<disclaimer > This is a general statement, I do not intend it to be 'in response' to your comment in particular, your comment just provides a logical space to precede mine.< /disclaimer > . I don't understand this negative, defeatist attitude of people with regards to our 'current' understanding of anything. We certainly know a lot more about everything in this world, including the brain than what we did in the year 1914. Why then is there a doubt that 100 years hence we'd understand lesser ? Is there really a proven 'law of diminishing returns' in the field of scientific research. Also, in reference to the parent comment, sure there isn't possibly a way to be 100% certain that the drugs did indeed help but the reasoning behind manufacturing them were presumably sound scientifically speaking based on the knowledge known at the time of their creation and the experiments conducted then. Development occurs not by discarding prior knowledge but by refining it or in the worst case scenario, eliminating the factors that make it obsolete. So, in summary, I think we are in the 'discovery phase' of medicine these days, similar to what the 1600-1900s were for physics.
