In about BC the curtain rises on Egyptian civilization. In a civilized society, some people did specialized jobs. One of these was the doctor.
We do not know what was wrong with them. Much of Egyptian medicine still relied on magic. However, at least they could keep written records of which treatments worked and which did not. In this way, medicine could advance. The earliest known medical book is the Ebers Papyrus, which was written about BC. Egyptian doctors used a huge range of drugs obtained from herbs and minerals. 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. The Egyptians knew that irrigation canals sometimes become 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. However, the Egyptians still believed that spells would help the sick and they carried amulets to ward off disease.
Nevertheless, they were beginning to seek a physical cause for illness. The Egyptians did have some knowledge of anatomy from making mummies. To embalm a dead body they first removed the principal organs, which would otherwise rot. However Egyptian surgery was limited to such things as treating wounds and broken bones and dealing with boils and abscesses.
The Egyptians used clamps, sutures, and cauterization. They had surgical instruments like probes, saws, forceps, scalpels, and scissors. They also knew that honey helped to prevent wounds from becoming infected. It is a natural antiseptic. They also dressed wounds with willow bark, which has the same effect.
The Egyptians were clean people. They washed daily and changed their clothes regularly, which must have helped their health. The roots of modern medicine are in ancient Greece. On the one hand, most Greeks believed in a god of healing called Asclepius.
People who were ill made sacrifices or offerings to the god. They then slept overnight in his temple. They believed that the god would visit them in their sleep i. At the same time, Greek doctors developed a rational theory of disease and sought cures.
However one did not replace the other. The cult of Asclepius and Greek medicine existed side by side. Medical schools were formed in Greece and in Greek colonies around the Mediterranean. As early as BC a man named Alcmaeon from Croton in Italy said that a body was healthy if it had the right balance of hot and cold, wet, and dry. If the balance was upset the body grew ill. However, the most famous Greek doctor is Hippocrates C. Although historians now believe that he was much less famous in his own time than was once thought.
It is believed that many of the medical books ascribed to him were actually written by other men. Hippocrates also rejected all magic and he believed in herbal remedies. 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. Finally, Aristotle BC thought the body was made up of four humors or liquids. They were phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile.
If a person had too much of one humor they fell ill. For instance, if a person had a fever he must have too much blood. The treatment was to cut the patient and let him bleed. The Greeks also knew that diet and exercise and keeping clean were important for health. Later Alexander the Great conquered Egypt. In BC he founded the city of Alexandria and a great medical school was established there. Doctors in Alexandria dissected human bodies and they gained a much better knowledge of anatomy.
However little progress was made in understanding disease. Many of them were slaves. Doctors had low status in Rome. However, the state paid public doctors to treat their poor. The Romans also had hospitals called valetudinaria for their wounded soldiers. Later in Roman times, Galen AD became a famous doctor.
At first, he worked treating wounded gladiators. Galen was also a writer and he wrote many books. Galen believed in the theory of the four humors. He also believed in treating illness with opposites. So if a patient had a cold Galen gave him something hot like pepper. Galen was also interested in anatomy. Unfortunately by his time dissecting human bodies was forbidden.
So Galen had to dissect animal bodies including apes. Unfortunately, Galen was a very influential writer. For centuries his writings dominated medicine. In the first century BC, a Roman named Varro suggested that tiny animals caused disease. They were carried through the air and entered the body through the nose or the mouth.
Unfortunately, with no microscopes, there was no way of testing his theory. The Romans were also skilled engineers and they created a system of public health. The Romans noticed that people who lived near swamps often died of malaria. They did not know that mosquitoes in the swamps carried disease but they drained the swamps anyway.
The Romans also knew that dirt encourages disease and they appreciated the importance of cleanliness. They built aqueducts to bring clean water into towns. They also knew that sewage encourages disease. The Romans built public lavatories in their towns. Streams running underneath them carried away sewage.
In the late 4th century The Roman Empire split in two, east and west. Meanwhile, Christians believed they had a duty to care for the sick and they founded many hospitals in the Eastern Roman Empire in the late 4th century. One of the first was built by Basil of Caesarea c.
Meanwhile in India surgeons were highly skilled. They were pioneers of plastic surgery. They performed an operation to reconstruct the nose rhinoplasty. After the fall of Rome in the 5th century the eastern half of the Roman Empire continued we know it as The Byzantine Empire and later Muslims took their knowledge of medicine from there. He then returned to Baghdad and translated them into Arabic. Later the same works were translated into Latin and passed back to western Europe.
In the Middle Ages learning flourished in Europe. Greek and Roman books, which had been translated into Arabic were now translated into Latin. In the late 11th century a school of medicine was founded in Salerno in Italy. Women were allowed to study there as well as men. In the 12th century, another was founded at Montpellier.
In the 13th century more were founded at Bologna, Padua, and Paris. Furthermore, many students studied medicine in European universities. Medicine became a profession again. In the Middle Ages medicine was dominated by the ideas of Galen and the theory of the four humors.
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.
Medieval doctors also prescribed laxatives for purging. Enemas were given with a greased tube attached to a pig bladder. Doctors also prescribed baths in scented water. They also used salves and ointments and not just for skin complaints. Doctors believed it was important when treating many illnesses to prevent heat or moisture from escaping from the affected part of the body and they believed that ointments would do that.
The color, smell, and even taste of urine were important. Then again the knowledge of medicine rekindled with researchers such as Vesalius, Thomas Brown and Servetus etc. The history of medicine faced renewal in when Joseph Lister brought the importance of antiseptics to the public. The continual changes in the history of medicines seem to be so promising so as to eradicate the diseases in the times to come.
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