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Edwin Klebs' Criteria for Disease Causality. precise causal notions of early nineteenth century medicine with the more elaborate conceptions of the germ theory. For these reasons Klebs' thoughts about causal criteria deserve careful attention. Edwin Klebs was born 6 February 1834 in Konigsberg.
- Overview
- The Enlightenment
Among the teachers of medicine in the medieval universities there were many who clung to the past, but there were not a few who determined to explore new lines of thought. The new learning of the Renaissance, born in Italy, grew and expanded slowly. Two great 13th-century scholars who influenced medicine were Roger Bacon, an active observer and tireless experimenter, and Albertus Magnus, a distinguished philosopher and scientific writer.
About this time Mondino dei Liucci taught at Bologna. Prohibitions against human dissection were slowly lifting, and Mondino performed his own dissections rather than following the customary procedure of entrusting the task to a menial. Although he perpetuated the errors of Galen, his Anothomia, published in 1316, was the first practical manual of anatomy. Foremost among the surgeons of the day was Guy de Chauliac, a physician to three popes at Avignon. His Chirurgia magna (“Great Surgery”), based on observation and experience, had a profound influence upon the progress of surgery.
The Renaissance in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries was much more than just a reviving of interest in Greek and Roman culture; it was rather a change of outlook, an eagerness for discovery, a desire to escape from the limitations of tradition and to explore new fields of thought and action. In medicine, it was perhaps natural that anatomy and physiology, the knowledge of the human body and its workings, should be the first aspects of medical learning to receive attention from those who realized the need for reform.
It was in 1543 that Andreas Vesalius, a young Belgian professor of anatomy at the University of Padua, published De humani corporis fabrica (“On the Structure of the Human Body”). Based on his own dissections, this seminal work corrected many of Galen’s errors. By his scientific observations and methods, Vesalius showed that Galen could no longer be regarded as the final authority. His work at Padua was continued by Gabriel Fallopius and, later, by Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente; it was his work on the valves in the veins, De venarum ostiolis (1603), that suggested to his pupil William Harvey his revolutionary theory of the circulation of the blood, one of the great medical discoveries.
Surgery profited from the new outlook in anatomy, and the great reformer Ambroise Paré dominated the field in the 16th century. Paré was surgeon to four kings of France, and he has deservedly been called the father of modern surgery. In his autobiography, written after he had retired from 30 years of service as an army surgeon, Paré described how he had abolished the painful practice of cauterization to stop bleeding and used ligatures and dressings instead. His favourite expression, “I dressed him; God healed him,” is characteristic of this humane and careful doctor.
In Britain during this period, surgery, which was performed by barber-surgeons, was becoming regulated and organized under royal charters. Companies were thus formed that eventually became the royal colleges of surgeons in Scotland and England. Physicians and surgeons united in a joint organization in Glasgow, and a college of physicians was founded in London.
In the 17th century the natural sciences moved forward on a broad front. There were attempts to grapple with the nature of science, as expressed in the works of thinkers like Francis Bacon, René Descartes, and Sir Isaac Newton. New knowledge of chemistry superseded the theory that all things are made up of earth, air, fire, and water, and the old A...
Nov 3, 2014 · The history of disease and medicine in early modern Europe is, like most histories, one of continuity and change. Over the course of the last several decades, older scholarship on science and medicine that emphasized medical progress, valorized the ‘great men of science and medicine’, and regarded ‘The Scientific Revolution’ as a movement that radically broke with the medieval world ...
- Sarah Roller
- Ambulances. The trenches of the Western Front were often several miles from any form of hospital. As such, one of the biggest problems with regards to medical facilities and treatment was getting wounded soldiers seen by a doctor or surgeon in time.
- Amputations and antiseptic. Soldiers living in the trenches endured horrible conditions: they shared the space with rats and lice amongst other pests and vermin – which could cause the so-called ‘trench fever’ – and the constant damp led many to develop ‘trench foot’ (a kind of gangrene).
- Plastic surgery. The new machinery and artillery used during World War One caused disfiguring injuries on a scale which had never been known before. Those who survived, partly thanks to new surgeries and antiseptics, would often have extreme scarring and horrific facial injuries.
- Blood transfusions. In 1901, the Austrian scientist Karl Landsteiner discovered that human blood actually belongs to 3 different groups: A, B and O. This discovery marked the beginning of a scientific understanding of blood transfusions and a turning point in their use.
Apr 4, 2017 · The Great War, or World War I, ushered in a new era of technological advancement, especially in the area of weaponry–tanks, machine guns and poison gas made a violent debut on the battlefields ...
The history of medicine is the study and documentation of the evolution of medical treatments, practices, and knowledge over time. Medical historians often draw from other humanities fields of study including economics , health sciences , sociology , and politics to better understand the institutions, practices, people, professions, and social ...
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The transition from the shaman to the modern physician, and from shamanism (i.e. a spiritual-based notion of disease) to scientific medicine (i.e. an anatomophysiological-based concept of disease), was a slow process that took many centuries to develop.
