, the first physician from antiquity known by name
Ancient world Prehistoric medicine incorporated plants (
herbalism), animal parts, and minerals. In many cases these materials were used ritually as magical substances by priests,
shamans, or
medicine men. Well-known spiritual systems include
animism (the notion of inanimate objects having spirits),
spiritualism (an appeal to gods or communion with ancestor spirits);
shamanism (the vesting of an individual with mystic powers); and
divination (magically obtaining the truth). The field of
medical anthropology examines the ways in which culture and society are organized around or impacted by issues of health, health care and related issues. The earliest known medical texts in the world were found in the ancient
Syrian city of
Ebla and date back to 2500 BCE. Other early records on medicine have been discovered from
ancient Egyptian medicine,
Babylonian Medicine,
Ayurvedic medicine (in the
Indian subcontinent),
classical Chinese medicine (
Alternative medicine) predecessor to the modern
traditional Chinese medicine), and
ancient Greek medicine and
Roman medicine. In Egypt,
Imhotep (3rd millennium BCE) is the first physician in history known by name. The oldest
Egyptian medical text is the
Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus from around 2000 BCE, which describes gynaecological diseases. The
Edwin Smith Papyrus dating back to 1600 BCE is an early work on surgery, while the
Ebers Papyrus dating back to 1500 BCE is akin to a textbook on medicine. In China, archaeological evidence of medicine in Chinese dates back to the
Bronze Age Shang dynasty, based on seeds for herbalism and tools presumed to have been used for surgery. The
Huangdi Neijing, the progenitor of Chinese medicine, is a medical text written beginning in the 2nd century BCE and compiled in the 3rd century. In India, the oldest known surgical text, the
Sushruta Samhita written by the surgeon
Sushruta, described numerous surgical operations, including the earliest forms of
plastic surgery as well as methods of sterilization for surgical instruments. The earliest records of dedicated hospitals come from Mihintale in
Sri Lanka where evidence of dedicated medicinal treatment facilities for patients are found. of Kos, depicting
Hippocrates, with
Asklepius in the middle (2nd–3rd century) In Greece, the ancient Greek physician
Hippocrates, the "father of modern medicine", laid the foundation for a rational approach to medicine. Hippocrates introduced the
Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still relevant and in use today, and was the first to categorize illnesses as
acute,
chronic,
endemic and epidemic, and use terms such as, "exacerbation,
relapse, resolution, crisis,
paroxysm, peak, and
convalescence". The Greek physician
Galen was also one of the greatest surgeons of the ancient world and performed many audacious operations, including brain and eye surgeries. After the fall of the
Western Roman Empire and the onset of the
Early Middle Ages, the Greek tradition of medicine went into decline in Western Europe, although it continued uninterrupted in the
Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. Most of our knowledge of ancient
Hebrew medicine during the
1st millennium BC comes from the
Torah, i.e. the Five Books of
Moses, which contain various health related laws and rituals. The Hebrew contribution to the development of modern medicine started in the
Byzantine Era, with the physician
Asaph the Jew.
Middle Ages '' by
Ali al-Ridha, the eighth Imam of
Shia Muslims. The text says: "Golden dissertation in medicine which is sent by Imam Ali ibn Musa al-Ridha, peace be upon him, to
al-Ma'mun." The concept of hospital as institution to offer medical care and possibility of a cure for the patients due to the ideals of Christian charity, rather than just merely a place to die, appeared in the
Byzantine Empire. Although the concept of
uroscopy was known to Galen, he did not see the importance of using it to localize the disease. It was under the Byzantines with physicians such of
Theophilus Protospatharius that they realized the potential in uroscopy to determine disease in a time when no microscope or stethoscope existed. That practice eventually spread to the rest of Europe. After 750 CE, the Muslim world had the works of Hippocrates, Galen and Sushruta translated into
Arabic, and
Islamic physicians engaged in some significant medical research. Notable Islamic medical pioneers include the Persian
polymath,
Avicenna, who, along with Imhotep and Hippocrates, has also been called the "father of medicine". He wrote
The Canon of Medicine which became a standard medical text at many medieval European
universities, considered one of the most famous books in the history of medicine. Others include
Abulcasis,
Avenzoar,
Ibn al-Nafis, and
Averroes.
Persian physician
Rhazes was one of the first to question the Greek theory of
humorism, which nevertheless remained influential in both medieval Western and medieval Islamic medicine. Some volumes of Rhazes's work
Al-Mansuri, namely "On Surgery" and "A General Book on Therapy", became part of the medical curriculum in European universities. Additionally, he has been described as a doctor's doctor, the father of pediatrics, and a pioneer of ophthalmology. For example, he was the first to recognize the reaction of the eye's pupil to light. In Europe,
Charlemagne decreed that a hospital should be attached to each cathedral and monastery and the historian
Geoffrey Blainey likened the
activities of the Catholic Church in health care during the Middle Ages to an early version of a welfare state: "It conducted hospitals for the old and orphanages for the young; hospices for the sick of all ages; places for the lepers; and hostels or inns where pilgrims could buy a cheap bed and meal". It supplied food to the population during famine and distributed food to the poor. This welfare system the church funded through collecting taxes on a large scale and possessing large farmlands and estates. The
Benedictine order was noted for setting up hospitals and infirmaries in their monasteries, growing medical herbs and becoming the chief medical care givers of their districts, as at the great
Abbey of Cluny. The Church also established a network of
cathedral schools and universities where medicine was studied. The
Schola Medica Salernitana in Salerno, looking to the learning of
Greek and
Arab physicians, grew to be the finest medical school in medieval Europe. , one of Europe's oldest hospitals. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church established universities to revive the study of sciences, drawing on the learning of Greek and Arab physicians in the study of medicine. However, the fourteenth and fifteenth century
Black Death devastated both the Middle East and Europe, and it has even been argued that Western Europe was generally more effective in recovering from the pandemic than the Middle East. In the early modern period, important early figures in medicine and anatomy emerged in Europe, including
Gabriele Falloppio and
William Harvey. The major shift in medical thinking was the gradual rejection, especially during the
Black Death in the 14th and 15th centuries, of what may be called the "traditional authority" approach to science and medicine. This was the notion that because some prominent person in the past said something must be so, then that was the way it was, and anything one observed to the contrary was an anomaly (which was paralleled by a similar shift in European society in general – see
Copernicus's rejection of
Ptolemy's theories on astronomy). Physicians like
Vesalius improved upon or disproved some of the theories from the past. The main tomes used both by medicine students and expert physicians were
Materia Medica and
Pharmacopoeia.
