THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

SPIRITS

• Ancient societies would drill holes in people's head to cure diseases.
• They thought it would release the evil spirits that cause disease

Humors

• Greek physician, Hippocrates, hypothesized that fluids, called humors, cause disese
• When a person had the right amount of humors, he/she is healthy

HERBAL TREATMENTS

• People use incense in an attempt to cure those with Black Death, caused by bacteria transmitted by rats' fleas
• This bacteria killed 43 million, 13%, people worldwide in 1330-1352

ANATOMY

• Between 1400-1600, people began to study anatomy

GERM THEORY

• In 1857, French scientists, Louis Pasteur, hypothesized that disease is caused by small "animals"
• He thought that specific microorganisms cause diseases. He called them pathogens and said that if pathogens were eliminated from a person's body, that person would not get sick
• It is called the germ theory

ANTISEPTIC TECHNIQUE

• British surgeon, Joseph Lister, found out that cleansing his surgical tools reduced his patients' infections.
• He used an acid to clean his tools and saw that this reduced the amount of deaths from a perfectly good surgery.

KOCH'S POSTULATES

• German scientist, Robert Koch, found that if he injected a healthy animal with a sick animal's pathogens that the healthy one would get sick
• He found four conditions that prove a pathogen causes disease
• His postulates included:
• 1. The pathogen must be isolated and grown outside the body in a pure, uncontaminated culture
• 2. The pathogen that causes the disease must be present in every case of which the disease is found
• 3. Healthy animals infected with pure culture must develop the disease
• 4. The pathogen must be re-isolated and cultured from the newly sick animals and must be identical to the original pathogen

APPLYING ANTISEPTIC TECHNIQUE

• Cities around the world start treating drinking water with chlorine, reducing the cases of cholera
• By treating drinking water you remove all of the dirty pathogens so that you don't get sick

ANTINIOTICS

• Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928
• Penicillin is a group of certain antibiotics that eliminate infection and disease causing bacteria

POLIO VACCINE

• Jonas Salk's vaccine against polio became available in 1955
• The disease is officially eliminated in the U.S. in 1994
• Polio is a contagious viral illness, that in most severe cases, causes paralysis, difficulty breathing, and sometimes death

NEW DISEASES

• In 2002, the first cases of SARS, a disease that affects the respiratory system, sprang up in China

POLIO COMEBACK

• Worldwide, efforts increase to vaccinate people against polio
• The polio virus emerges in fewer than ten people in the U.S.