Surgical Techniques

The Assyrians were using bandages to treat wounds and knew about inflammation, while the Egyptians were treating their mummies with crushed spices and perfumes (doc 1 and 4). Medical achievements were very important during this time period because there were diseases that were hard to protect oneself against, therefore the doctors must learn how to treat them one contracted. Document 2 shows a picture from an Egyptian book, and a boat is present. Boats were a very useful invention because using them made it easy to go up and down the Nile River. The Chinese had very advanced silk and bronze making techniques (doc 5 and 7).

The 18th Century was a period where teachings of Aristotle were prominent. Herbal medicine and therapeutic techniques was the primary medical treatment. During this period society had no know knowledge of bacteria, germs, viruses, or any known sanitation methods. Primary methods of medical administration included blistering , bloodletting, clysters (known as enemas), diet changes, and cold bathing.

While Greek Medicine particularly from the 5th century B.C onwards, increasingly used scientific method to develop cures, there still however remained people that considered medicine to be a religion. The ancient Greeks (Hellenic) made important discoveries about the human body and health, so by the sixth century BC, medicinal practices focused largely on a more clinical approach involving observation. Their discoveries were made by firstly studying the human anatomy using dissection and vivisection, finding ways to heal using things such as plants and herbs, then finally practising surgery on the human body using different instruments.

First Step is to graduate from a surgical technology program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP). Most of these programs take one to two years to complete. They combine classroom instruction in subjects such as anatomy, pharmacology and medical terminology with hands-on training in clinical settings.

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.

There are many reasons to become a surgical technologist, and numerous information reasons why I want to take this course. Taking this class made me see a whole other side of the profession then when I was doing my research. I have learned so much about the changes in medicine and about surgical technology itself that it’s hard for me to put in all in one paper. Through the course of this paper I will go over my own reasons to take the course, things that I personally learned over the last eight weeks, what my plans for the future are, and the different qualities that are needed in the field.

Prior to 18th century Europe there were a few effective medical developments but most treatments lacked medical value. An idea developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans insisted that bloodletting was a fantastic remedy to difficult diseases but it did more harm than good (Doc 4). Another flaw in medicine is the level of hygiene in the institutions that provided care. The sick were crammed into dirty hospitals, dead lay beside those clinging to life, and the air was

Diseases and their treatments changed and shaped the modern world. The Tang Dynasty of Ancient China had great value to the medicinal fields and led the way for medical technology and advancements that are used today by standardizing the supreme methods, procedures, and treatments during this time period; therefore, they made it less complicated for people to learn and teach how to practice medicine. Areas of medicine that were greatly improved and exceptionally recorded during the Tang Dynasty were symptomatology, etiology, surgery, orthopedics, and traumatology.

Many individuals ponder how remarkable it is that humans have lasted this long in a world full of war and through chaotic times. One element that has helped humanity is the use of medicine and healthcare systems. Medicine and healing have been around for many centuries, and has made countless advances in the system and cures to diseases within many civilizations. Instead of discussing the change of medicine over all time and around the world, we will narrow the ways in which a civilization heals their sick into a smaller time period and this period was the era of the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. In the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, medicine and health were very important to help the ill and infirm, and many medical techniques were developed

There were no medical schools at all and very few physicians in Western Europe. Those who studied the human body or any kind of medicine were members of the Church. Even then, if the human body was studied, dissection was not allowed. “Furthermore, because the human body was held sacred, dissection was prohibited and this meant that the sciences of anatomy and physiology, which are the bedrock of all medical knowledge, could not be studied in a practical manner” (Bishop 58). Going deeper into the natural causes of disease was discouraged as well, even when one of the first principles of Christianity was healing the sick. Instead of physicians curing people, churches dedicated shrines to saints that were associated with the healing arts. “A patron saint was usually regarded as having power to relieve affections of a particular organ or part of the body” (Bishop 58). Practices of surgery were forbidden to priests; any practice of surgery therefore was left into the hands of barbers and uneducated men. However, there were surgeons who attended the noble and royal. This surgery that was attempted was meddlesome in the Middle Ages. “The progress of surgery was long retarded by the belief that suppuration was an essential process in the healing of wounds” (Bishop 60). Suppuration is discharged waste from a wound. There were messy and obnoxious antidotes for treating a wound and the wound was kept open artificially (Bishop 60). Another way wounds were treated was the use of ligature by the Greeks to control haemorrhage. Ligature is the binding of a wound. Ligature was abandoned because of the later surgeons and the use of cauterization. However these methods were only used in time of dire need and the surgeons usually did not want to use any brutal methods; the surgeons wanted to stick with a simple dressing of the wound. After some

