Germ theory and bacteriology In the 1830s in Italy,
Agostino Bassi traced the silkworm disease
muscardine to microorganisms. Meanwhile, in Germany,
Theodor Schwann led research on
alcoholic fermentation by
yeast, proposing that living microorganisms were responsible. Leading chemists, such as
Justus von Liebig, seeking solely
physicochemical explanations, derided this claim and alleged that Schwann was regressing to
vitalism. In 1847 in Vienna,
Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865), dramatically reduced the death rate of new mothers (due to
childbed fever) by requiring physicians to
clean their hands before attending childbirth, yet his principles were marginalized and attacked by professional peers. At that time most people still believed that infections were caused by foul odors called
miasmas. experimenting on bacteria, , father of medical bacteriology, at Robert-Koch-Platz (Robert Koch square) in Berlin French scientist
Louis Pasteur confirmed
Schwann's fermentation experiments in 1857 and afterwards supported the hypothesis that yeast were microorganisms. Moreover, he suggested that such a process might also explain contagious disease. In 1860, Pasteur's report on bacterial fermentation of
butyric acid motivated fellow Frenchman
Casimir Davaine to identify a similar species (which he called ) as the pathogen of the deadly disease
anthrax. Others dismissed "" as a mere byproduct of the disease. British surgeon
Joseph Lister, however, took these findings seriously and subsequently introduced
antisepsis to wound treatment in 1865. German physician
Robert Koch, noting fellow German
Ferdinand Cohn's report of a spore stage of a certain bacterial species, traced the life cycle of
Davaine's , identified spores, inoculated laboratory animals with them, and reproduced anthrax—a breakthrough for
experimental pathology and
germ theory of disease. Pasteur's group added ecological investigations confirming spores' role in the natural setting, while Koch published a landmark treatise in 1878 on the bacterial pathology of wounds. In 1881, Koch reported discovery of the "
tubercle bacillus", cementing germ theory and Koch's acclaim. Upon the outbreak of a
cholera epidemic in
Alexandria, Egypt, two medical missions went to investigate and attend the sick, one was sent out by Pasteur and the other led by Koch. Koch's group returned in 1883, having successfully discovered the
cholera pathogen. Pettenkofer conceded bacteria's casual involvement, but maintained that other, environmental factors were required to turn it pathogenic, and opposed water treatment as a misdirected effort amid more important ways to improve public health.
Nursing The breakthrough to professionalization based on knowledge of advanced medicine was led by
Florence Nightingale in England. She resolved to provide more advanced training than she saw on the Continent. At Kaiserswerth, where the first German nursing schools were founded in 1836 by
Theodor Fliedner, she said, "The nursing was nil and the hygiene horrible." Britain's male doctors preferred the old system, but Nightingale won out and her Nightingale Training School opened in 1860 and became a model. The Nightingale solution depended on the patronage of upper-class women, and they proved eager to serve. Royalty became involved. In 1902 the wife of the British king took control of the nursing unit of the British army, became its president, and renamed it after herself as the
Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps; when she died the next queen became president. Today its Colonel in Chief is
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, the daughter-in-law of
Queen Elizabeth II. In the United States, upper-middle-class women who already supported hospitals promoted nursing. The new profession proved highly attractive to women of all backgrounds, and schools of nursing opened in the late 19th century. Nurses were soon a part of large hospitals, where they provided a steady stream of low-paid idealistic workers. The International Red Cross began operations in numerous countries in the late 19th century, promoting nursing as an ideal profession for middle-class women.
Statistical methods of the causes of mortality in the army in the East''" by Florence Nightingale A major breakthrough in epidemiology came with the introduction of statistical maps and graphs. They allowed careful analysis of seasonality issues in disease incidents, and the maps allowed public health officials to identify critical loci for the dissemination of disease.
