| All human societies have medical beliefs that provide explanations for, and
responses to, birth, death, and
disease. Throughout the world, illness has often been attributed to witchcraft, demons, or the will of the
gods, ideas that retain some power, with faith healing and shrines still common, although the rise of
scientific medicine in the past two centuries has altered or replaced many historic health practices.
General review of medicine history
Indian medicine
Ayurveda, the Vedic system of medicine originating 6000 years ago, views health
as harmony between body, mind and spirit. Its two most famous texts belong to the schools of Charaka and Sushruta. According to Charaka, health and disease are not predetermined and life may be prolonged by human effort. Sushruta defines the purpose of medicine to cure the diseases of the sick, protect the
healthy, and to prolong life.
Āyurveda speaks of eight branches: kāyāchikitsā (internal medicine), shalyachikitsā (surgery including
anatomy), shālākyachikitsā (eye,
ear, nose, and throat diseases), kaumārabhritya (pediatrics),
bhūtavidyā (psychiatry, or demonology), and agada tantra (toxicology), rasāyana
(science of rejuvenation), and vājīkarana (the science of fertility).
Apart from learning these, the student of Āyurveda was expected to know ten arts that were indispensable in the
preparation and application of his medicines: distillation, operative skills, cooking, horticulture, metallurgy, sugar
manufacture, pharmacy, analysis and separation of minerals, compounding of metals, and preparation of alkalis. The teaching of
various subjects was done during the instruction of relevant clinical subjects. For example, teaching of anatomy was a part of
the teaching of surgery, embryology was a part of training in pediatrics and
obstetrics, and the knowledge of physiology and pathology was interwoven in the teaching of all
the clinical disciplines.
At the closing of the initiation, the guru gave a solemn address to the students where
the guru directed the students to a life of chastity, honesty, and vegetarianism. The student was to strive with all his being for the health of the sick. He was not to betray
patients for his own advantage. He was to dress modestly and avoid strong drink. He was to be collected and self-controlled,
measured in speech at all times. He was to constantly improve his knowledge and technical skill. In the home of the patient he
was to be courteous and modest, directing all attention to the patient's welfare. He was not to divulge any knowledge about the
patient and his family. If the patient was incurable, he was to keep this to himself if it was likely to harm the patient or
others.
The normal length of the student's training appears to have been seven years. Before graduation, the student was to pass a
test. But the physician was to continue to learn through texts, direct observation (pratyaksha), and through inference (anumāna). In addition, the vaidyas attended meetings where knowledge was
exchanged. The doctors were also enjoined to gain knowledge of unusual remedies from hillsmen, herdsmen, and forest-dwellers.
Chinese medicine
See main article: History of traditional Chinese medicine.
China also developed a large body of traditional medicine. Much of the philosophy of traditional Chinese medicine derived from Taoist philosophy and reflects the classical Chinese belief that individual human experiences
express causative principles effective in the environment at all scales. These causative principles, whether material, essential,
or spiritual, correlate as the expression of the fates decreed by heaven.
During the golden age of his reign from 2696 to 2598 B.C, as a result of a dialogue with his minister Ch'i Pai, the Yellow Emperor is supposed by Chinese tradition to have composed his
Neijing(內經) Suwen(素問) or Basic Questions of Internal Medicine. Modern scholarly opinion
holds that the extant text of this title was compiled by an eponymous scholar between the Chou and Han dynasties more than two
thousand years later than tradition reports, although some parts of the extant work may have originated as early as 1000 B.C.
During the Han dynasty, Chang Chung-Ching, who was mayor of Chang-sha near the end of the second century A.D., wrote a
Treatise on Typhoid Fever, which contains the earliest known reference to Neijing Suwen. The Chin dynasty
practitioner and advocate of acupuncture and moxibustion, Huang-fu Mi (215-282 A.D), also quotes the Yellow Emperor in his Chia I Ching, ca. 265 A.D. During the Tang dynasty, Wang Ping claimed to have
located a copy of the originals of the Neijing Suwen, which he expanded and edited substantially. This work was revisited
by an imperial commission during the eleventh century A.D., and the result is our best extant representation of the foundational
roots of traditional Chinese medicine.
