Vitruvian ManA prominent European (Swiss-born) physician who lived at the junction of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, an era of dissipating darkness that prefigured the Renaissance that followed, was a man known by the pseudonym Paracelsus. His real name was Philip Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. He became famous for his revolutionary views on medicine, rejecting blind adherence to the authorities of antiquity. For this he was excommunicated from teaching and declared a fraud by his Nuremberg colleagues in the medical profession. In response to this accusation, Paracelsus offered to entrust him with the treatment of three patients who were deemed hopeless. There are documents in the city archives of Nuremberg certifying that he cured these three patients who were considered incurable, and in a fairly short time and for free – and restored his reputation. Paracelsus died suddenly and early, at the age of 48, and there is reason to believe that his death was not natural, but the result of an attack paid for by one of his jealous colleagues. During his short but very fruitful life Paracelsus managed to make a major contribution to the development of medicine as a science, gave an understanding of man as a holistic organism, a microcosm in macrocosm, breathed new life into pharmacology.

During the Renaissance, the understanding of medicine as a science returns and it begins its rapid growth, perhaps comparable in importance only with the ancient Greek period. Here are just a few of the scientists whose contributions to medicine at that time played a very important role and greatly contributed to the advances we enjoy today.

Leonardo Da Vinci – performed autopsies and sketched the results in detail. His drawings served as an anatomical atlas; he is credited with the discovery of the cerebral aqueduct, the maxillary sinus, and the cardiac conduction system.

Girolamo Frocastro was the progenitor of epidemiology. He described infectious diseases, including typhoid, syphilis, and tuberculosis, and the ways in which they spread.

André Vesalius – made a great contribution to the development of anatomy, described the cardiovascular system as it is known today.

Eustachius Bartolomeo – studied the organ of hearing (the Eustachian tube connecting the ear to the nasopharynx is named after him) and the vascular system.

Ambroise Paré – founder of military surgery, created a manual on treatment of various wounds caused by weapons (for example, before him it was believed that gunshot wounds should be treated with boiling oil and red-hot iron).

William Garvey was a prominent English physician, the founder of modern circulatory physiology, who also made discoveries in embryology.

This period was a time of accumulation of knowledge about human nature, as well as about various diseases and their treatments. All this basis prepared the scientific breakthrough that followed.

The post Medieval Medicine appeared first on Doc-is Art-Em.

At that time, people accumulated empirical knowledge about the properties of certain plants and minerals. This knowledge was often erroneous, i.e., plants were ascribed properties which they did not have, but there were also correct data. For example, the Incas discovered the tonic effect of cacao beans, the therapeutic properties of mate, and the narcotic effect of coca leaves. Such information was accumulated, laying the foundation for future pharmacology. It should be noted that many of the discoveries of our ancient ancestors are used in modern medicine.

Medicine in Ancient Greece
Daughter of Asclepius, the god of medicineAlthough the first written medical sources that have reached us are Egyptian papyri, which describe, in particular, surgical operations and obstetrical practices (Berlin, London, Leiden papyri), the place of origin of modern medicine is considered to be ancient Greece, though there is no doubt that its sources are from the same Ancient Egypt.

The ancient Greeks can be considered the founders of scientific thought as such, and of medicine in particular, because it was here that medicine as a science appeared. This means that the Greeks undertook a scientific approach to the information accumulated by that time, although certainly not all of it was reliable. At this time, medicine was divided into temple medicine and, if I may say so, scientific, or evidence-based medicine. Schools emerged in different cities of Greece, each of which developed certain scientific (or pseudoscientific) theories. The god of medicine among the Greeks was Asclepius, son of Apollo, the Roman pronunciation is Aesculapius. Medicines were called “pharmakon” by the Greeks. Asclepius had children, each of whom embodied a particular branch of medicine: Hygiea – hygiene, prevention, Panacea – therapy, Machaon – surgery, Podalarius – internal diseases, Telesphorus – magic. Thus we see that at this time there was already a division of medicine into the main directions, which as a whole have reached our days.

The father of medicine is called the man who founded one of the Greek schools of medicine and devoted his whole life to medicine – Hippocrates. His influence on medicine as a science cannot be overestimated. His numerous writings, which contain descriptions of practices used by physicians to this day, are grouped together in a large collection – the Hippocratic Corpus, the first medical encyclopedia. In addition, as not only a physician but also an outstanding philosopher and thinker, he laid the foundations of medical ethics, and the famous Hippocratic Oath has survived almost unchanged to the present day as a mark of respect for this great man.

