Ancient Vs Modern Medical Practices

history of medicine, the development of the prevention and handling of illness from prehistoric and ancient times to the 21st century.

Medicine and surgery before 1800

Early medicine and folklore

Unwritten history is not like shooting fish in a barrel to interpret, and, although much may exist learned from a written report of the drawings, bony remains, and surgical tools of early on humans, information technology is hard to reconstruct their mental mental attitude toward the bug of disease and death. It seems probable that, as soon equally they reached the stage of reasoning, they discovered past the process of trial and mistake which plants might be used every bit foods, which of them were poisonous, and which of them had some medicinal value. Folk medicine or domestic medicine, consisting largely in the use of vegetable products, or herbs, originated in this fashion and withal persists.

Just that is not the whole story. Humans did not at beginning regard death and disease as natural phenomena. Common maladies, such every bit colds or constipation, were accepted equally office of existence and dealt with by means of such herbal remedies equally were available. Serious and disabling diseases, yet, were placed in a very different category. These were of supernatural origin. They might exist the result of a spell bandage upon the victim past some enemy, visitation by a malevolent demon, or the work of an offended god who had either projected some object—a dart, a stone, a worm—into the body of the victim or had bathetic something, commonly the soul of the patient. The treatment then applied was to lure the errant soul back to its proper habitat within the body or to excerpt the evil intruder, be it dart or demon, past counterspells, incantations, potions, suction, or other ways.

One curious method of providing the illness with means of escape from the body was by making a hole, ii.5 to 5 cm across, in the skull of the victim—the practice of trepanning, or trephining. Trepanned skulls of prehistoric date have been constitute in Britain, French republic, and other parts of Europe and in Peru. Many of them show show of healing and, presumably, of the patient'south survival. The practise nevertheless exists amongst some tribal people in parts of People's democratic republic of algeria, in Melanesia, and maybe elsewhere, though information technology is fast becoming extinct.

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Magic and religion played a large part in the medicine of prehistoric or early on man society. Administration of a vegetable drug or remedy by mouth was accompanied by incantations, dancing, grimaces, and all the tricks of the wizard. Therefore, the beginning doctors, or "medicine men," were witch doctors or sorcerers. The use of charms and talismans, still prevalent in modern times, is of ancient origin.

Apart from the treatment of wounds and broken bones, the folklore of medicine is probably the near ancient aspect of the art of healing, for archaic physicians showed their wisdom by treating the whole person, soul every bit well as body. Treatments and medicines that produced no physical effects on the torso could nonetheless brand a patient feel meliorate when both healer and patient believed in their efficacy. This and so-called placebo consequence is applicative fifty-fifty in modernistic clinical medicine.

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The ancient Eye East and Egypt

The institution of the calendar and the invention of writing marked the dawn of recorded history. The clues to early noesis are few, consisting only of clay tablets bearing cuneiform signs and seals that were used by physicians of ancient Mesopotamia. In the Louvre Museum in France, a stone pillar is preserved on which is inscribed the Lawmaking of Hammurabi, who was a Babylonian male monarch of the 18th century bce. This code includes laws relating to the practise of medicine, and the penalties for failure were severe. For example, "If the doctor, in opening an abscess, shall impale the patient, his easily shall be cut off"; if, yet, the patient was a slave, the medico was simply obliged to supply another slave.

Greek historian Herodotus stated that every Babylonian was an amateur dr., since it was the custom to lay the sick in the street so that anyone passing by might offering advice. Divination, from the inspection of the liver of a sacrificed animal, was widely good to foretell the course of a illness. Piddling else is known regarding Babylonian medicine, and the proper noun of not a single physician has survived.

When the medicine of aboriginal Egypt is examined, the picture becomes clearer. The kickoff physician to emerge is Imhotep, chief government minister to Male monarch Djoser in the 3rd millennium bce, who designed one of the earliest pyramids, the Footstep Pyramid at Ṣaqqārah, and who was afterward regarded every bit the Egyptian god of medicine and identified with the Greek god Asclepius. Surer knowledge comes from the study of Egyptian papyri, especially the Ebers papyrus and Edwin Smith papyrus discovered in the 19th century. The one-time is a list of remedies, with appropriate spells or incantations, while the latter is a surgical treatise on the treatment of wounds and other injuries.

Contrary to what might exist expected, the widespread practise of embalming the expressionless body did non stimulate written report of human anatomy. The preservation of mummies has, however, revealed some of the diseases suffered at that time, including arthritis, tuberculosis of the os, gout, tooth decay, bladder stones, and gallstones; there is evidence also of the parasitic affliction schistosomiasis, which remains a scourge still. There seems to have been no syphilis or rickets.

The search for data on aboriginal medicine leads naturally from the papyri of Egypt to Hebrew literature. Though the Bible contains little on the medical practices of ancient Israel, it is a mine of information on social and personal hygiene. The Jews were indeed pioneers in matters of public health.

Douglas James Guthrie Philip Rhodes