John Snow in London developed the methods. In 1849, he observed that the symptoms of cholera, which had already claimed around 500 lives within a month, were vomiting and diarrhoea. He concluded that the source of contamination must be through ingestion, rather than inhalation as was previously thought. It was this insight that resulted in the removal of The Pump On Broad Street, after which deaths from cholera plummeted. English nurse
Florence Nightingale pioneered analysis of large amounts of statistical data, using graphs and tables, regarding the condition of thousands of patients in the Crimean War to evaluate the efficacy of hospital services. Her methods proved convincing and led to reforms in military and civilian hospitals, usually with the full support of the government. By the late 19th and early 20th century English statisticians led by
Francis Galton,
Karl Pearson and
Ronald Fisher developed the mathematical tools such as correlations and hypothesis tests that made possible much more sophisticated analysis of statistical data. During the U.S. Civil War the Sanitary Commission collected enormous amounts of statistical data, and opened up the problems of storing information for fast access and mechanically searching for data patterns. The pioneer was
John Shaw Billings (1838–1913). A senior surgeon in the war, Billings built the
Library of the Surgeon General's Office (now the
National Library of Medicine), the centerpiece of modern medical information systems. Billings figured out how to mechanically analyze medical and demographic data by turning facts into numbers and punching the numbers onto cardboard cards that could be sorted and counted by machine. The applications were developed by his assistant
Herman Hollerith; Hollerith invented the punch card and counter-sorter system that dominated statistical data manipulation until the 1970s. Hollerith's company became
International Business Machines (IBM) in 1911.
Psychiatry , founded in 1796, gained international prominence as a centre for moral treatment and a model of asylum reform following the publication of
Samuel Tuke's
Description of the Retreat (1813). Until the nineteenth century, the care of the
insane was largely a communal and family responsibility rather than a medical one. The vast majority of the
mentally ill were treated in domestic contexts with only the most unmanageable or burdensome likely to be institutionally confined. This situation was transformed radically from the late eighteenth century as, amid changing cultural conceptions of madness, a new-found optimism in the curability of insanity within the asylum setting emerged. Increasingly, lunacy was perceived less as a
physiological condition than as a mental and moral one to which the correct response was persuasion, aimed at inculcating internal restraint, rather than external coercion. This new therapeutic sensibility, referred to as
moral treatment, was epitomised in French physician
Philippe Pinel's quasi-mythological unchaining of the lunatics of the
Bicêtre Hospital in Paris and realised in an institutional setting with the foundation in 1796 of the Quaker-run York
Retreat in England. ever more state governments in the West extended their authority and responsibility over the mentally ill. Small-scale asylums, conceived as instruments to reshape both the mind and behaviour of the disturbed, proliferated across these regions. By the 1830s, moral treatment, together with the asylum itself, became increasingly medicalised and asylum doctors began to establish a distinct medical identity with the establishment in the 1840s of associations for their members in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and America, together with the founding of medico-psychological journals. Processes of long-term institutional segregation, allowing for the psychiatric conceptualisation of the
natural course of mental illness, supported the perspective that the insane were a distinct population, subject to mental pathologies stemming from specific medical causes. heredity was seen as the central causal element in chronic mental illness, and with national asylum systems overcrowded and insanity apparently undergoing an inexorable rise, the focus of psychiatric therapeutics shifted from a concern with treating the individual to maintaining the racial and biological health of national populations. (1856–1926), the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics
Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) introduced new medical categories of
mental illness, which eventually came into
psychiatric usage despite their basis in behavior rather than
pathology or underlying cause. Shell shock among frontline soldiers exposed to heavy artillery bombardment was first diagnosed by British Army doctors in 1915. By 1916, similar symptoms were also noted in soldiers not exposed to explosive shocks, leading to questions as to whether the disorder was physical or psychiatric. In the 1920s
surrealist opposition to psychiatry was expressed in a number of surrealist publications. In the 1930s several controversial medical practices were introduced including inducing seizures (by
electroshock,
insulin or other drugs) or cutting parts of the brain apart (
leucotomy or
lobotomy). Both came into widespread use by psychiatry, but there were grave concerns and much opposition on grounds of basic morality, harmful effects, or misuse. In the 1950s new
psychiatric drugs, notably the antipsychotic
chlorpromazine, were designed in laboratories and slowly came into preferred use. Although often accepted as an advance in some ways, there was some opposition, due to serious adverse effects such as
tardive dyskinesia. Patients often opposed psychiatry and refused or stopped taking the drugs when not subject to psychiatric control. There was also increasing opposition to the use of psychiatric hospitals, and attempts to move people back into the community on a collaborative
user-led group approach ("therapeutic communities") not controlled by psychiatry. Campaigns against
masturbation were done in the
Victorian era and elsewhere.
