 |
 Highlights in
Medical History |
 Hippocrates
was the first to free medicine from its
traditional link with magic and religion. He
believed that every disease had a natural cause,
rather than being some kind of "infliction
from the gods." |
 Claudius Galen
"preached" the importance of anatomical
knowledge to any practice of medicine. He made
many important discoveries regarding the movement
of blood in the body, and was the first physician
to use the pulse as an indicator of illness when
compared to the normal pulse. |
 Paracelsus
believed in the treatment of the whole person and
in nature's own healing tendencies. He also saw
the importance of "mental power" as an
element in the healing process. |
 Béla
Schick developed the Schick Test,
whichinvolved injecting a small amount of
diphtheria toxin under the skin; the extent of a
child's immunity to the disease could be
determined by the presence or absence of a
reaction around the injection site. |
 Frederick Banting
shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his
role in isolating and mass-producing insulin,
which was first tested on a human in 1922. |
 John
Hunter was the first to suggest that
blood is a living substance, speculated that the
embryo in its development may go through various
phases resembling more primitive creatures, and
pioneered the art of tissue grafting. |
 Edward
Jenner recognized that it was
possible for a relatively mild disease of cows to
confer immunity against smallpox to humans. He
successfully tested his vaccination
theory in 1796. |
 Joseph
Lister discovered that sterilizing
surgical areas, instruments and surgeons' hands
reduced post-surgical infection and death
dramatically. He called the practice of such
sterilization antiseptic surgery. |
 Ambroise Paré
prefered to treat gunshot wounds with ointment
and bandages rather than cauterization, and
invented upper and lower extremity prostheses
that were hundreds of years ahead of his time. |
 Emil Adolf von Behring
spent his life in the study of immunity. In 1889
he produced an antitoxin against diphtheria, and
in 1890 produced an antitoxin against tetanus. He
was the receipient of the 1901 Nobel Prize for
Physiology and Medicine. |
 Albert Bruce Sabin
was influenced to study polio by an epidemic of
that disease that hit New York City in 1931. He
began testing a live-virus vaccine in 1954, and
by the 1970's that vaccine had succeeded in
nearly eradicating polio from the world. |
