Evolutions and Advances of Medicine

When we suffer from any disease today, we generally know a lot about it. First of all, its cause. With this knowledge, we can find out how it works and from there derive possible therapies, whether palliative, curative or preventive.

The amazing thing about this entire body of knowledge is that it did not exist just 160 years ago. In other words, practically everything we know about physiology, anatomy, heredity, pharmacology, and biology is the product of human work from the mid-nineteenth century. Just like how online poker is entirely a twenty first century invention.

Today, however, we live under a medical reality, especially in societies that have better economic conditions but not only in them. It is hard for us to imagine what a world was like almost without painkillers, without antibiotics, without anesthetics, without insulin, without transfusions, without transplants, without vaccines, without all the elements that we have at our service in case of illness or injury.

The evolution of medicine

The evolution of medicine has a long journey with procedures carried out since times as old as the Paleolithic. In prehistory, medicine was immersed in magical rituals, where shamans and similar figures used preparations based on plants, animals, and minerals.

In the history of medicine, the Egyptians recorded an extensive study of diseases and treatments, dating back to 3,000 BC. Doctors at the service of the pharaohs and their instruments have been reflected in tombs and temples.

The so-called medical papyri (2040 to 1795 BC) include Egyptian diagnoses, treatments, and medications. The Ebers papyrus stands out in this period for its details of recipes, ointments, and instructions for treatments.

Next, we are going to learn how the historical evolution of medicine was enriched by the research of great philosophers.

Greece and Hippocratic thought in the evolution of medicine

An important medical school flourished in Alexandria with exponents such as Herophilus, Erasistratus, and Galen. These philosophers, among others, helped develop scientific and philosophical thought and the Hippocratic orientation of medicine.

Herophilus of Chalcedon (335-280 BC) developed the first comprehensive work on the anatomy and connections of the nervous system. Erasistratus of Ceos (304-250 BC) studied the brain, blood vessels, and nerves.

Aelius Galen or Galen of Pergamon (128-200), studied medicine with followers of Hippocrates and was a physician to several Roman emperors. He was a talented anatomist and also influenced the definition of ethical aspects of medicine with his treatises (Campohermoso, 2016).

Socrates and the ethics of medicine

Socrates the Greek (470 BC) has gone down in history as one of the most important classical philosophers. Noted for his approaches to ethics and morals in patient care.

Socrates conducted studies regarding the functioning of the mind and the understanding of the world. From his practices derive the maieutics and the Socratic method, still in use. Also studies on the psyche, the development of the inductive method, and constructivism, among other areas.

Medical knowledge, before the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century, faced enormous limitations, so that it was replaced by speculations rather of a philosophical nature or reasoned, argued, or common-sense conclusions, but which had no proof. ascertainable. Thus, for example, the Romans prohibited the dissection of the human body, so that knowledge of anatomy was derived from the treatment of soldiers in combat or gladiators in the arena, and from the dissection of animals.

That made the most influential doctor before the appearance of science, Galen, a Greek who lived under the Roman Empire. He believed that the human body was made up of four senses of humor (yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm) and that the imbalance between them was the cause of the disease, which in turn came from “miasmas” or “bad winds”.

The idea was not unreasonable, because at least it correlated the lack of hygiene, unpleasant odors such as those of decomposing food or stagnant water, with the disease, but assuming a causal relationship that did not exist. Galen described the human body using his work on animals, accumulating a large number of errors. For example, he claimed that the human jaw was made up of two bones, like in dogs, when in fact it is a single bone.

Nonetheless

Thousands of years of trial and error, especially in surgery, developed in part due to the warlike tendency that our species has shown, were not totally in vain. In fact, it is amazing that some techniques of reconstructive surgery, cataract surgery, or some battle operations, in particular amputations, are so similar to those we use today, although in much less frightening conditions for patients.

Little more could have been done at the time by the doctor of the second century of the Common Era. But little more would be done in the following 1,400 years. Galen’s statements became part of the authority of antiquity, which could not be questioned, along with views that prevented the development of chemistry or biology.

In other human societies, disease theories were also not supported by an objective approach to reality. Some invoked supernatural issues, such as divine punishment for sin, demonic intervention (such as possessions or witchcraft enchantments) as the origins of disease. Others blamed the individual for having an incorrect or unhealthy attitude or vision. And others looked for causes abroad, in food, in water, or in the air.

Pine resin and feces

Therapies that were available to people were equally unreliable. Some were the product of empirical knowledge derived from the use of plants within the reach of each society, which could contain, without doctors or patients actually knowing it, some active ingredient that had an effect on health, such as willow bark, which has acid salicylic, an analgesic.