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History of medicine essay
2600 bc history of medicine
History of medicine essay
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Around the world, Joseph Lister is considered to be the “father of modern surgery” (Pitt & Aubin, 2012). Joseph Lister was a surgeon in England that not only influenced the surgery techniques of surgeons in England, but who also played a major role in the sterilization techniques that surgeons use in our country. He realized that the infections and deaths that occurred after surgery were caused by bacteria and was able to come up with a sterilization technique that would minimize the deaths of the patients. The sterilization technique that Lister used was an antiseptic method. By using the antiseptic method that used carbolic acid, Lister was able to prevent any contamination of the wound or medical instruments that were involved in performing the surgery in order to decrease the amount of deaths that occurred from infections by bacteria. Through the creation of this antiseptic technique, Joseph Lister introduced to the world an invention that improved the safety of surgery and influenced the way surgeons in other countries, such as Germany and the United States, would view microorganisms’ effect on surgical wounds eventually leading to the modernization of surgery.
Joseph Lister was born in 1827 in Upton England. He was born into a wealthy family and his father was Joseph Jackson Lister who was a wine merchant and created the achromatic microscope. Lister went to obtain a college education at University College London and graduated as a medical student. Eventually, he went to work with James Syme at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. His main area of study was inflammation and wound healing, which he had performed numerous studies on by observing the vascular changes that occurred in a frog’s foot (Ellis, 2012). Before his inf...
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Ellis, Harold, “Joseph Lister: father of modern surgery.” British Journal of Hospital Medicine 73, no. 1 (2012): 52, accessed February 1, 2014, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=34d88c2f-9c0a-445b-95e6-031823e06676%40sessionmgr198&hid=105
Pitt, Dennis & Aubin, Jean-Michel, “Joseph Lister: Father of Modern Surgery.” Canadian Journal of Surgery 55, no. 5 (2012): E8-E9, accessed February 1, 2014, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=34d88c2f-9c0a-445b-95e6-031823e06676%40sessionmgr198&vid=4&hid=105
Newsom, S.W.B, “Pioneers in infection control-Joseph Lister.” Journal of Hospital Infection 55, (2003): 246-253, accessed March 7, 2014, http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.gsu.edu/science/article/pii/S0195670103003049?
As a child Edward was an apprentice to a surgeon for nine years, that was where he observed and studied the surgeons every move. From there he traveled to Saint Georges Hospital in London to study both anatomy and surgery. From ther...
———. "A surgeon's code of behaviour and ethics, c. 1376." English Historical Documents. Accessed December 8, 2013. http://www.historystudycenter.com/search/displaySuitemPageImageItemById.do?UseMapping=SuitemPageImage&QueryName=suitem&ItemID=10648&resource=ehd&imageNumber=4&scale=100.
Robinson, Victor, M.D. Victory Over Pain: A History of Anesthesia. New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1946.
Agatha Cobourg Hodgins was a true anesthesia pioneer. She was one of courage, intelligence and determination. She wouldn’t let anything stop her from carrying out her dreams.
“Surgery.” Brought to Life Exploring the History of Medicine. Science Museum, London, n.d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
Weston, Debbie. Infection Prevention and Control: Theory and Clinical Practice for Healthcare Professionals. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. Print.
Because of the lack of knowledge about many ailments, many advances in hospitals were completed. Anesthetics were developed, as well as clinics for rehabilitation and new knowledge was gained on the matter of reconstructive surgery. As a result of scurvy, soldiers frequently required reconstructive bone and joint surgery, just to be able to walk again.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines hand hygiene as, “a general term that applies to routine hand washing, antiseptic hand wash, antiseptic hand rub, or surgical hand antisepsis.” (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013) The idea of hand washing has been around for centuries. In the mid-1800’s Ignaz Semmelweis established that hospital-acquired diseases were transmitted via the hands of health care workers. After Semmelweis observed physicians and health care workers in the obstetric setting and studied mortality rates he recommended that hands be scrubbed in a chlorinated lime solution before coming in contact with every patient. Following the implementation of Semmelweis’s recommendation mortality rates associated with childbirth fell from seven percent to three percent. Although Semmelweis observation and recommendations were significant fellow physicians and colleagues did not adopt them. The 1980’s posed as a crucial time for health care in the sense of hand hygiene. This was when the first national hand hygiene guidelines were published in the 1980s. In 1995 and 1996, the CDC/Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) in the USA suggested that either antimicrobial soap or a waterless antiseptic agent be use...
In 1865 before an operation, he cleansed a leg wound first with carbolic acid, and performed the surgery with sterilized (by heat) instruments. The wound healed, and the patient survived. Prior to surgery, the patient would need an amputation. However, by incorporating these antiseptic procedures in all of his surgeries, he decreased postoperative deaths. The use of antiseptics eventually helped reduce bacterial infection not only in surgery but also in childbirth and in the treatment of battle wounds.
7) Spettel, Sara, and Mark Donald White. "The portrayal of J. Marion Sims' controversial surgical legacy." The Journal of urology 185.6 (2011): 2424-2427.
Since the sixteenth century medicine has progressed further and it will continue to do so until...maybe when a miscreated ‘monster’ is born. We can now perform acutely complex operations and offer surg...
Aynsley, E.E. and Campbell, W.A. .Journal of Medical History, v.6, (July 1962) Johann Konrad Dippel, 1673-1734.
...s and measurement to decrease healthcare- associated infections. American Journal Of Infection Control, pp. S19-S25. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2012.02.008.
Harold Gillies industrialized many procedures of modern facial plastic surgery. He fashioned these techniques to be able to help combatants who were in agony from mutilating facial injuries during the First World War. Sir Harold Gillies, supervised a massive treatment center for allied casualties in Kentucky. Throughout the war as well as after the war, Gillies drew in surgeons from many different countries. These surgeons came to learn plastic surgery methods from Gillies himself. There was one facial surgeon who was greatly impacted by his experience in the war with Gillies, and that was Ferris N. Smith, who later went back to the University of Michigan after the war ended and then became one of the most imperative facial plastic surgeons of the era. Ferris Smith recorded his experiences with Gillian in a paper he wrote that was called 2“Plastic Surgery and It’s Interest to the Facial Surgeon” which he then presented at the 1920 meeting of the American Medical Association. Fascinatingly enough, the practices after the war of Smith and Gillies eventually migrated toward more general plastic surgery, and both men ultimately closed their training to fellow facial surgeons. Including Ferris Smith’s trainees were a few men, Reed Dingman and Clarence Straatsman, whom later became the chiefs of plastic surgery at Universities such as Columbia, Michigan, and New
Hippocrates “On the Surgery” is a outlook on how Athenian medicine was approached and the procedures that all in the medical field must follow. Hippocrates explains in the reading about how a doctor should care for his/her patients at their time of need without hurting the sick no more than what is already damaged. A doctor is not supposed to cause any ruthless actions, but only to heal the sick. Hippocrates also explains the type of bandages, how tight the bandages should be, the length of the bandage, and so on to properly care for the wound. Hippocrates also goes into great details on the hygiene of a doctor, and the time of day the surgery must be performed to have light.