Lobotomy was used until the 1970s to treat
schizophrenia. This was denounced by the
anti-psychiatric movement in the 1960s and later.
Women It was very difficult for women to become doctors in any field before the 1970s.
Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to formally study and practice medicine in the United States. She was a leader in women's medical education. While Blackwell viewed medicine as a means for social and moral reform, her student
Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906) focused on curing disease. At a deeper level of disagreement, Blackwell felt that women would succeed in medicine because of their humane female values, but Jacobi believed that women should participate as the equals of men in all medical specialties using identical methods, values and insights. Although the majority of medical doctors in the
Soviet Union were women, they were paid less than the male dominated factory workers.
Asia Places China Finally in the 19th century, Western medicine was introduced at the local level by Christian medical missionaries from the
London Missionary Society (Britain), the
Methodist Church (Britain) and the
Presbyterian Church (US).
Benjamin Hobson (1816–1873) in 1839, set up a highly successful Wai Ai Clinic in Guangzhou, China. The
Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese was founded in 1887 by the
London Missionary Society, with its first graduate (in 1892) being
Sun Yat-sen, who later led the
1911 Revolution. The
Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese was the forerunner of the School of Medicine of the
University of Hong Kong, which started in 1911. Because of the social custom that men and women should not be near to one another, the women of China were reluctant to be treated by male doctors. The missionaries sent women doctors such as Dr.
Mary Hannah Fulton (1854–1927). Supported by the Foreign Missions Board of the Presbyterian Church (US) she in 1902 founded the first medical college for women in China, the Hackett Medical College for Women, in Guangzhou.
Japan European ideas of modern medicine were spread widely through the world by medical missionaries, and the dissemination of textbooks. Japanese elites enthusiastically embraced Western medicine after the
Meiji Restoration of the 1860s. However they had been prepared by their knowledge of the Dutch and German medicine, for they had some contact with Europe through the Dutch. Highly influential was the 1765 edition of Hendrik van Deventer's pioneer work
Nieuw Ligt ("A New Light") on Japanese obstetrics, especially on Katakura Kakuryo's publication in 1799 of
Sanka Hatsumo ("Enlightenment of Obstetrics"). A cadre of Japanese physicians began to interact with Dutch doctors, who introduced smallpox vaccinations. By 1820 Japanese ranpô medical practitioners not only translated Dutch medical texts, they integrated their readings with clinical diagnoses. These men became leaders of the modernization of medicine in their country. They broke from Japanese traditions of closed medical fraternities and adopted the European approach of an open community of collaboration based on expertise in the latest scientific methods.
Kitasato Shibasaburō (1853–1931) studied bacteriology in Germany under
Robert Koch. In 1891 he founded the Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo, which introduced the study of bacteriology to Japan. He and French researcher
Alexandre Yersin went to Hong Kong in 1894, where; Kitasato confirmed Yersin's discovery that the bacterium
Yersinia pestis is the agent of the plague. In 1897 he isolated and described the organism that caused dysentery. He became the first dean of medicine at Keio University, and the first president of the Japan Medical Association. Japanese physicians immediately recognized the values of X-Rays. They were able to purchase the equipment locally from the Shimadzu Company, which developed, manufactured, marketed, and distributed X-Ray machines after 1900. Japan not only adopted German methods of public health in the home islands, but implemented them in its colonies, especially Korea and Taiwan, and after 1931 in Manchuria. A heavy investment in sanitation resulted in a dramatic increase of life expectancy.