Medicine in ancient Rome
After the unprecedented rise of Greek medicine, one would have expected it to continue its upward development in Rome, which became the successor to Greece. However, this did not happen. For certain historical reasons, the decline of science, including medicine, rather began in Ancient Rome. During this era, although outstanding physicians appeared, they rather considered it their duty to serve the wealthy Romans, whose main requirement for treatment was that it should be as unburdensome and pleasant as possible. For the most part, the successes of Roman medicine were due to the work of Greek scholars, especially that of Hippocrates.

A prominent representative of medicine was Galen, a Roman physician and philosopher originally from Greece. Galen laid the foundation for many medical disciplines, such as physiology, pharmacology, neurology and, of course, anatomy. The anatomical knowledge of man was based, interestingly enough, on what was learned from dissecting animals, notably pigs and monkeys, and this knowledge was used by physicians over the next 13 centuries, until the period when, in 1543, a contemporary of Paracelsus, Vesalius published his work On the Structure of the Human Body. In addition to very significant medical discoveries, Galen had erroneous theories, particularly concerning the medicinal properties of certain substances, but his authority was so indisputable that both erroneous and correct theories of Galen were used by doctors without any revision for almost a thousand and a half years.

The post The Medicine of Antiquity appeared first on Doc-is Art-Em.

The first surgery under general anesthesia was performed in China around 140-150 A.D.. It was performed by the most famous doctor of ancient China, Hua To. As an anesthetic, Hua To used strong wine mixed with hemp – ma fei san. Before the Communists came to power in China, Hua To’s birthday was celebrated as a national holiday.

5. In ancient Greece, the electric charge produced by electric stingrays was used to treat the sick. The stingray was placed on the patient’s chest to stimulate his reflexes. And the ancient Roman physician Scribonius Largue (1st century A.D.) described the positive results of treating various chronic diseases with the help of an electric stingray.
6. An easy and pleasant recipe for longevity was proposed in 1743 by the English physician John Cohazn. He claimed that a man can live to 115 years old if he inhales the smell of young girls. Kohazn recommended to mix a pound of odorous resin, 2 ounces of myrrh, aromatic balm and some other odorous herbs, to set fire to this mixture and to breathe the smoke, at the same time a young girl should be near.
7. Rumors about the harm of coffee are greatly exaggerated. The Swedish King Gustav III (1746-1792) was convinced that coffee was poison. To prove it, he decided to conduct a very peculiar experiment. The experiment involved two prisoners, one drinking only coffee, and the other only tea. The test subjects were monitored by two doctors. Gustav was sure that the “coffee drinker” would die of acute poisoning. However, the first to die was… one of the doctors, followed shortly thereafter by the second doctor. A short time later Gustave himself was mortally wounded. Both prisoners lived for several more years, the first to die was the one who had been given tea.
8. The first successful cornea transplant was performed by an English military surgeon in India in 1835, though not on a man, but on an antelope. He had a tame animal that had only one eye, and it was covered with scars. The doctor removed the cornea of a recently killed antelope and transplanted it into his pet. The operation was successful and the animal regained its sight.
9. “Blue blood,” so they say about aristocrats. But, as it turned out, we all are aristocrats, because human blood is blue. And it becomes red when it comes in contact with oxygen, which is why the blood flows red from wounds and cuts.
10. It turns out that the risk of dying living with a smoker is not that high: it is 1 in 4200. The greater probability of dying from lightning is 1 in 3,000.
11. King George V of Great Britain had bronchitis at the end of his life, and his condition was extremely serious. He died on January 20, 1936 at 11:55 pm. It wasn’t until 50 years later, in 1986, that it was discovered that his life doctor, Bertrand Dawson, had administered a lethal dose of morphine and cocaine to his comatose patient. Dawson did this so that George would die before midnight: in this case the news of the king’s death would make it into the morning edition of the Times, more authoritative than the afternoon edition.
12. it turns out that if a person loses his memory completely, the last thing he remembers is swearing in his native language. And in this way doctors can determine the nationality of the patient.
13. At the very end of the 19th century, in 1898, a new medicine was obtained in the research laboratory of the Bayer pharmaceutical company. It relieved pain and relieved coughing. The researchers who tested the new drug on themselves, noted that it causes a powerful emotional reaction, a man feels just a hero. For this property the drug was called heroin. Until 1910, heroin was sold in pharmacies as an analgesic and cough medicine for children.

The post Interesting facts from the history of medicine appeared first on Doc-is Art-Em.