From the History of Medicine

                                                                             VSMU    

 

 

 

Topic: From the History of Medicine

 

 

Medical Faculty

The first-year student

Group № 15

Danilova Valeria

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vitebsk 2012

Today's health care professionals work hard to promote hygiene, prevent and detect disease, cure patients, and when that is impossible, reduce their suffering.  Still, it is worthwhile to remember that the modern practice of medicine has not always been with us but was developed over thousands of years. All human societies have medical beliefs that provide explanations for birth, death, and disease. Throughout history, illness has been attributed to witchcraft, demons, astral influence, or the will of the gods. These ideas still retain some power, with faith healing and shrines still used in some places, although the rise of scientific medicine over the past millennium has altered or replaced mysticism in most cases.

Early man was subject to illness and death. Their life was so difficult, dangerous and uncomfortable. The man was like the animal. And when he had a wound, his instinctive action was to lick and to suck this wound. Later instinctive medical actions became ceremonial rituals which became very important for a primitive man.

So, I want to underline, that medicine progressed slowly. And in such period the medicine-man practiced magic to help people with their diseases.

During some centuries man came to know anatomy from the animals he killed. And in this period the medicine-man became the central figure of the tribe.

Between 7000 and 4000 B.C. ancient Egyptians were the earliest civilized people in the world. Egyptian doctors used a huge range of drugs obtained from herbs and minerals. They were drunk with wine or beer or sometimes mixed with dough to form a 'pill'. Egyptian doctors also used ointments for wounds and they treated chest complaints by getting the patient to inhale steam.

 

The Egyptians believed that the human body was full of passages that acted like irrigation canals. They carried blood, urine and faeces, tears and semen. The Egyptians knew that irrigation canals sometimes became blocked. They reasoned that if the passages in a human body became blocked it might cause illness. To open them Egyptians used laxatives and induced vomiting. And of course magic in this civilization played an important part in treating people.

In different centuries there were a lot of ways how to treat people. For example, the Indians in Mexico used narcotics, in Peru and India medicine- man developed surgery. The Chinese used acupuncture and they discovered about 2000 medicinal substances.

As the centuries passed the medical knowledge spread from Egypt to Greece. The roots of modern medicine are in ancient Greece. Greeks further developed this knowledge, especially such great philosophers as Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Inhabitants of Greece knew how to stop bleeding, they could diagnose illness. A number of Greeks speculated that the human body was made up of elements. If they were properly balanced the person was healthy. However if they became unbalanced the person fell ill.  The Greeks also knew that diet and exercise and keeping clean were important for health.

In this period, the period of gods and goddesses, people credited them and believed that they could cure diseases and bring health. For example, Apollo was the god of disease and healing. Asclepius, his mythical son, and his daughter Hygeia replaced Apollo at a later date. Hygeia was the goddess of health. The cup of Asclepius, entwined with a serpent, is still the symbol of medicine. And I also want to add, that the cult of Asclepius was the most famous religious-medical cult in history.

Hippocrates in the creative and classical period of history symbolized the greatness and he is called “the father of scientific medicine”.

And now I want to tell you about this fantastic philosopher. So, Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BC on the Greek island of Cos. His father was a doctor.

When Hippocrates finished his studies of medicine, he went from town to town. In these towns he practiced the art of medicine. And I know that he drove out the plague from Athens, because he lighted fires in the streets of the city. Hippocrates was the excellent doctor and a teacher   of medicine. He established medical schools, wrote several books and many case histories. He taught his pupils to examine the patients very attentively and to give them quick help.

Hippocrates was the first person to believe that diseases were caused naturally, not because of superstition and gods. He used a lot of methods of treating diseases: exercise, salt water baths, massage, suitable medicine and diet. He observed diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia. And of course he added such words as chronic, relapse, convalescence to the medical language.

Hippocrates had one theory, that the body had 4 fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. After two thousand years later his theory was proved incorrect. But another his ideals today are still important.

