AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE, WITH MEDICAL CHRONOLOGY, SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND BIBLI

An Introduction to the History of Medicine: With Medical Chronology, Suggestions for Study and Bibliographic Data. image description.
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Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine surveys the rise of medicine in the West from classical times to the present. Covering both the social and scientific history of medicine, this lavishly illustrated volume traces the chronology of key developments and events, while at the same time engaging with the issues, discoveries, and controversies that have beset and characterized medical progress. The authors weave a narrative that connects disease, doctors, primary care, surgery, the rise of hospitals, drug treatment and pharmacology, mental illness and psychiatry.

This volume emphasizes the crucial developments of the past years, but also examines classical, medieval, and Islamic and East Asian medicine. Authoritative and accessible, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine is for readers wanting a lively and informative introduction to medical history. Roy Porter is professor of the social history of medicine at the Wellcome Insitute for the History of Science.

He has written or edited numerous books about the history of medicine, including Western Medical Tradition with L. History of medicine [electronic resource]: Against the backdrop of unprecedented concern for the future of health care, this Very Short Introduction surveys the history of medicine from classical times, through the scholastic medieval tradition and the Enlightenment to the present day.

Classical Studies: Ancient Medicine

Taking a thematic rather than strictly chronological approach, W. Bynum, explores the key turning points in the history of Western medicine-such as the first surgical procedures, the advent of hospitals, the introduction of anesthesia, X-Rays, vaccinations, and many other innovations, as well as the rise of experimental medicine.

The book also explores Western medicine's encounters with Chinese and Indian medicine, as well as nontraditional treatments such as homeopathy, chiropractic, and other alternative medicines. Covering a vast amount of information, this Very Short Introduction sheds new light on medicine's past, while at the same time engaging with contemporary issues, discoveries, and controversies, such as the spiraling costs of health care, lack of health insurance for millions, breakthrough treatments, and much more. For readers who wish to understand the how we have arrived at our current state of medical practice and knowledge, this book is essential reading.

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London ; New York: The first edition of Ancient Medicine was the most complete examination of the medicine of the ancient world for a hundred years. The new edition includes the key discoveries made since the first edition, especially from important texts discovered in recent finds of papyri and manuscripts, making it the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey available. Vivian Nutton pays particular attention to the life and work of doctors in communities, links between medicine and magic, and examines the different approaches to medicine across the ancient world.


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The new edition includes more on Rufus and Galen as well as augmented information on Babylonia, Hellenistic medicine and Late Antiquity. With recently discovered texts made accessible for the first time, and providing new evidence, this broad exploration challenges currently held perspectives, and proves an invaluable resource for students of both classics and the history of medicine.

Ancient Babylonian medicine [electronic resource]: Chichester, West Sussex, U. Utilizing a great variety of previously unknown cuneiform tablets, "Ancient Babylonian Medicine: Theory and Practice" examines the way medicine was practiced by various Babylonian professionals of the 2nd and 1st millennium B. Represents the first overview of Babylonian medicine utilizing cuneiform sources, including archives of court letters, medical recipes, and commentaries written by ancient scholars Attempts to reconcile the ways in which medicine and magic were related Assigns authorship to various types of medical literature that were previously considered anonymous Rejects the approach of other scholars that have attempted to apply modern diagnostic methods to ancient illnesses.

University of Oklahoma Press, c The skills of the ancient Egyptians in preserving bodies through mummification are well known, but their expertise in the everyday medical practices needed to treat the living is less familiar and often misinterpreted. Nunn draws on his own experience as an eminent doctor of medicine and an Egyptologist to reassess the evidence.

history of medicine | History & Facts | leondumoulin.nl

He has translated and reviewed the original Egyptian medical papyri and has reconsidered other sources of information, including skeletons, mummies, statues, tomb paintings and coffins. Illustrations highlight similarities in the conditions of ancient and modern patients. Nunn appraises the criteria by which the ancient Egyptian doctors made their diagnoses in the context of current medical knowledge, showing that many of their findings are still valid today.

Nunn also explores ancient Egyptian spells and incantations and the relationship of magic and religion to medical practices. Incorporating the most recent insights of modern medicine and Egyptology, Nunn furnishes the reader with a comprehensive and authoritative book on a fascinating subject. The Greeks were the first to use rational systems of medicine, based upon belief in natural causation, rather than magical and religious elements, which resulted in a new conception of disease, accounting for causes and symptoms of illness.

The book provides a chronological account on the most important aspects of ancient medicine, and includes chapters on specific areas of medicine, such as gynecology, dietetics, pharmacology and surgery.

Studying Medicine in Eastern Europe - A comprehensive guide

After introducing relevant myths and legends from earliest times in Greece, she discusses ancient philosophers from the sixth-fifth centuries BC and the subsequent development of schools of medicine. Cult practices at shrines of healing in classical Greece are also discussed in this introductory section. Rome's conquest of the Greek world led to a syncretization of religion and to the development of knowledge and skills between these two worlds.

Although physicians continued to be mainly Greeks, it was Roman and Celtic blacksmiths who developed and manufactured their surgical instruments, and Roman engineers who, albeit fortuitously, provided the people with clean water, baths and latrines and who drained Italy's disease-infested marshes. The Roman Army was provided with purpose-built hospitals, whilst contemporaneously, healing sanctuaries at both urban and rural sites continued to flourish. In BC Rome was held in the grip of the plague and, according to legend, in answer to a directive from the Sibylline Books, the Roman Senate decided to send to Epidaurus for Asclepius.

The paramount god of healing in the Greek world travelled to Rome in BC. This was a significant event, for it is the first example of a foreign cult being imported directly into the Roman Pantheon. The story has it that after the god's arrival in Rome the plague subsided and 'Aesculapius' became the Latinized form of the god's name. His temples and shrines continued to flourish throughout the Greek and Roman worlds until well into the Christian period.

