Medicine History
The role of medicine and medicine history in our society is immense and touches on every aspect of human life. From the time when life expectancy for an individual barely hovered around 30 years of age until now with people surpassing one hundred years regularly, medicine history has seemingly multiplied ten fold in just the last fifty to one hundred years.
* Medicine history shows us the shortcomings of medical expertise and practice in many societies. Either religious groups claiming that health is based off culture or belief or a mere individual acting as a professional, the lack of a uniform medicine practice generally hurt the population more than these practices could have ever aided their respective populations. For example, a common practice in medicine history throughout the world is the use of ritual and religious practice to treat clearly physiological issues. Many believed the role of medicine and health to be strictly attributable to one’s religious doctrine.
* Another role of medicine history is to illuminate the grossly uneven treatment between the poor and rich. Poverty-stricken areas were generally plagued by disease and plague due to filthy conditions and close quarters without any form of proper medicine. These individuals often had absolutely no access to the simplest form of any medicine practice and would quickly pass on their ailments between houses and communities. Interestingly, the fission between rich and poor with regards to health care has remained wide in the history of modern medicine.
* Medicine history would forever change with the introduction of penicillin and similar medicine that offered treatment to a wide-array of bacteria-based illness. General access to medicine began to increase in civilized populations of the world helping to lessen the transfer of disease between individuals. In addition, the uniformity of vaccination practices allowed for communes of people to no longer worry about the spread of bacteria through close proximity. Most specifically in public education, a sickness that one had in a class generally would cause a larger situation of sick children. After disease control and prevention became a part of modern medicine, guidelines were introduced to limit this situation.
Looking towards the future, many recent innovations in the field of medicine seem poised to again revolutionize medicine history. Nuclear medicine, biologics, and new discoveries in disease treatment are relatively new in the larger view of medicine history and will likely grow exponentially. Modern medicine also recognizes the benefits to ensuring all parts of the globalized world have at least some access to rudimentary care.
