Medicine

My essay topic is medicine. Medicine has been evolving for thousands of years and has been around since the beginning of human civilization. Medicine started out as herbal remedies, religious ceremonies, animal feces, raw meat and minerals. If you look back on early medicine, you can see how far medicine has come. We have found vaccines for deadly illnesses and ways to perform surgeries that done centuries ago could have killed a person. I am going to summarize major events of early medicine and mainly focus on the most rapidly advancing periods of medicine discovery, 1700 – modern day.

In 2600 B.C. an ancient Egyptian by the name Imhotep, chancellor to Pharaoh Djoser, could diagnose and treat 200 diseases including: tuberculosis, appendicitis, gout, gallstones, and arthritis. He is thought to be the first physician as a papyrus scroll known as the Edwin Smith papyrus that describes various surgeries, wounds and how they were treated is thought to be written by him. In 460 B.C. Hippocrates was born. He is thought of as the father of modern medicine because he started the scientific study of medicine. Over the next 2,000 years many other people studied human anatomy and the use of plants for herbal treatments. One of them was Pedanius Dioscorides who wrote De Materia Medicain 60 A.D, a book describing more than 600 plants used in traditional medicine. Another example is famous artist and scientist, Leonardo DeVinci, who was known to dissect human corpses in 1489.

A period of rapid discovery began in the 1500s when a maker of reading glasses, Zacharias Jannssen, invented the microscope in 1590. This allowed us to finally see microbacteria and other microscopic organisms. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek made a simple microscope in 1668 and saw microbacteria in pond water nobody else had seen before. In 1670 he also discovered blood cells and in 1683 he observed bacteria. This helped lead us toward the germ theory. Back in 1546, Girolamo Fracastoro first proposed the germ theory, then in 1762 Marcus von Plenciz expanded on his theory and Louis Pasteur identified germs as a cause of disease in 1857 and in 1870 Robert Koch and he established the germ theory.

After we learned that germs cause disease, we started to be more sanitary and clean. Our personal hygiene improved so we could prevent ourselves from getting sick. We developed better ways to clean ourselves, take care of body waste and started to quarantine sick people to help prevent others from getting sick. Instead of piling up poop and dead, rotting bodies on streets we buried the dead and found different ways to dispose of body waste. We started to properly dispose of trash and leftover food. We also developed better ways to stay clean, such as bathing more often with soap instead of just water. Once we knew what was causing disease we did our best to prevent it and take care of it. We started to clean our teeth properly and developed better toothbrushes than sticks and pig hair. By being more sanitary, diseases spread slower and less people became sick. When vaccines became available they helped to prevent disease.

The first form of a vaccine was given by Giacomo Pylarini in 1701 and in 1796 the process of the smallpox vaccination was developed by Edward Jenner. Smallpox was a devastating illness for the world until there was a vaccine. There were many other vaccines invented between 1796 and modern day. Some are still given today, such as the vaccination for diphtheria, whooping cough (pertussis), and tetanus known as Tdap or DTaP. You receive DTaP as a baby and Tdap as a twelve year old. Another common vaccination is the influenza vaccination which was developed in 1945 by Thomas Francis and Jonas Salk. The next vaccination I will talk about is the polio vaccination which was also developed by Jonas Salk in 1952. Polio is a disease that can cause paralysis. Most people in the U.S. are vaccinated against polio but if you have not had the full vaccination you are still at risk. The most controversial modern vaccine is the Covid-19 vaccine. It has many variants to protect us from different types of Covid-19.

The most recent big medical revolution is the advances in antibiotics and the treatment of diseases. In 1899 aspirin was developed by Felix Hoffman and in 1922 insulin was first used to treat diabetes. Lastly in 1943 the antibiotic streptomycin was discovered by Selman A. Waksman. These are just some of many revolutions in the field of medical treatment.

Over time the practice of medicine has been innovated and developed to make it more efficient, safe and healthy for the patient. As the Hippocratic oath begins: “I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant: I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.” People who are beginning medical practice swear under this oath. To my mom, who is a doctor, it means they agree to provide the best care within their power that modern medicine allows and they will teach younger generations in hope of making further advancements to improve care of the patient.

Works Cited

hms.harvard.edu. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2023, https://hms.harvard.edu/about-hms/history-hms/timeline-discovery. 6 March 2023.

Hajar, Rachel M.D. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. National Library of Medicine, 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4379645/. 7 March 2023.

Barton, Dr. Marc. pastmedicalhistory.co.uk. Past Medical History, 2019, https://www.pastmedicalhistory.co.uk/imhotep-the-first-physician/. 7 March 2023