Leading academics have demonstrated that eye diseases were prevalent in the western empire and this is discussed in the book with special relevance to Roman Britain.


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The author also looks at the many different aspects of medicine and health in the Roman Empire, especially with regard to doctors, their drugs and their surgical equipment. The prince of medicine: Galen of Pergamum A. Later in life he achieved great distinction as one of a small circle of court physicians to the family of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, at the very heart of Roman society.

Susan Mattern's The Prince of Medicine offers the first authoritative biography in English of this brilliant, audacious, and profoundly influential figure. Like many Greek intellectuals living in the high Roman Empire, Galen was a prodigious polymath, writing on subjects as varied as ethics and eczema, grammar and gout. Indeed, he was as he claimed as highly regarded in his lifetime for his philosophical works as for his medical treatises. It is for medicine that he is most remembered today, and from the later Roman Empire through the Renaissance, medical education was based largely on his works.

Even up to the twentieth century, he remained the single most influential figure in Western medicine. He was a complicated individual, full of breathtaking arrogance, shameless self-promotion, and lacerating wit. He was fiercely competitive, once disemboweling a live monkey and challenging the physicians in attendance to correctly replace its organs. Relentless in his pursuit of anything that would cure the patient, he insisted on rigorous observation and, sometimes, daring experimentation.

He confronted one of history's most horrific events--a devastating outbreak of smallpox--and persevered, bearing patient witness to its predations, year after year. The Prince of Medicine gives us Galen as he lived his life, in the city of Rome at its apex of power and decadence, among his friends, his rivals, and his patients. It offers a deeply human and long-overdue portrait of one of ancient history's most significant and engaging figures. Johns Hopkins University Press, c The fascinating story of how Hippocrates and the Oath which is unlikely to have been written by the great Coan doctor himself became Christianized is the theme of this wise and humane book Historians, theologians, and doctors alike will benefit from this clear, learned, and courteous exposition of an enthralling theme.

The reader can only salute [Temkin] as one of the greatest humanist physicians of our time. In Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians, Temkin shows how the perennial appeal of Hippocratic practice helped establish the relationship between scientific medicine and monotheistic religion. After the first century, Hippocratic medicine competed with powerful beliefs in religious healers from Asclepius to Jesus.

Yet the ascendance of Christianity, Temkin explains, did not diminish the stature of Hippocratic science. Hippocrates, after all, saw nature as a divine and orderly power that caused growth and supplied "health. But they could not sacrifice their belief in nature as the basis of health, disease, and therapy without renouncing their science. In compromise, the Church accepted Hippocratic medicine with the proviso that the Christian physician shun all pagan or heretical interpretations of naturalism--he must not, for example, believenature to be divine, the soul a mere function of the brain, or himself the true savior of the sick.

History Today, Volume 21, Issue 4, April The Temple of Kom Ombo is an unusual double temple constructed during the Ptolemaic period, which lasted from to 47 BC. The ancient Egyptian place of worship features a unique engraving that is thought to be among the first representations of medical and surgical instruments..

Rediscovering an ancient book. The treatment then applied was to lure the errant soul back to its proper habitat within the body or to extract the evil intruder, be it dart or demon, by counterspells, incantations, potions, suction, or other means. One curious method of providing the disease with means of escape from the body was by making a hole, 2. Trepanned skulls of prehistoric date have been found in Britain, France, and other parts of Europe and in Peru.

The practice still exists among some tribal people in parts of Algeria, in Melanesia, and perhaps elsewhere, though it is fast becoming extinct. Magic and religion played a large part in the medicine of prehistoric or early human society. Administration of a vegetable drug or remedy by mouth was accompanied by incantations, dancing, grimaces, and all the tricks of the magician. 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 most ancient aspect of the art of healing, for primitive physicians showed their wisdom by treating the whole person, soul as well as body. Treatments and medicines that produced no physical effects on the body could nevertheless make a patient feel better when both healer and patient believed in their efficacy.

This so-called placebo effect is applicable even in modern clinical medicine. The establishment of the calendar and the invention of writing marked the dawn of recorded history. The clues to early knowledge 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 Code of Hammurabi , who was a Babylonian king of the 18th century bce. This code includes laws relating to the practice of medicine, and the penalties for failure were severe. Greek historian Herodotus stated that every Babylonian was an amateur physician, since it was the custom to lay the sick in the street so that anyone passing by might offer advice.

Divination , from the inspection of the liver of a sacrificed animal, was widely practiced to foretell the course of a disease. Little else is known regarding Babylonian medicine, and the name of not a single physician has survived. When the medicine of ancient Egypt is examined, the picture becomes clearer. Surer knowledge comes from the study of Egyptian papyri, especially the Ebers papyrus and Edwin Smith papyrus discovered in the 19th century.

The former 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 be expected, the widespread practice of embalming the dead body did not stimulate study of human anatomy.

The preservation of mummies has, however, revealed some of the diseases suffered at that time, including arthritis , tuberculosis of the bone, gout , tooth decay , bladder stones, and gallstones ; there is evidence too of the parasitic disease schistosomiasis , which remains a scourge still. There seems to have been no syphilis or rickets. The search for information on ancient medicine leads naturally from the papyri of Egypt to Hebrew literature.

The ancient Middle East and Egypt

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. We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind.

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Ashworth Underwood Robert G. Richardson Douglas James Guthrie. Read More on This Topic. Page 1 of Next page Traditional medicine and surgery in Asia. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: The three great areas of Hellenistic scholarship were medicine, astronomy, and mathematics.