Medicine in Colonial Days Essay

The logic and principles of medieval medicine shaped those of Modern medicine. Never was there a more efficient method perfected, so much that it remained through history through so many hundreds of years. Today’s concepts of diagnosis, relationships with the church, anatomy, surgery, hospitals and training, and public health were established in the Middle Ages.

The Civil War was a time of great learning in the medical field. Without these advances, we would live in a completely different world. The question is though, would the same amount of medical supplies and knowledge in both the North or South have changed the eventual outcome of the Civil War? Similar circumstances in medicine would have only affected the mortality rates of both sides, not the outcome of the Civil War. Almost all odds were against the South from the very beginning. It was just a matter of time from the very start.

During the Civil War, they had to have many medicines, operations, and surgeries done to themselves or others in order to survive (Jenny Goellnitz, Paragraph 1). Some of these medicines we still use today. Medical technology and scientific knowledge have changed dramatically since the Civil War, but the basic principles of military health care remain the same. The deadliest thing that faced the Civil War soldier was disease. For every soldier who died in battle, two died from disease.

Medicine has developed in many ways throughout time and is a necessity in our society. People would die of the common cold if there was no medicine in our world. Sure some natural remedies have helped people through the years but nothing has changed lives like medicine. Imagine having the common cold and realizing you might not make it. This is a simple cold that nowadays can be treated with a simple dosage of cough syrup. The 1800’s in particular is what made scientist decide to investigate more medicine. I will also explain how people lived and how society moved as a whole in the 1800’s till now.

As America became increasingly urbanized in the mid 1800s, hospitals, first built by city governments to treat the poor, began treating the not-so-poor. Doctors, with increased authority and power, stopped traveling to their sickest patients and began treating them all under one roof. Unlike hospitals in Europe where patients were treated in large wards, American patients who could pay were treated in smaller, often private rooms.

Taking care of the sick and ailing during colonial times was quite the challenge and very different from what it is like nowadays. There wasn’t much modern understanding of medicine. Thus a lot of the medicines used in that time consisted of various types of healing herbs. In their own personal gardens, many colonists would grow these and use them in their medications. Some of these herbs were believed to possess beneficial curing powers and effects for such things as colds, fevers, cuts, and broken bones. It wasn’t that these herbs were not beneficial, the real problem was that anyone could be an apothecary if they wished to. Many crafty individuals sold pretentious, cheap medicines and frauds that were not medicines at all. After such experiences, the poor people did not know whom they could trust. However herbs weren’t they only treatments around. Early settlers would make and quaff a tea made from a powder which was extracted from fried frogs. That was one of the more

In are Western Civilization today we still use are medicine to help cure us when we are sick. Medicine can be used in many different ways to help people in our society today. There was a physician named Hippocrates. Hippocrates was the first Greek to find out that every disease only had natural

The Ideas of Medicine and Health in Victorian England Did you know that in the Victorian Era a traditional idea of the body included of woman being smaller version of men. This was a common idea explored in the Victorian era; however, the research states differently. As a result, this idea was not a fact rather a misconception caused due to the lack of education and research. The Victorian era was a period in 1837 to 1901 ruled by Queen Victoria, who became a queen at the age of eighteen and ruled until 1901. In this time period, many people had an lack of education and most of the Victorians had miniscule knowledge about the human body.

As far back as 1200 B.C., in Ancient Greece, medicine played a very important role in the lives of the Greek peoples. As all other areas in their lives were expanding, so did their medical knowledge. Ancient Greece was steeped in mythology, such that, no matter what went on in the world around them, it was explained as having something to do with one god or the other. Unless it concerned medicine. The physicians of that time looked toward a natural reason why an illness would happen to someone, instead of saying a god caused it to happen.

In the 21th century we live our lives day to day seeing the next medicine breakthrough. It is easy for us to assume that’s how the history of medicine has always been. On the contrary, medicine became positively modern in the 19th century, new inventions were introduced, new discoveries were brought to their attention, remedies was in the spotlight, and the start of women’s professions generated.

Diseases in the late 1800s were on the rise, however, doctors and doctoral schools were not. Since there were very few physicians in this time, black and white men and women were often left to treat illnesses, bring new life into the world, and handle medical emergencies (Plantation Medicine and Health Care in the Old South). People relied on self-help manuals a lot of the time to hopefully give them the insight they needed for the specific disease or illness they had or were treating. This was not very effective because the people with the diseases were not getting proper care and there was a lack of sanitary facilities that could be used. The Old South only had 5 medical schools by 1845, and medical students only studied for one to two years on their medical training (Plantation Medicine and Health Care in the Old South). Because of the lack of physicians, there were more patients in the

Eclectic medicine “believes that nature has curative powers, and practitioners seek to remove the causes of disease through natural outlets of the body” (Spector, 2013, p. 111). The incorporation of opium, and modified minerals to treat patients (“Eclectic medicine,” n.d.). “Eclectic medicine was discovered in 1825 by Wooster Beach in New York” (“Eclectic medicine,” n.d.). At the early development of eclectic medicine the main attributes consisted of recognizing disease was caused by unsanitary environment, which developed chemicals that killed bacteria and a heavy sanitary environment (“Eclectic medicine,”

I have always wondered where and how medicine first came about. I also wondered who would have had the thought of medicine. Louis Pasteur contributed to several studies such as fermentations, silkworm diseases, and helped Joseph Lister to the practice of antisepsis in surgeries. Pasteur was congratulated hugely for his anthrax vaccine. Even though he loved science, Louis had a passion about the fine arts even after putting aside his own drawings at a young age to put himself into science. Pasteur was so close to making the biggest discovery of his life: finding a vaccine for rabies. The article later describes this painting of Louis Pasteur and describes his character. This relates to the scientific process because for the artist trying to

Over a century ago, the practice of medicine was hardly a science. “[T]he most eminent doctors had not one bit better explanation for the causes of epidemics than the ignorant Russian villagers who hitched the town widows to their plows,” writes Paul de Kruif in Microbe Hunters. It wasn’t until the discoveries of Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur, and Paul Ehrlich, effective treatments were developed. Demons were no longer the cause of disease and incurable maladies were no longer incurable. These trail breakers developed medicine into what it is today. The research and inventions of Koch, Pasteur, and Ehrlich introduced the world to new scientific breakthroughs and knowledge.

From the dawn of the very first civilization, humans have been experimenting with new ways of life. And stemming from these experiments came disease, injuries, and ultimately the need to discover ways to survive as a population. Those who were not successful in healing the sick and injured became lost civilizations, unable continue on their cultures. As the history of the world expanded exponentially, historians are able to pinpoint those who were advanced in implementing early forms of medical care seen in today’s physician care. Among the archives of talented early physicians, Ancient Rome proves to be one of the most progressive civilizations in the field of historical medicine to date. Countless Roman authors’ works have been found with