For thousands of years, bloodletting was the standard of care for any number of medical conditions, but at the turn of the nineteenth century, often acrimonious debates about the practice would lead to a new method of medical knowledge. The first of a multi-part series on the birth of population medicine, this episode visits the controversies surrounding the death of George Washington and Benjamin Rush's bleeding of Philadelphia during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic and asks the big question -- how do doctors truly "know" what actually helps their patients? Plus, a brand new #AdamAnswers about military metaphors in medicine. All this and more on Episode 37 of Bedside Rounds, a tiny podcast about fascinating stories in clinical medicine!

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