Europe The practice of medicine changed in the face of rapid advances in science, as well as new approaches by physicians. Hospital doctors began much more systematic analysis of patients' symptoms in diagnosis. Among the more powerful new techniques were anaesthesia, and the development of both antiseptic and aseptic operating theatres. Effective cures were developed for certain endemic infectious diseases. However, the decline in many of the most lethal diseases was due more to improvements in public health and nutrition than to advances in medicine. Medicine was revolutionized in the 19th century and beyond by advances in chemistry, laboratory techniques, and equipment. Old ideas of infectious disease
epidemiology were gradually replaced by advances in
bacteriology and
virology. The Russian Orthodox Church sponsored seven orders of nursing sisters in the late 19th century. They ran hospitals, clinics, almshouses, pharmacies, and shelters as well as training schools for nurses. In the Soviet era (1917–1991), with the aristocratic sponsors gone, nursing became a low-prestige occupation based in poorly maintained hospitals.
Places France Paris (France) and Vienna were the two leading medical centers on the Continent in the era 1750–1914. In the 1770s–1850s Paris became a world center of medical research and teaching. The "Paris School" emphasized that teaching and research should be based in large hospitals and promoted the professionalization of the medical profession and the emphasis on sanitation and public health. A major reformer was
Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1756–1832), a physician who was Minister of Internal Affairs. He created the Paris Hospital, health councils, and other bodies.
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) was one of the most important founders of
medical microbiology. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from
puerperal fever, and he created the first
vaccines for
rabies and
anthrax. His experiments supported the
germ theory of disease. He was best known to the general public for inventing a method to treat milk and wine to prevent it from causing sickness, a process that came to be called
pasteurization. He is regarded as one of the three main founders of
microbiology, together with
Ferdinand Cohn and
Robert Koch. He worked chiefly in Paris and in 1887 founded the
Pasteur Institute there to perpetuate his commitment to basic research and its practical applications. As soon as his institute was created, Pasteur brought together scientists with various specialties. The first five departments were directed by
Emile Duclaux (general
microbiology research) and
Charles Chamberland (microbe research applied to
hygiene), as well as a biologist,
Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (morphological microbe research) and two physicians,
Jacques-Joseph Grancher (
rabies) and
Emile Roux (technical microbe research). One year after the inauguration of the Institut Pasteur, Roux set up the first course of microbiology ever taught in the world, then entitled
Cours de Microbie Technique (Course of microbe research techniques). It became the model for numerous research centers around the world named "Pasteur Institutes."
Vienna The First Viennese School of Medicine, 1750–1800, was led by the Dutchman
Gerard van Swieten (1700–1772), who aimed to put medicine on new scientific foundations—promoting unprejudiced clinical observation, botanical and chemical research, and introducing simple but powerful remedies. When the
Vienna General Hospital opened in 1784, it at once became the world's largest hospital and physicians acquired a facility that gradually developed into the most important research centre. Progress ended with the Napoleonic wars and the government shutdown in 1819 of all liberal journals and schools; this caused a general return to traditionalism and eclecticism in medicine. Vienna was the capital of a diverse empire and attracted not just Germans but Czechs, Hungarians, Jews, Poles and others to its world-class medical facilities. After 1820 the Second Viennese School of Medicine emerged with the contributions of physicians such as
Carl Freiherr von Rokitansky,
Josef Škoda,
Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra, and
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis. Basic medical science expanded and specialization advanced. Furthermore, the first
dermatology, eye, as well as
ear, nose, and throat clinics in the world were founded in Vienna. The textbook
Lehre von den Augenkrankheiten of
ophthalmologist Georg Joseph Beer (1763–1821) combined practical research and philosophical speculations, and became the standard reference work for decades.
