History of Medicine

Today's news about Pfizer's coronavirus vaccination brings hope for an end to the covid-19 pandemic. With an effective vaccine (90% effective as Pfizer has claimed for their vaccine is truly spectacular!), we can finally think about returning to life as before- normal school, yay! (never thought I would say that ever!), even though it will be months or years before a sufficiently large population can be given the vaccine. Nevertheless, it is exciting news for people, as well as for the scientific community that a new vaccine was developed in such an unprecedented short time. In honor of Pfizer's announcement today, I decided to update an older post about vaccines and their history.   A vaccine protects a person from becoming sick when exposed to the virus. How exactly does that happen? When a person gets infected by a virus (any type of virus in general), the white blood cells in their body produces antibodies to fight the virus which helps them recover, and these antibodi

As I ponder a career in medicine, I have started researching colleges with good medical programs, which made me curious about medical schools in the past. Although the art of medicine was widely practiced in ancient civilizations, it wasn't really taught as a science until much later. It was only during the Classical period that medical schools started being established as a formal place to study the science of medicine.  The first known medical school was built in Alexandria around 311 BCE in modern-day Egypt (which was controlled by the Greeks at the time). However, Pergamum (where Hippocrates practiced) is rumored to have had a medical school earlier than that but there is very little known about this school, so the first medical school is credited to Alexandria. The Greeks were always stronger in medicine than the Romans, and Alexandria was certainly proof of that! What is also impressive is that Alexandria School of Medicine united all the different medical doctrines including

Symbol of the discipline of pharmacy After prescriptions, I decided to explore the history of pharmacy. Pharmacy is defined as “the art of preparing and dispensing drugs or a place where drugs are sold.” The word itself originates from the Greek word for remedy, pharmakon . However, the concept of a drug store where a pharmacist makes and dispenses medicine didn't exist in ancient Greece, but came much later- back in the ancient times, priests and doctors acted as the pharmacist, combining different ingredients as medicine for patients. This process, called compounding, is now done at the pharmacy. Although drug stores did not exist back in ancient times, doctors and priests were history’s first pharmacists as they practiced the art of pharmacy.  During the Egyptian civilizations, they mostly worked in temples or palaces, making medicines or personal luxury goods for priests and the royalty. In the Classical world, the best-known pharmacist was the Greek Diocles of Carystus, who wa