Starting soon after the achievements of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, in 460 BC Greek medicine and treatments began to intensely develop and improve due to anatomical research. Ancient physicians and anatomists such as Erasistratus, Herophilus, Galen, and Andreas Vesalius conducted dissections on live and dead organisms to lead them to make important discoveries about the anatomy, functionality, and overall health of humans. With passing time, each person built off of their influences work by testing validity, expanding on research, and all the meanwhile making their own discovers. However, human dissection and vivisection experiments were limited due to conflicts with ethnics and the ways of the Catholic Church. There was also the

The of the most notable piece of medical achievement from this time is Al-Qasim’s The Method which was used around Europe for around 200 years as a textbook for surgery (Noonan, 2007). This affects how people in that time lived and got through surgery, leading to the survival of our ancestors that would may not have survived without this knowledge from the Islamic Empire. Along with this book, many scholars in the Empire were focused on learning and studying medicine and anatomy (Gardner, 2001). Without these devoted scholars we would not be as advanced medically as we are today.

Ancient Egyptian culture was constantly making and recording many discoveries about the human anatomy. Ancient Egypt is most likely the origin of anatomical sciences and they used their knowledge of the human anatomy to create medicine. For example, “they did what they could to prevent illness, by bathing and purifying their bodies habitually, shaving off their head and body hair (women included), and staying with a diet that excluded many “unclean” animals (including fish)” (“Ancient Egyptian Medicine: The Study and Practice of Medicine in Ancient”, 2012). No society can ever completely escape disease, so the Egyptians learned about the human body and started to create remedies for illnesses. Once the Ancient Egyptians became doctors, they specialized in different fields just like modern doctors. For example “these fields

Before the years of the Medieval or Dark Ages, medicine and the study of human anatomy was at an all time high with physicians like Galen who discovered much about what the human body was and what diseases were. By 750 AD, the progress in the medical field came to almost a complete stand-still due to the lack of ideas going around and no way of learning. During the Dark Ages, no one knew exactly who illnesses happened, or why, and it was like that for over three hundred years, no fresh ideas coming up until the Renaissance took over. The Church heavily influenced the way medical care was taken, and most scholars depended on Galen and a few famous physicians’ work.

There have been many advances in the medical field such as; anesthesia, drugs, machines, etc. This has helped the doctors find alternative solutions to problems, and in return has helped them save more lives. In the article “Medicine” by Britannica, “Many new advances in anesthesia, and these in turn depend upon engineers who have devised machines and chemists produced new drugs. Other operations are made possible by new materials, such as the alloys and plastics that are used to make artificial hip and knee joints.” Advances in the medical field have truly helped modern doctors. Without the medicine, machines, technology they have now there’s no way the doctors could have saved the same amount of lives. As Brian Ward, the author of “The Story of Medicine”, states in his book, “Despite opposition, revolutionary scientists and doctors persevered and made some ground breaking discoveries,” (Ward 22). Even though the doctors during the Renaissance had little technology, they still made discoveries that impacted the medical field. The discoveries made by the Renaissance doctors were life saving. However, with the given technology that is commonly found in modern day society doctors are able to impact the medical and scientific fields and by doing so, save more lives than thought possible during the Renaissance. Within the article “Medicine” written by Britannica, it shows the importance of, “Many other developments in modern surgical treatment rest on a firm basis of experimentation, often first in animals but also in humans; among them are Renal dialysis (artificial kidney), arterial bypass operations, embryo implantation, and exchange transfusions.” Although testing on animals is cruel, it shows that modern doctors were not just experimenting on people. The modern doctors had a thought process to reduce the amount of deaths due to