Early Medicine
Taylor Simpson
March 19, 2007
Throughout the Ancient times and into the 1800s, the misconceptions of doctors are seen as so outrageous it is difficult to understand how people even thought that way. Yet, medicine as we see it today came about, many times, through mistakes, and often through courageous doctors willing to step out of the status quo to question what no one thought could ever be wrong, and ultimately save thousands of lives.
The very first doctor we know about today was named Imhotep. A later doctor living around the time of Imhotep and whose work was more well-known was the Greek Hippocrates, known today as “The Father of Medicine.” Hippocrates was the first doctor to find that, to cure a sickness, its cause must be found. He did not believe that gods brought on sickness. He also refused to take bribes to make someone sick, such as was done in that day. He created an oath, the Hippocratic Oath of proper conduct, which doctors are today required to take before entering into the practice.
Another famous doctor was named Galen, also a Greek, who lived in the Roman Empire. At that time there was a law that forbade anyone to dissect a human body. Galen, knowing that the only way to learn about the body was to do just that, instead compensated by dissecting animals. He also learned much from repairing the gladiators’ mutilated bodies before burial. As his knowledge grew, so did his success.
Galen died in A.D. 200, but his ideas did not die with him. He had written approximately 125 books which other doctors looked to as gospel. Of course, the books were not free from errors; in fact, there were many vital mistakes which cost many people dearly. One such mistake was Galen’s theory that disease came from an imbalance of the vital fluids of the body. This idea led to blood-letting, where doctors would drain blood from a sick person. This treatment often proved fatal as the victim bled to death: George Washington’s death was a result of this procedure, which made a bad cold become fatal.
Galen did not expect nor desire his books to go this far. He warned doctors in these writings to look for answers firsthand, but this advice went unheeded. After the law against dissecting human bodies was lifted, doctors, instead of researching for themselves within the body, would use it for lectures, reading out of Galen’s book the whole time. Sometimes, the dissection would even contradict the book; if this happened, then surely the error was in the corpse. Galen could not have been wrong.
Andreas Vesalius was the first master of human anatomy. When studying medicine, Andreas concluded that “There is only one book from which to learn about the human body and that is the human body itself.” Andreas found one day the skeleton of a convict left hanging on the gallows. He smuggled it back to his room, and began to study it. Vesalius did the bulk of his work after traveling to Padua University, which was near Venice. After earning his medical degree in 1537, Andreas was elected professor of anatomy. He carried out the dissections himself, and taught from those, not from Galen’s book.
Vesalius found over two hundred errors in Galen’s books. He wrote a book called On the Fabric of the Human Body meant to correct these errors. He chose artist Jan Stephen van Calcar to illustrate the book. Of course, this book brought on opposition, and everything that could be disputed by other doctors was. Vesalius spent nearly the rest of his life fighting against his adversaries. However, today, the publication of On the Fabric of the Human Body is considered one of the ten most important events in medicinal history.
Other important discoveries included blood circulation by Ambroise Pare in the 1500s which was continued by William Harvey in 1616, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microscopic creatures, being the first to lay eyes on bacteria, and William Jenner’s discovery of vaccinations. Another very famous breakthrough was Humphry Davy’s discovery of anesthesia, which was completed by William Thomas Green Morton in 1846.
A great event in the history of medicine was the recognition of dangerous bacteria. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweiss was the first to find that cleanliness led to health. While working at a maternity hospital in Vienna, he noticed that the women in the ward run by the midwives had a smaller fatality rate than in the doctor’s ward. The midwives’ facility was much cleaner than the men’s. The doctors did not wash their hands or their aprons, thinking that the blood made them look more professional.
After working for a year at the hospital, a doctor died of a sort of blood poisoning, and after further investigation, Philipp learned that, a week before, he had nicked himself while performing an autopsy on a childbed fever victim. Philipp concluded that childbed fever was contagious. The doctors themselves were carrying it to the patients from their blood-crusted hands and aprons. They did not even wash their hands between dissecting a corpse and attending to a patient.
Semmelweiss immediately had his students wash their hands and keep themselves clean while treating patients. They did as he said for a while. The fatality rate dropped from ten percent to one percent. Yet soon the death rates were high again, as the doctors refused to lower themselves to washing their hands. The head doctor at last drove Semmelweiss from the hospital. It was not until the 1860s when doctors finally began to accept sterilization and hand-washing. It was too late, though, for the thousands of young mothers who died in the Vienna “Death House,” victims to arrogance and egotism.
After Semmelwiess, doctors such as Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and Robert Koch found ways to cure and prevent different diseases, and in 1876, the theory that germs caused disease was firmly established. However, it may have been a bit too established. In the 1700s-1800s, doctors did not believe that disease could be prevented by simply eating the right food. They thought that everything came from a germ.
In 1747 Dr. James Lind was the first to discover that good diet was essential for good health. Captain James Cook, wanting to avoid scurvy, followed the doctor’s advice, bringing fruit on his exploration of the Pacific Ocean. His crew remained healthy. In 1885, a doctor named Christiaan Eijkman found that the brown rice eaten by the natives in the Orient contained something vital to the diet which would prevent Berberi. In 1929, Eijkman was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for this discovery.
From Ancient Egypt and Greece to brain surgery, medicine has created quite a history for itself. Throughout its twists and turns involving discoveries, inventions, and a lot of faith, God has slowly allowed us to gain more and more knowledge about how to care for ourselves and others. Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.”
Well, readers, we’ve nearly come to the end of the school-year, and the last of the Student Developers! As your editor for the past year, I have to say that it was only through the grace of God, and your generosity and willingness to share your work, that this was even possible, and I thank both Him and you from the bottom of my heart. Let all the glory go to God! As for the rest of the summer, I pray that you all enjoy a fun, exciting couple months off, and are ready to get back into school come September! God Bless!
Once again, if you have any questions or want to request some Bible trivia questions to work on over the summer, just let me know.
Thanks!
Abby M. Frierson