The Bacterial Theory Of Peptic Ulcer Disease: Its Formulation, Consensus And Communication

This is a case study on the bacterial theory of peptic ulcer disease (PUD), focusing on its formulation, consensus and communication. A model is constructed to analyze the key social elements and their mechanisms concerning the evolution process of this scientific theory.Bibliometrics methods and discourse analysis methods are applied to reach the following goals. (1)Clarify the historical process from the formulation of bacterial theory of PUD to its being widely accepted both in the scientific community and the laypersons, and then trying to understand how the relating subjects were involved. (2)The mechanisms of how the social aspects interact with the acceptance of the theory. (3)Take such a process as an example to discuss the real mode of how the scientific knowledge was evolved in its social context. Thus attempts to manipulate a multiple bibliographical approach in the study of medical history.In this case study we discovered that a kind of federation network mediate and manipulate the consensus and acceptance of the theory, which is constructed with three type of nods, the trust, the interest and the benefit. The scientists, the pharmacy companies, the doctors and the patients are main elements of the net, through which the target theory evolves and spreads.This thesis also argues that medical knowledge is somewhat different from general scientific knowledge, such as medical knowledge updates more frequently and the result is more unstable, thus it's difficult to validate by a singe or simple crucial experiment. The valuable and strong enough clinical evidence is usually restricted to many practical aspects and hard to achieve, so it's more difficult to verify a medical theory than most expectations.The various theoretical models brought by the scientific philosophies and scientific sociologists explain science within certain dimension and reflect parts of the essential of science. So it's helpful to use multiple approaches in the study of history of medicine for the sake of reaching the history of its own.