke, was published the same year, presenting the same general premise of the television series in expanded detail. A revised edition subsequently appeared in 1995.

The series' primary focus is on the effect of advances in science and technology on western philosophy. The title comes from the philosophical idea that the universe essentially only exists as you perceive it through what you know; therefore, if you change your perception of the universe with new knowledge, you have essentially changed the universe itself.

To illustrate this concept, James Burke tells the various stories of important scientific discoveries and technological advances and how they fundamentally altered how western civilization perceives the world. The series runs in roughly chronological order, from around the beginning of the Middle Ages to the present.

Episodes

1. The Way We Are: It Started with the Greeks
2. In the Light of the Above: Medieval Conflict - Faith & Reason
3. Point of View: Scientific Imagination in the Renaissance
4. A Matter of Fact: Printing Transforms Knowledge
5. Infinitely Reasonable: Science Revises the Heavens
6. Credit Where It's Due: The Factory & Marketplace Revolution
7. What the Doctor Ordered: Social Impacts of New Medical Knowledge
8. Fit to Rule: Darwin's Revolution
9. Making Waves: The New Physics - Newton Revised
10. Worlds Without End: Changing Knowledge, Changing Reality

Source: Wikipedia