History of Medicine

In a true marriage of tradition and innovation, an AI (artificial intelligence) robot has been built by a Singapore startup called Ai Treat to give massages based on the tradition of Tui Na, an ancient Chinese medical therapy. The robotic masseuse, EMMA, uses sensors and 3D vision to measure muscle stiffness and identifies pressure points before giving a personalized massage to patients for the purpose of relaxation and pain relief. EMMA (Expert Manipulative Massage Automation) was developed by a physician trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and uses the same principles of personalized soft tissue massage which is derived from Tui Na therapy. Tui Na is the oldest known massage therapy and is one of the four branches of TCM, along with acupuncture, qi gong, and herbal medicine. It is meant to stimulate the flow of qi to promote balance and harmony within the body. The massage alternates between yin techniques, which are gentle, passive, and meditative, and the yang techniques

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

As the world struggles to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers around the globe are racing against time to find a cure and vaccine for the coronavirus. One of the therapies under investigation is the ancient Indian healing science, Ayurveda. It turns out Harvard and MIT scientists recently investigated the potential of Ayurvedic science to cure coronavirus and found promising results. They are not the only ones to look at Ayurveda- Indian researchers have been investigating it for the last several months and some doctors are already prescribing medicines based on Ayurvedic herbs. A doctor in India conducted clinical trial with a small number of patients with mild to moderate symptoms and found 100% recovery rate in 9 days or less. There is also an example of an Indian man who made a full recovery from COVID-19 in a short time after taking only Ayurvedic medicines. Interestingly, I read that Ayurvedic medicine was used extensively during the Spanish flu pandemic a century ago. A

Avicenna (980-1037 AD) was a renowned Persian physician, who is regarded as the one of the greatest scholars of the Islamic Golden Age. He was also one of the most influential philosophers of the pre-modern era (Middle Ages), whose teachings extended beyond medicine into astronomy, alchemy, geography, psychology, poetry, and philosophy.  Avicenna is the Latinized version of the Arabic name, Ibn Sina, which means Son of Sina. His formal Arabic name was quite a mouthful: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdillāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Sīnā. Rather than make any new medical discoveries, Avicenna studied the Greco-Roman, Persian and ancient Indian texts widely, and helped bring their teachings into the western world, eventually forming the basis of modern medicine. He and other Arab scholars extensively studied Indian mathematical systems, astronomy, and medicine and combined them with Greco-Roman teachings, particularly that of Galen. Avicenna wrote two famous books, The Book of Healing

Even though Cajal is considered the father of neuroscience, his contribution came centuries after the first insights into the nervous system. As I wrote in my earlier posts, ancient doctors pondered over the nervous system, trying to understand what controlled the mind and body. Of these doctors, one that stands out is Galen, whose contribution to the understanding of the nervous system was fundamental to neuroscience. Through anatomical experiments, Galen was the first to observe and teach the functioning of nerves in the body. For these experiments, which he wasn’t shy about demonstrating to the public, Galen is regarded as the founder of experimental physiology. Galen is considered one of the most prominent and influential doctors in history, second only to Hippocrates. Galen was a staunch follower of Hippocrates and helped spread his teachings from Greece to the vast Roman Empire. Claudius Galenus, commonly know as Galen, was born in 129 AD in Pergamum in modern-day Turkey to a

One name that pops up frequently while studying neuroscience is Santiago Ramón y Cajal. His contributions to the field of neuroscience is so vast that he is aptly called the father of neuroscience. Cajal  won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1906 for the neuron doctrine that became the basis of neuroscience. Interestingly, he shared the Nobel Prize with his arch rival, Camillo Golgi. Cajal's main contribution was identifying that neurons are individual cells that are biochemically distinct from each other, which directly contradicted the theories of Golgi and many other contemporaries. Cajal is considered one of history's most brilliant neuroanatomists, but his story is more inspiring than just his contributions to neuroscience. As a child, Cajal was very mischievous and often got into trouble in school. He had to change several schools and finally withdrew from school altogether. His father tried to apprentice him to a barber, then a cobbler, but nothing

Even though the origins of neuroscience can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, it remained a speculative science until the imaging of the neurons. The person who transformed the study of nerves to an experimental and observational science was Spanish physician Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Cajal’s images and drawings made such a profound contribution to the field of neuroscience that he is considered the Father of Neuroscience. Cajal (1852-1935) created nearly 3000 drawings of the nervous system, detailing its architecture, and unraveling the mysteries of neuroanatomy. Through his elaborate drawings of the nervous system, he showed that the brain is made up of individual cells called neurons. Until Cajal’s drawings, the common view was that the nervous system was a spider web-like structure of cells that behaved like a single unit. Cajal’s drawing of the neurons in a bird’s cerebellum Although Cajal used the tissue staining method developed by his contemporary, Camillo G

Another important person in Greek medicine is Hippocrates. Hippocrates is considered the father of modern medicine who continues to influence medicine more than 2000 years later. Although he is as revered as Asclepius, they have very different origins. While Asclepius is a mythological character, considered to be descended from God, Hippocrates is very much a historical figure, whose origin and life is recorded in history. Hippocrates lived from 460 to 375 BCE during the Classical Greece period and practiced medicine in Greece. His contribution to western medicine is rivaled by none other, and his collection of works covers almost every aspect of disease and medicine including infection, hygiene, epidemiology and the human immune system. Bust of Hippocrates Also, unlike Asclepius, Hippocrates practiced medicine as a science, not as divine magic. He was one of the first to separate religion from medicine, and sought to match treatment with symptoms.  His observations in the Corp

Asclepius is the ancient Greek god of medicine. He is the son of Apollo and a mortal woman named Koronis, which makes him a demigod. Asclepius grew up motherless with different versions of how he lost his mother. However, in all versions of his story, he is brought up by his father, Apollo, who grants him the gift of healing and the secrets of medicine using herbs and plants. Asclepius is married to Hygeia, the goddess of hygiene and health (although some versions claim she is his daughter!) Statue of Asclepius Asclepius was a very gifted healer who was so successful at saving lives that he could also raise the dead. This made the god of the underworld, Hades, worried that he would not get any dead spirits, so he complained to his brother, Zeus. Fearing that Asclepius will make humans immortal, Zeus kills Asclepius with the strike of a thunderbolt, but later places him among the stars as the constellation, Ophiuchus , also known as the Serpent bearer. Ophiuchus constella

In my previous post, I wrote about the appreciation shown towards healthcare workers during the current pandemic. Not just during this crisis, but people, in general, have a lot of respect for the medical profession. Unfortunately, it seems it wasn’t so in the Ancient Roman civilization. Medicine wasn’t a very highly regarded profession in Ancient Rome. One of the main reasons for this was because many doctors were actually freed Greek slaves, so they were not respected very much. Also, becoming a doctor required no formal training -- it was mostly from apprenticeship. As a result, there was a lot of trial and error in treating patients, which resulted in a low success rate and therefore, skepticism and even scorn towards doctors.  The first Greek doctor who came to Rome was Archagathus of Sparta in 219 BC. He specialized in healing battle wounds, but Romans were skeptical of his methods of cutting and burning the flesh, which earned him the nickname, carnifex or 'butcher'.