Berlin in Berlin After 1871 Berlin, the capital of the new German Empire, became a leading center for medical research. The
Charité is tracing back its origins to the year 1710. More than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, including
Emil von Behring,
Robert Koch and
Paul Ehrlich, worked there. Koch, (1843–1910), was a representative leader. He became famous for isolating
Bacillus anthracis (1877), the
Tuberculosis bacillus (1882) and
Vibrio cholerae (1883) and for his development of
Koch's postulates. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905 for his tuberculosis findings. Koch is one of the founders of
microbiology and
modern medicine. He inspired such major figures as Ehrlich, who discovered the first
antibiotic,
arsphenamine and
Gerhard Domagk, who created the first commercially available antibiotic,
Prontosil. Conditions were poor in the
Confederacy, where doctors and medical supplies were in short supply. The war had a dramatic long-term impact on medicine in the U.S., from surgical technique to hospitals to nursing and to research facilities. Weapon development—particularly the appearance of
Springfield Model 1861, mass-produced and much more accurate than muskets—led to generals underestimating the risks of long range rifle fire; risks exemplified in the death of
John Sedgwick and the disastrous
Pickett's Charge. The rifles could shatter bone forcing amputation and longer ranges meant casualties were sometimes not quickly found. Evacuation of the wounded from
Second Battle of Bull Run took a week. As in earlier wars, untreated casualties sometimes survived unexpectedly due to maggots
debriding the wound—an observation which led to the
surgical use of maggots—still a useful method in the absence of effective antibiotics. The hygiene of the training and field camps was poor, especially at the beginning of the war when men who had seldom been far from home were brought together for training with thousands of strangers. First came epidemics of the childhood diseases of chicken pox, mumps, whooping cough, and, especially, measles. Operations in the South meant a dangerous and new disease environment, bringing diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid fever, and malaria. There were no antibiotics, so the surgeons prescribed coffee, whiskey, and quinine. Harsh weather, bad water, inadequate shelter in winter quarters, poor policing of camps, and dirty camp hospitals took their toll. This was a common scenario in wars from time immemorial, and conditions faced by the Confederate army were even worse. The Union responded by building army hospitals in every state. What was different in the Union was the emergence of skilled, well-funded medical organizers who took proactive action, especially in the much enlarged United States Army Medical Department, and the
United States Sanitary Commission, a new private agency. Numerous other new agencies also targeted the medical and morale needs of soldiers, including the
United States Christian Commission as well as smaller private agencies. The U.S. Army learned many lessons and in August 1886, it established the Hospital Corps.
Institutions Johns Hopkins Hospital, founded in 1889, originated several modern medical practices, including
residency and
rounds.
People File:Louis Pasteur, foto av Paul Nadar, Crisco edit.jpg|
Louis Pasteur, (1822–1895), known for, with Koch, the founding of modern
bacteriology, contributions to
germ theory, and
pasteurization File:RobertKoch cropped.jpg|
Robert Koch, (1843–1910), known for his founding, with Pasteur, of modern
bacteriology, and a father of modern medicine. He provided proofs for the scientific basis of
public health. File:Paul Ehrlich 1915.jpg|
Paul Ehrlich, (1854–1915), known for his discovery of the first
antibiotic,
arsphenamine. One of the founders of
immunology. File:Emil von Behring sitzend.jpg|
Emil von Behring, (1854–1917), known for his discovery of a
diphtheria antitoxin. He was widely known as a "saviour of children".
Cardiovascular Blood groups The
ABO blood group system was discovered in 1901 by
Karl Landsteiner at the
University of Vienna.
Landsteiner experimented on his staff, mixing their various blood components together, and found that some people's blood agglutinated (clumped together) with other blood, while some did not. This then lead him identifying three blood groups, ABC, which would later be renamed to ABO. The less frequently found blood group
AB was discovered later in 1902 by Alfred Von Decastello and Adriano Sturli. In 1937
Landsteiner and
Alexander S. Wiener further discovered the Rh factor (misnamed from early thinking that this blood group was similar to that found in
rhesus monkeys) whose antigens further determine blood reaction between people.
Blood transfusion Canadian physician
Norman Bethune, M.D. developed a mobile
blood-transfusion service for frontline operations in the
Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), but ironically, he himself died of
sepsis.
Pacemaker In 1958,
Arne Larsson in Sweden became the first patient to depend on an
artificial cardiac pacemaker. He died in 2001 at age 86, having outlived its inventor, the surgeon, and 26 pacemakers.
Cancer Cancer treatment has been developed with
radiotherapy,
chemotherapy and
surgical oncology.
Diagnosis X-ray imaging was the first kind of
medical imaging, and later
ultrasonic imaging,
CT scanning,
MR scanning and other imaging methods became available.