Egyptian medicine
The Edwin Smith
Papyrus (ca 1600 BC), an ancient textbook on surgery, describes in exquisite
detail the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of numerous ailments (Encyclopędia
Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9032043&query=Edwin%20Smith%20papyrus&ct=)).
Additionally, although the Ebers papyrus (ca 1550 BC) is full of incantations and foul applications meant to turn away
disease-causing demons and other superstition, in it there is also evidence of a long tradition of empirical practice and
observation.
Early European medicine
As societies developed in Europe and Asia, belief systems were replaced with a different natural system. The Greeks, from Hippocrates,
developed a humoral medicine system where treatment was to restore the balance of humours within the body. Similar views were espoused in China and
in India. See Ancient Greek medicine for more.
From the ideas developed in Greece, through Galen until the Renaissance the main thrust of medicine was the maintenance of health by control of
diet and hygiene.
Anatomical knowledge was limited and there were few surgical or other cures, doctors
relied on a good relation with patients and dealt with minor ailments and soothing chronic conditions and could do little when
epidemic diseases, growing out of urbanization and the domestication of
animals, then raged across the world.
Medieval medicine was an evolving mixture of the scientific and the spiritual. In the early middle ages, following the fall of the Roman Empire,
standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Ideas
about the origin and cure of disease were not, however, purely secular, but were also based on a spiritual world view, in which factors such as destiny, sin, and astral influences played as great a part as
any physical cause.
In this era, there was no clear tradition of scientific medicine, and accurate observations went hand-in-hand with spiritual
beliefs as part of the practice of medicine.
Muslim medicine
The Muslim world rose to primacy in medical science with such thinkers as Avicenna, Ibn Nafis, and Rhazes. See also early Muslim medicine.
The first generation of Islam's superb physicians were trained at the Academy of Gundishapur, where the teaching hospital was first invented. Rhazes, for example, became
the first physician to systematically use alcohol in his practice as a physician.
Renaissance and Enlightenment medicine
This idea of personalised medicine was challenged in Europe by the rise of experimental investigation, principally in
dissection, examining bodies in a manner alien to other cultures. The work of individuals like Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey
challenged accepted folklore with scientific evidence. Understanding and diagnosis improved but with little direct benefit to
health. Few effective drugs existed, beyond opium and quinine, folklore cures and almost or actually poisonous metal-based compounds were popular, if useless,
treatments.
Important figures:
Modern medicine
Medicine was revolutionized in the 18th century and beyond by advances in chemistry and laboratory techniques and equipment, old ideas of infectious disease epidemiology were replaced
with bacteriology developed by Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur. For the first time
actual cures were developed for certain endemic infectious diseases. However the decline in the most lethal diseases was more due
to improvements in public health and nutrition than to medicine. It was not until the 20th century that there was a true
breakthrough in medicine, with great advances in pharmacology and
surgery.
From 20th century we have witnessed a shift from a master-apprentice paradigm of teaching of clinical medicine to a more
"democratic" system of medical schools. With the advent of the evidence-based medicine and great advances of information technology the process of change is
likely to evolve further.
The evidence-based medicine has had a great impact on practice of medicine throughout the world of modern medicine.
Modern, western medicine has proven uniquely effective and widespread compared with all other medical forms, but has
fallen far short of what once seemed a realistic goal of conquering all disease and bringing health to even the poorest of
nations. It is notably secular and material, indifferent to ideas of the supernatural or the spirit, and concentrating on the
body to determine causes and cures - an emphasis that has provoked something of a backlash in recent years.
Special history of medicine
- History of anatomy
- History of
immunology
- History of internal medicine
- History
of legal medicine
- History of
microbiology
- History of neurology
- History of
ophthalmology
- History of
pharmacology
- History of
physiology
- History of
psychiatry
Museums and collections of health and medicine
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