Medicine through time (Surgery and Anatomy)

Medicine through time (Surgery and Anatomy)

1. Prehistory

   • Trephining this was believed to release evil spirits and connect people with the spiritual world.
   • Broken bones could be set with mud and wounds with bandages but there was spiritual explanations for illness and cure
   • Not much was known about the body and msot people beleved in spirtual cures

2. Ancient Egypt

   • The River Nile led to suggestions that the body had channels like the Nile
   • purging, vomiting and blood letting to unblock the channels when people became ill.
   • The body was needed in the after life so bodies were preserved in mummification, extracted organ and dried them out using salt by doing this they had knowledge of the body.
   • They believed the body was needed for the afterlife so experimental dissection was not aloud. Egyptian papyrus has been found to carry out simple surgeryT
   • Metal instruments were used

3. Ancient Greece

   • Improvements in materials so surgicals instruments improved.
   • Theory of four humours
   • Library of Alexandria. Human dissection was only aloud at Alexandria . Surgeons were trained there.
   • Observation was key to change. Erasistratus found difference between arteries, blood vessels and nerves.
   • Surgery advanced a little but was very risky. Surgery was last resort.Good techniques for setting broken bones,

4. Ancient Rome

   • Galen discoverd that the brain controls speech not the heart. Arteries as well as viens carry blood and proved animals anatomy if different to humans.
   • Common treatment was bleeding. internal operations rare due to risk. Amputations and trephinning to releive pain
   • Galen made mistakes as he only dissected animals, he said there was holes in the heart which let blood pass from right to left and he believed blood was consumed not circulated.