In many countries doctors take the Hippocrates Oath. It is a collection of promises which form the basis of the medical code of honor. The Hippocrates Oath is one of the oldest binding documents in history.

It sounds so:

I swear by Apollo the physician, by Asclepius, Hygeia and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, and the goddesses to keep according to my ability the following Oath.

I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and never do harm to anyone. I will prescribe a deadly drug, nor give advice which may cause him death.

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, I will keep myself far from all intentional ill-doing, and  especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves. All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or outside of my profession, which must not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.

If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all humanity and in all times, but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot. 

And in conclusion to an oath I would like to add, that the Hippocrates Oath contains many of his basic thoughts and principles.

So, after this period, became the period of the Middle Ages. Epidemics of different diseases took millions of lives. But man used important methods to protect health. In the Middle Ages medicine was dominated by the ideas of Galen and the theory of the four humours. Medieval doctors were great believers in bloodletting. Ill people were cut and allowed to bleed into a bowl. People believed that regular bleeding would keep you healthy. So monks were given regular bloodletting sessions.

One of awful epidemics was leprosy, which was spread for hundreds of years. It was controlled not by medical means. During this period very important method was used in public health. Poor lepers lived away from other people, in special colonies.

And one more very serious disease affected people of Europe during this time. It was plague. It also called the Black Death, because this disease killed millions of people and nobody knew how to fight with it. People thought, that plague was punishment of god.

Of course people tried to avoid and cure all these diseases, that’s why they started to build hospitals. The first hospital appeared in Ceylon  and in India. During the middle ages hospitals were founded in European countries.

Another development was the foundation of Universities. In them biological sciences were taught. Students in the Universities studied the human body.

Religion and the law banned dissection. Dissection is the cutting open of bodies to learn more about the various parts and how they work.

The first effort to study the human body was made by Renaissance artists, such as Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The last one wished to draw the body with more realism. So he carefully examined the shape of muscles and bones. After he dissected over thirty dead bodies, he drew pictures of many internal organs, the veins and arteries.

In the XVI century a doctor Andreas Vesalius began to study anatomy on dead bodies. He was born in Brussels, became a doctor in Paris. In Padua University he became a professor of anatomy. In 1543 Vesalius published an illustrated book- “The Working of a Human Body”.

From the XIV to XVII century the foundations of medicine and science were established.

I would like to present you the small table about a contribution of scientists:

CENTURY	NAME(S) OF SCIENTISTS	CONTRIBUTION
XVI	Ambroise Pare	improved the art of surgery
	Parecelsus	became the father of chemotherapy
	Andreas Vesalius	made the study of anatomy a science based on direct observations
XVII	Fabricius ab Aquapendente	published numerous surgical treatises
	William Harvey	discovered the circulation of the blood
	Thomas Sydenham	developed the science of internal medicine
	Antony van Leeuwenhoek	invented the microscope and observed bacteria and protozoa, described microscopic organisms

 

So, these discoveries helped to study and of course to understand the human body.

During the 18th century medicine made slow progress. Doctors still did not know what caused disease. Some continued to believe in the four humours (although this theory declined during the 18th century). Other doctors thought disease was caused by 'miasmas' (odourless gases in the air). However surgery did make some progress. Furthermore during the 18th century a number of hospitals were founded. In the late 18th century and early 19th century dispensaries were founded in many towns. They were charities were the poor could obtain free medicines.

In the 18th century many sailors suffered from scurvy (vitamin c deficiency). However a Scottish surgeon named James Lind discovered that fresh fruit or lemon juice could cure or prevent scurvy. He published his findings in 1753 as A Treatise on the Scurvy.

A major scourge of the 18th century was smallpox. However in 1796 a doctor named Edward Jenner (1749-1823) realised that milkmaids who caught cowpox were immune to smallpox. He invented vaccination. (Its name is derived from the Latin word for cow, Vacca). The patient was cut then matter from a cowpox pustule was introduced. The patient gained immunity to smallpox. Unfortunately nobody knew how vaccination worked.

