3Gpp6

The History of Medicine.

For thousands of years human beings have gotten sick and ever since then, people have tried to find ways to cure them.   The information about medicine in prehistoric times comes from the discoveries of archaeologists.   They said that the first people who cured other people began around 27,000 years ago in what is now France.   There is evidence of “healers” painted in caves.   These people used plants for medicinal purposes.   The knowledge about curing others passed down through tribes.   Ancient people believed  in spirits and supernatural forces; so, they used animals and plants to treat sicknesses.   Many years later, around 9,000 years ago, Egyptians performed the first recorded surgery.   One of the first documented surgeries is called “trepanation.”   It was a primitive brain surgery.   People made a hole in the skull of the “sick” patient while he was still alive.   Some historians say that the reason for these operations may have been to let the evil spirits leave the sick person.

Hippocrates and Medicine.

From the years 450 B.C. to 300 A.D., Greeks tried to understand diseases in a more scientific way.   The Greek philosopher Hippocrates is known as the father of modern Medicine.   He was against the conventional thinking about evil spirits and looked for a balance in the human body by taking into account four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.   The four humors were the basis of medical treatments into medieval times.   Many centuries later, during Renaissance, the study of Medicine gained new interest.   At that time, Leonardo da Vinci dissected corpses to study.   He made many drawings and studies of the human anatomy.   Andrea Vesalius, a physician and professor of Medicine in Italy, wrote the first textbook on human anatomy called On the Structure of the Human Body.   Those studies were very important for the development of modern-day Medicine.