Andreas Vesalius was the author of
De humani corporis fabrica, an important book on
human anatomy. Bacteria and microorganisms were first observed with a microscope by
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1676, initiating the scientific field
microbiology. Independently from Ibn al-Nafis,
Michael Servetus rediscovered the
pulmonary circulation, but this discovery did not reach the public because it was written down for the first time in the "Manuscript of Paris" in 1546, and later published in the theological work for which he paid with his life in 1553. Later this was described by
Renaldus Columbus and
Andrea Cesalpino.
Herman Boerhaave is sometimes referred to as a "father of physiology" due to his exemplary teaching in Leiden and textbook 'Institutiones medicae' (1708).
Pierre Fauchard has been called "the father of modern
dentistry".
Modern injecting a plague vaccine in
Karachi, 1898 Veterinary medicine was, for the first time, truly separated from human medicine in 1761, when the French veterinarian
Claude Bourgelat founded the world's first veterinary school in Lyon, France. Before this, medical doctors treated both humans and other animals. Modern scientific
biomedical research (where results are testable and
reproducible) began to replace early Western traditions based on herbalism, the Greek "four humours" and other such pre-modern notions. The modern era really began with
Edward Jenner's discovery of the
smallpox vaccine at the end of the 18th century (inspired by the method of
variolation originated in ancient China),
Robert Koch's discoveries around 1880 of the transmission of disease by bacteria, and then the discovery of
antibiotics around 1900. The post-18th century
modernity period brought more groundbreaking researchers from Europe. From
Germany and Austria, doctors
Rudolf Virchow,
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen,
Karl Landsteiner and
Otto Loewi made notable contributions. In the
United Kingdom,
Alexander Fleming,
Joseph Lister,
Francis Crick and
Florence Nightingale are considered important.
Spanish doctor
Santiago Ramón y Cajal is considered the father of modern
neuroscience. From New Zealand and Australia came
Maurice Wilkins,
Howard Florey, and
Frank Macfarlane Burnet. Others that did significant work include
William Williams Keen,
William Coley,
James D. Watson (United States);
Salvador Luria (Italy);
Alexandre Yersin (Switzerland);
Kitasato Shibasaburō (Japan);
Jean-Martin Charcot,
Claude Bernard,
Paul Broca (France);
Adolfo Lutz (Brazil);
Nikolai Korotkov (Russia);
Sir William Osler (Canada); and
Harvey Cushing (United States). As science and technology developed, medicine became more reliant upon
medications. Throughout history and in Europe right until the late 18th century, not only plant products were used as medicine, but also animal (including human) body parts and fluids.
Pharmacology developed in part from herbalism and some drugs are still derived from plants (
atropine,
ephedrine,
warfarin,
aspirin,
digoxin,
vinca alkaloids,
taxol,
hyoscine, etc.).
Vaccines were discovered by Edward Jenner and
Louis Pasteur. The first antibiotic was
arsphenamine (Salvarsan) discovered by
Paul Ehrlich in 1908 after he observed that bacteria took up toxic dyes that human cells did not. The first major class of antibiotics was the
sulfa drugs, derived by German chemists originally from
azo dyes. at the Star pharmaceutical factory in
Tampere,
Finland in 1953 Pharmacology has become increasingly sophisticated; modern
biotechnology allows drugs targeted towards specific physiological processes to be developed, sometimes designed for compatibility with the body to reduce
side-effects.
Genomics and knowledge of
human genetics and
human evolution is having increasingly significant influence on medicine, as the causative
genes of most monogenic
genetic disorders have now been identified, and the development of techniques in
molecular biology,
evolution, and
genetics are influencing medical technology, practice and decision-making. Evidence-based medicine is a contemporary movement to establish the most effective
algorithms of practice (ways of doing things) through the use of
systematic reviews and
meta-analysis. The movement is facilitated by modern global
information science, which allows as much of the available evidence as possible to be collected and analyzed according to standard protocols that are then disseminated to healthcare providers. The
Cochrane Collaboration leads this movement. A 2001 review of 160 Cochrane systematic reviews revealed that, according to two readers, 21.3% of the reviews concluded insufficient evidence, 20% concluded evidence of no effect, and 22.5% concluded positive effect. == Quality, efficiency, and access ==