Earlier today, a friend of mine passed me a video to watch- 100 greatest discovery in medicine (or something like that). It was a 50 minute video by Discovery channel, I think. Since I was really bored at that time, I decided to watch it, but surprisingly, it was quite a nice video to watch.
I do agree that almost all inventions/findings are miracles - electricity, telephone, cars, planes, internet, and of course the TV. But what I saw today somehow made me realize how much we rely on all the discoveries of those before us in the practice of medicine.
Some of the discoveries were related to anatomy itself, the fundamental subject in medicine. They told of a guy who dug up graves to find bodies to dissect just to know the basic anatomy of the human body. People didn't know about the blood circulation until another guy made an effort to actually study them. All we do now is open a textbook, look at the pictures and try to remember whatever we can, which in my case, is not much.
Cleaning/washing hands after examination of a patient - one of the first things we learnt when we started our clinical years. Do you know how many people died before someone realized that examining a patient after a post-mortem is not safe? No one knew the existence of bacteria and viruses back then; now, even a primary school kid knows that germs are harmful.
Almost everytime we discuss or read about a disease in class, one of the diagnostic method is X-ray. There is no need to even think it over. It's like our brain has been tuned to automatically tuned to think 'X-ray' when we think about instrumental tests.. How did they diagnose a disease before the X-ray was discovered? Almost all health centres now have an X-ray machine. Just imagine how dependent we are on something that was an accidental finding.
Can you imagine what it will be like if someones cuts open your abdomen without any form of pain relief? That was what surgeries were like before anaesthetics was discovered (couldn't find any other words to use). According to the video, many people opted to die rather than undergo surgery. I wouldn't say I blame them, I can't even imagine how painful it would be!
There are SO many different medicines that have been 'created' and used by many worldwide. The ones mentioned in the videos were penicillin, sulpha drugs and insulin. Millions and millions of people depend on this drugs every day. Millions are alive now because of this drugs.Vaccination has prevented and saved millions, maybe billions or trillions or (wsateva-ions that come after that) from many life-threatening diseases.
Many, many amazing discoveries. Trillions and trillions of people alive because of these findings. Thankfully these people took the effort to look for new things, to experiment, to let the world know of their discovery. Can you imagine a life without these things that we take for granted? I can't.
I do agree that almost all inventions/findings are miracles - electricity, telephone, cars, planes, internet, and of course the TV. But what I saw today somehow made me realize how much we rely on all the discoveries of those before us in the practice of medicine.
Some of the discoveries were related to anatomy itself, the fundamental subject in medicine. They told of a guy who dug up graves to find bodies to dissect just to know the basic anatomy of the human body. People didn't know about the blood circulation until another guy made an effort to actually study them. All we do now is open a textbook, look at the pictures and try to remember whatever we can, which in my case, is not much.
Cleaning/washing hands after examination of a patient - one of the first things we learnt when we started our clinical years. Do you know how many people died before someone realized that examining a patient after a post-mortem is not safe? No one knew the existence of bacteria and viruses back then; now, even a primary school kid knows that germs are harmful.
Almost everytime we discuss or read about a disease in class, one of the diagnostic method is X-ray. There is no need to even think it over. It's like our brain has been tuned to automatically tuned to think 'X-ray' when we think about instrumental tests.. How did they diagnose a disease before the X-ray was discovered? Almost all health centres now have an X-ray machine. Just imagine how dependent we are on something that was an accidental finding.
Can you imagine what it will be like if someones cuts open your abdomen without any form of pain relief? That was what surgeries were like before anaesthetics was discovered (couldn't find any other words to use). According to the video, many people opted to die rather than undergo surgery. I wouldn't say I blame them, I can't even imagine how painful it would be!
There are SO many different medicines that have been 'created' and used by many worldwide. The ones mentioned in the videos were penicillin, sulpha drugs and insulin. Millions and millions of people depend on this drugs every day. Millions are alive now because of this drugs.Vaccination has prevented and saved millions, maybe billions or trillions or (wsateva-ions that come after that) from many life-threatening diseases.
Many, many amazing discoveries. Trillions and trillions of people alive because of these findings. Thankfully these people took the effort to look for new things, to experiment, to let the world know of their discovery. Can you imagine a life without these things that we take for granted? I can't.
No comments:
Post a Comment