I tell my patients to change their diet, step outside in the sunshine, and be more active!
Treating patients is one part medicine and one part philosophy!
Galen- 150 AD
Medieval Medicine
Europe- 1300-1500 AD
The doctor recommends leeches to balance my humors.
This Plague is surely because we have sinned!
Renaissance Medicine
Balancing the humors doesn't always work. We should look outside of the body for the cause of disease!
All physicians should see my drawings of the human heart!
Italy- 1500 - 1700 AD
Hippocrates and Galen believed in the four humors- Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile and Black Bile. If someone was sick, they believed that it was an imbalance with one of those 4 humors. Treatments were things like changing the diet, using leeches to remove blood, and causing people to vomit.
The First Vaccine!
London- 1798
If I take a similar illness- cowpox- and use material from the scabs, I can protect people from Small Pox!
Galen and Hippocrates influenced European medicine until the 1700's. Doctors in Medieval Europe still believed in balancing the 4 humors. The Catholic Church was also really important, so the idea of demons and sin also became part of a doctor's treatment of a patient.
Medical Schools Begin
Europe and the US- 1700-1800 AD
Did you remember your medical text?
After seeing how unsuccessful Europe was at treating the Black Plague, Girolamo Fracastoro introduced the idea that things outside of the body might cause disease. DaVinci and fellow scientists also spent time drawing detailed anatomy pictures to share with other doctors how organs worked.
Medicine Today
This is something I've never seen! I'm going to search the American Medical Association to find a doctor I can call!
Ancient Greeks used people who already had smallpox to help people who hadn't become immune. Edward Jenner was the first scientist to take that idea and develop a vaccine for smallpox.
While people were sharing ideas about medicine in small groups, the first Medical Schools really moved collective learning forward. Doctors taught each other procedures and taught the next generation of people who wanted to be doctors their ideas.
I can't wait to learn about medicine from the best doctors in the world!
Doctors today learn and practice medical knowledge in similar schools and share information over the internet instantly. We have the benefit of over 2500 years of scientists and doctors writing and sharing knowledge with each other!