During the 19th century medicine made rapid progress. In 1816 a man named Rene Laennec invented the stethoscope. At first he used a tube of paper. Later he used a wooden version.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) proved that microscopic organisms caused disease. In the early 19th century many scientists believed in spontaneous generation i.e. that some living things spontaneously grew from non-living matter. In a series of experiments between 1857 and 1863 Pasteur proved this was not so. Once doctors what caused disease they made rapid headway in finding cures or preventions.

In 1880 Pasteur and a team of co-workers searched for a cure for chicken cholera. Pasteur and his team grew germs in a sterile broth. Pasteur told a co-worker to inject chickens with the germ culture. However the man forgot and went on holiday. The germs were left exposed to the air. Finally, when he returned the man injected chickens with the broth. However they did not die. So they were injected with a fresh culture. Still they did not die.

Pasteur realised the germs that had been left exposed to the air had been weakened. When the chickens were injected with the weakened germs they had developed immunity to the disease.

In 1882 Pasteur and his team created a vaccine for rabies.

Immunization against diphtheria was invented in 1890. A vaccine for typhoid was invented in 1896.

Surgery was greatly improved by the discovery of Anaesthetics. As early as 1799 the inventor Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) realised that inhaling ether relieved pain. Unfortunately decades passed before it was actually used in an operation in 1842.

Rubber gloves were first used in surgery in 1890. Anaesthetics and antiseptics made surgery much safer. They allowed far more complicated operations.

During the 19th century the ancient practice of bloodletting declined. (It was still used in France, to treat pneumonia, until the 1920s).

In 1865 Joseph Lister discovered antiseptic surgery, which enabled surgeons to perform many more complicated operations. Lister prevented infection by spraying carbolic acid over the patient during surgery. German surgeons developed a better method. The surgeons hands and clothes were sterilised before the operation and surgical instruments were sterilised with super-heated steam.

In 1851 Herman von Helmholtz invented the ophthalmoscope. The hypodermic syringe was invented in France in 1853. In 1895 x-rays were discovered by Wilhelm Roentgen. The same year aspirin was invented.

Medicine made huge advances in the 20th century. The first non-direct blood transfusion was made in 1914. Insulin was first used to treat a patient in 1922. The EEG machine was first used in 1929. Meanwhile many new drugs were developed. In 1910 the discovered salvarsan, a drug used to treat syphilis was discovered. In 1935 prontosil was used to treat blood poisoning.

Antibiotics were discovered too. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming but it was not widely used till after 1940. Another antibiotic, streptomycin was isolated in 1944. It was used to treat tuberculosis. They were followed by many others.

Meanwhile the iron lung was invented in 1928 and in 1943 Willem Kolf built the first artificial kidney machine. (The first kidney transplant was in 1963).

In 1954 Dr Jonas Salk invented a vaccine for poliomyelitis. A vaccine for measles was discovered in 1963.

Meanwhile surgery made great advances. The most difficult surgery was on the brain and the heart. Both of these developed rapidly in the 20th century. The first pacemaker was made in 1958. The first heart transplant was performed in 1967. The first artificial heart was installed in 1982. The first heart and lung transplant was performed in 1987.

The laser was invented in 1960. In 1964 it was used in eye surgery for the first time.

Treatment for infertility also improved in the late 20th century. The first test tube baby was born in 1978.

So, proceeding from the aforesaid, we can draw a conclusion, that medicine, as all the different areas is suffering a big change with the new technologies.

The successes reached already convince that medicine the last four centuries applied generally true receptions of thinking and research, stopped on really useful ways of treatment. All this allows hoping that in the future the modern direction of medicine will yield to mankind even more important results thanks to which existence of people will be happier and longer.