Disabilities is a common kind of
neural prosthesis, a device replacing part of the
human nervous system.
Prosthetics have improved with lightweight materials as well as
neural prosthetics emerging in the end of the 20th century.
Diseases Oral rehydration therapy has been extensively used since the 1970s to treat
cholera and other diarrhea-inducing infections. As infectious diseases have become less lethal, and the most common
causes of death in developed countries are now
tumors and
cardiovascular diseases, these conditions have received increased attention in medical research.
Disease eradication Malaria eradication Starting in World War II,
DDT was used as insecticide to combat
insect vectors carrying
malaria, which was endemic in most tropical regions of the world. The first goal was to protect soldiers, but it was widely adopted as a public health device. In Liberia, for example, the United States had large military operations during the war and the U.S. Public Health Service began the use of DDT for indoor residual spraying (IRS) and as a larvicide, with the goal of controlling malaria in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. In the early 1950s, the project was expanded to nearby villages. In 1953, the
World Health Organization (WHO) launched an antimalaria program in parts of Liberia as a pilot project to determine the feasibility of malaria eradication in tropical Africa. However these projects encountered a spate of difficulties that foreshadowed the general retreat from malaria eradication efforts across tropical Africa by the mid-1960s.
Pandemics 1918 influenza pandemic (1918-1920) The
1918 influenza pandemic was a global pandemic in the early 20th century that occurred between 1918 and 1920. Sometimes known as Spanish Flu due to popular opinion at the time thinking the flu originated from Spain, this pandemic caused close to 50 million deaths around the world. Spreading at the end of
World War I.
Public health Public health measures became particularly important during the
1918 flu pandemic, which killed at least 50 million people around the world. It became an
important case study in epidemiology. Bristow shows there was a gendered response of health caregivers to the pandemic in the United States. Male doctors were unable to cure the patients, and they felt like failures. Women nurses also saw their patients die, but they took pride in their success in fulfilling their professional role of caring for, ministering, comforting, and easing the last hours of their patients, and helping the families of the patients cope as well.
Research Evidence-based medicine is a modern concept, not introduced to literature until the 1990s.
Sexual and reproductive health The
sexual revolution included taboo-breaking research in
human sexuality such as the 1948 and 1953
Kinsey reports, invention of
hormonal contraception, and the normalization of abortion and homosexuality in many countries.
Family planning has promoted a
demographic transition in most of the world. With threatening
sexually transmitted infections, not least HIV, use of
barrier contraception has become imperative. The struggle against HIV has improved
antiretroviral treatments.
Smoking Tobacco smoking as a cause of lung cancer was first researched in the 1920s, but was not widely supported by publications until the 1950s.
Surgery Cardiac surgery was revolutionized in 1948 as open-heart surgery was introduced for the first time since 1925. In 1954
Joseph Murray,
J. Hartwell Harrison and others accomplished the first
kidney transplantation.
Transplantations of other organs, such as heart, liver and pancreas, were also introduced during the later 20th century. The first partial
face transplant was performed in 2005, and the first full one in 2010. By the end of the 20th century,
microtechnology had been used to create tiny robotic devices to assist
microsurgery using micro-video and
fiber-optic cameras to view internal tissues during surgery with minimally invasive practices.
Laparoscopic surgery was broadly introduced in the 1990s. Natural orifice surgery has followed.
War Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) During the 19th century, large-scale wars were attended with
medics and
mobile hospital units which developed advanced techniques for healing massive injuries and controlling infections rampant in battlefield conditions. During the
Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), General
Pancho Villa organized hospital trains for wounded soldiers. Boxcars marked
Servicio Sanitario ("sanitary service") were re-purposed as surgical operating theaters and areas for recuperation, and staffed by up to 40 Mexican and U.S. physicians. Severely wounded soldiers were shuttled back to base hospitals.
World War I (1914-1918) Thousands of scarred troops provided the need for improved
prosthetic limbs and expanded techniques in plastic surgery or
reconstructive surgery. Those practices were combined to broaden
cosmetic surgery and other forms of
elective surgery.
