Overview: The history of medicine is about two of our big questions: one, what is life? What makes it so special, so fragile, so… goopy!? Two, how do we know what we know? Why should I take my doctor’s advice? Why are deep-fried Oreos bad for me? It may be tempting to look at medicine as a science that has simply progressed over time—that medicine used to be bad, and its history is a story of how it got better.