HISTORY OF MEDICINE

PEOPLE & PRACTICES

Ancient History

Ancient History was filled with disease, illness and plagues.

Reasons: overcrowding, open sewers, filth.

Thought to be caused by evil spirits and demons brought on as a punishment for disobedience to the gods.

Ancient History cont’

Medical practice became the role of priests or medicine men.Treatments involved rituals to cast out demons.Trephining: a surgical procedure involving cutting a hole in the skull with a flint knife to treat migraines, epilepsy, paralysis, or insanity.

Egyptians: 3000 b.c.Physicians were Priest who studied medicine and surgery in Temple medical schools.Tried to drive out evil spirits, if failed, used concoctions made with excretions of lions, panthers, gazelles and ostrich.Insects: used alive or crushed were swallowed, along with backbones of ravens and fat from snakes.Also used medicinial plants still used in pharmacology today

Egyptian physicians:3000 b.c.

Imhotep: The Egyptian God of Medicine

Bloodletting and leeches..to open clogged vessels.

Were conservative: used a Sacred Book to guide them.*

Executed if patient died

Babylonians: 2000 b.c.

Lived in squalor, drank filthy water and poor personal hygiene.The ruler of Babylon established a legal code for medical practice. This set fees for services and established rules of conduct.Physicians hands cut off, if patient died (nobility)

India/Hindus (1500 b.c.)Diseases were malaria, dysentery,typhoid, cholera, leprosy, smallpox.World’s first nurses and hospitals. Used AnesthesiaContributed SurgeryPerformed cataract and plastic surgeries Used approximately 120 surgical instruments.Walled sewers & underground water pipes.

Chinese

Highly developed center of medical learning and as a result the Chinese belief in evil spirits as the cause of illness gradually changed.

Father of Chinese Medicine: emperor had documents of Herbal medicines some of which are still used today.

Acupuncture was used to drive out evil demons.

Greeks: approximately 2000 b.c.

Belief in Apollo, The Sun God, taught medicine to a centaur who taught others.Asklepios: Greek God of Healing(1250b.c.) used massage, bathing and exercise in treating patients.Used the magical powers of large yellow nonpoisonous snakes

Greeks cont’

Snakes licked wounds while patients slept.

Asklepious applied salves

The medical caduceus symbolizes the past use of snakes as treatments.

Greeks cont’HIPPOCRATES (b.460 b.c.)Founder of Scientific MedicineOrganized method of gaining medical knowledge through observation.Disease was a result of natural causesExamining a patient’s environmentStressed diet and cleanlinessDisease traced by listening to the chest

Father of Medicine: due to his accomplishments- prognostics, fractures, surgery, and code of behavior which became the HIPPOCRATIC OATH

Aristotle

Contemporary of Hippocrates…Philosopher and scientific geniusTutor of Alexander the GreatBrought together botany,biology and medicine

Aristotle

His findings were based on animal dissection, because human dissection was illegal where he lived.

In Alexandria, Egypt human dissection was legal..therefore students studied in Alexandria which was the center for learning and home of a famous medical school

Claudius Galen

Physician from Asia MinorProfessed to the teachings of Hippocrates however ignored the theory of observation. He believed that illness and disease was a result of an unbalance in “humors”.Believed that the body was regulated by the “four fluids” …blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile.

Claudius Galen

Prescribed diets, massage, exercise and drugs to treat patients.

His viewpoints were unchallenged until the 16th Century

Romans

Made almost no contributions to medicine, BUT…

Established superior methods of sanitation and water supply.

Laws to maintain public health and clean streets. Built aqueducts, pure water systems and underground sewer systems.

Romans

Despite these efforts..the pandemic (occurring at the same time in different places) bubonic plague afflicted many.

It spread from China through trade routes to Egypt, North Africa, Syria, and into Europe.

It infected all the known world.