Interwar period (1918–1939) From 1917 to 1932, the
American Red Cross moved into Europe with a battery of long-term child health projects. It built and operated hospitals and clinics, and organized antituberculosis and antityphus campaigns. A high priority involved child health programs such as clinics, better baby shows, playgrounds, fresh air camps, and courses for women on infant hygiene. Hundreds of U.S. doctors, nurses, and welfare professionals administered these programs, which aimed to reform the health of European youth and to reshape European public health and welfare along American lines.
World War II (1939-1945) , 1943 The advances in medicine made a dramatic difference for Allied troops, while the Germans and especially the Japanese and Chinese suffered from a severe lack of newer medicines, techniques and facilities. Harrison finds that the chances of recovery for a badly wounded British infantryman were as much as 25 times better than in the First World War. The reason was that: :"By 1944 most casualties were receiving treatment within hours of wounding, due to the increased mobility of field hospitals and the extensive use of aeroplanes as ambulances. The care of the sick and wounded had also been revolutionized by new medical technologies, such as active immunization against tetanus, sulphonamide drugs, and penicillin." During the
second World War,
Alexis Carrel and
Henry Dakin developed the
Carrel-Dakin method of treating wounds with an irrigation, Dakin's solution, a
germicide which helped prevent
gangrene. The War spurred the usage of
Roentgen's
X-ray, and the
electrocardiograph, for the
monitoring of internal bodily functions. This was followed in the inter-war period by the development of the first anti-bacterial agents such as the
sulpha antibiotics.
Nazi and Japanese medical research Unethical
human subject research, and killing of patients with disabilities, peaked during the Nazi era, with
Nazi human experimentation and
Aktion T4 during
the Holocaust as the most significant examples. Many of the details of these and related events were the focus of the
Doctors' Trial. Subsequently, principles of
medical ethics, such as the
Nuremberg Code, were introduced to prevent a recurrence of such atrocities. After 1937, the Japanese Army established programs of biological warfare in China. In
Unit 731, Japanese doctors and research scientists conducted large numbers of vivisections and experiments on human beings, mostly Chinese victims.
Institutions World Health Organization vaccination in Niger, 1969. A decade later, this was the first infectious disease to be eradicated.The
World Health Organization was founded in 1948 as a United Nations agency to improve
global health. In most of the world,
life expectancy has improved since then, and was about 67 years , and well above 80 years in some countries.
Eradication of infectious diseases is an international effort, and several new
vaccines have been developed during the post-war years, against infections such as
measles,
mumps, several strains of
influenza and
human papilloma virus. The long-known vaccine against
Smallpox finally eradicated the disease in the 1970s, and
Rinderpest was wiped out in 2011.
Eradication of polio is underway.
Tissue culture is important for development of vaccines. Despite the early success of antiviral vaccines and antibacterial drugs,
antiviral drugs were not introduced until the 1970s. Through the WHO, the international community has developed a response protocol against epidemics, displayed during the
SARS epidemic in 2003, the
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 from 2004, the
Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and onwards.
People File:MaryCorinnaPutnamJacobi.jpg|
Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906), known for debunking myths around menstruation and female intelligence File:Florence Nightingale CDV by H Lenthall.jpg|
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), known for her social action and reforms to nursing File:Elizabeth Blackwell NLM 02.jpg|
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910), known as the first women to gain a medical degree in the United States File:Doctor.susan.la.flesche.picotte.jpg|
Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865–1915), known for their activism and as the first
indigenous woman to gain a medical degree in the United States File:Linda Richards (page 8 crop).jpg|
Linda Richards (1841–1930), known for their pioneering work in
nursing File:Synthetic Production of Penicillin TR1468.jpg|
Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), known for the discovery of
penicillin and
lysozyme File:Gerty Theresa Cori.jpg|
Gerty Cori (1896–1957), known for their discovery of the
catalytic conversion of glycogen and first woman awarded a
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine File:Virginia-Apgar-July-6-1959.jpg|
Virginia Apgar (1909–1974), known for the
Apgar score and improving
infant mortality == Contemporary medicine ==