How much has the field of medicine evolved?
Innovations that have paved the way for modern medicine.
Medicine provides diagnosis, prognosis, and prevention of diseases. Its roots can be traced back to India, dating back to 2 millennium BCE in the Atharva veda, with preventions and diagnosis to like fevers, coughing, diarrhea, and Edema. Medicine in China was based on herbal medicines, acupuncture, massage and more. Early medical systems allowed people to make sense of their bodies and health — leading it to flourish.
Anaesthesia
As a result of technological developments, scientific research and trials, civilization have been able to pave the ways for modern medicine. On October 16th, 1846, dentist T.G Morton and surgeon John Warren were the first to practice the use of anaesthesia, in order to remove a vascular tumor from a patient’s neck. Before the advent of anaesthetics in the 1840s, surgical operations were conducted with little to no pain relief, often accompanied with great suffering and emotional distress. Before the development, surgery had extremely traumatizing effects on patients.
Inside the Body
For over 120 years, X-Rays have been used in clinic to see what can not be visible to the naked eye. They’ve been used to observe bones and identify inner body issues such as pneumonia in lungs, or osteoporosis. In 1972, CT (computerized axial tomography) scans were invented by British engineer Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI laboratories, England and South African physicist Allan Cormack of Tufts University, Massachusetts; the first used clinical CT scanners were installed between 1974 and 1976. These systems were dedicated to head imaging only, but full body system scanning became available in 1976.
Antibiotics
Before we could detect tumours through X-Ray technology, antibiotics, also known as “wonder drugs” were the guess-medicine of choice. In 1929, Alexander Fleming reported on penicillin’s potential to kill bacteria. This resulted in cheap mass production, reaching heights during the second world war, allowing allowing American soldiers to be protected from not only wound infections, but sexually transmitted diseases.
Antibiotics, Anesthesia, and X-Ray technologies have transformed healthcare — and it’s not nearly done evolving.
These developments and advancements in chemistry, drugs, and technologies have paved the way to what medicine is today.
