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Pattern hunters

The entire history and practice of modern medicine is built on the finding of

patterns in data. Ever since Hippocrates founded his school of medicine in

ancient Greece some 2,500 years ago, observation, experimentation and the

analysis of data have been fundamental to the fight to keep us healthy.

Before then, medicine had been – for the most part – barely

distinguishable from magic. People believed that you fell ill if you’d

displeased some god or other, and that disease was the result of an evil spirit

possessing your body. As a result, the work of a physician would involve a lot

of chanting and singing and superstition, which sounds like a lot of fun, but

probably not for the person who was relying on it all to stop them from dying.