A holiday table without mincemeat pie is like an American flag without stars or stripes, or a baseball game without a seventh-inning stretch. It’s incomplete. Some people would take up arms at the thought of such a culinary injustice.
From advancements to abominations, medicine in the early 1900s was a mixed bag. On one hand, achievements like the commercialization of aspirin and the introduction of penicillin was the dawn of a bright future for public health. On the other hand, the unregulated nature of the medical community led to a flood of “snake oil” treatments that were useless at best and downright dangerous at worst.