History of Medicine

As we come to accept that the great covid-19 pandemic which started off as an epidemic is slowly becoming  endemic , it's worth noting the new additions to our vocabulary. These words that were likely "all Greek to you" before 2020, are indeed just that -- they are all in fact derived from ancient Greek! The word  epidemic was in use since at least the time of Homer which is around 600 BCE, and is mentioned in the Odyssey to mean "who is back home" or "who is in his country." However, it was first introduced to medical jargon, along with its closely associated words pandemic and endemic , by the ancient Greek doctor, Hippocrates.    Hippocrates' treatise on Epidemics  Evolution of the term Epidemics. Credit: Paul Martin And not just these but several other words that we have come to associate with the current pandemic (as well as other diseases) were also coined by Hippocrates and his medical school such as: Cytokine Chronic Resolution Peak Acute

As the only lefty in my immediate family, I have always been intrigued by handedness, which is defined as an individual's preferential use of one hand, also known as the dominant hand. This post is dedicated to all the world's lefties trying to function in a right-handed world (you know what I'm talking about!) For my clueless right-handed friends, think of me when you see a classroom desk, scissors, or a microscope!)  Left-handedness is apparently genetic, so it's all the more surprising that I'm the only one in my family. However, my extended family on my dad's side certainly has some more lefties, so it's not all that strange. Another interesting tidbit that I found was that India has about half as many left-handers as the United States (despite its much larger population), and this is attributed mainly to the cultural aspect of the society. India is known to be a "collectivistic culture", which discourages left-handedness in children, whereas i

Happy Star Wars Day on this May the 4th! On this momentous day for Star Wars fans, I wanted to revisit the concept of the "force" that Star Wars borrowed from ancient medicine.   As Obi-Wan Kenobi explains, “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”  Pretty heavy stuff!  In an old post, I explored the similarity between this force field and the life force that is an essential component of many ancient civilizations: prana in India, qi in Chinese culture, Japanese  ki, Egyptian ka,  Greek pneuma ,   and the Latin spiritus . All of these are essentially the same "life force energy" that keeps us alive and binds us. Just as Luke Skywalker trains to harness the power of the force, yoga, reiki, taichi and other ancient practices teach how to control and balance the life force present inside of us. So here's wishing everyone boatloads of the force worki

For World Health Day 2022, the WHO has selected the theme, "Our Planet, Our Health", with the aim of creating a healthier world. WHO's statement reads,  "In the midst of a pandemic, a polluted planet, increasing diseases like cancer, asthma, heart disease, on World Health Day 2022, WHO will focus global attention on urgent actions needed to keep humans and the planet healthy and foster a movement to create societies focused on well-being."  In the spirit of World Health Day, I wanted to explore the idea of health in ancient medicine. This is a topic that I have written on before but I thought it would be interesting to compare the ideology of good health in different societies of the ancient world. Ancient Medicine Across all ancient civilizations, before scientific thought became common, the prevailing idea was that  good health was a divine gift, while poor health was attributed to divine punishment. Theory of Spirits Even though the ancient Egyptians were one

St. Patrick's Day celebrates the patron saint of the Irish who brought Christianity to Ireland and taught about the Holy Trinity using a three-leafed clover (hence the significance of the clover). Over time, he also came to be associated with healing of several diseases like epilepsy. He is associated with some 50 holy wells in Ireland, whose waters are supposed to help with a variety of ailments from toothache to eye and skin ailments. While these superstitions have long passed, I think it's important to celebrate the contributions of the Irish to modern medicine on a day that celebrates Irish culture and traditions. St. Patrick's Well in Belcoo, Ireland Of all Irish doctors, the story I found most captivating is that of Dr. James Barry, nee Margaret Bulkley, who disguised herself as a man in order to practice medicine in 1790 in Cork, Ireland. She became the first female doctor in all of the U.K. and also the first one to perform a successful caesarian operation. Margaret

Happy Pi Day. On March 14 (3.14 for the uninitiated), we celebrate the special number pi which has so much importance and use across all practical fields from the obvious (geometry, astronomy, architecture) to the obscure (music theory, communications, quantum physics). It is often called the most important number in the universe. Interestingly, Pi Day happens to coincide with Einstein's birthday, which is quite apt in my opinion because pi represents a mathematical wonder and Einstein surely was a human wonder. The discovery of the number pi is credited to Greek mathematician, Archimedes, in the 3rd century BC when studying the relationship between a circle's circumference to its diameter (the ratio is pi) - hence the Greek alphabet name. However, even before that, all the way back in 1800 BCE, the Babylonians knew of it and had approximated the value in base 60 as 25/8 or 3.125.  The beauty of pi is that the digits don't end - in mathematical terms, it is an irrational an

As we mark the second anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic today (March 11, 2020 was when the WHO declared the coronavirus disease as a pandemic), I thought it would be interesting to compare it with other historical pandemics once again. The most recent pandemic before the current one was the Spanish flu outbreak that took place right after World War I. It was caused by an H1N1 virus outbreak (origin unknown but suspected to be Kansas, USA!) that spread worldwide during 1918-1919. It was carried to all corners of the world by troops returning home from combat and infected 1/3rd of the world's population (500 million people). The death count was over 50 million people. We are fast approaching the same number of infections for Covid-19, with the worldwide number of infections reported to be over 450 million today according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of deaths, thankfully, is much lower than the Spanish flu, but is still a shockingly high number exce