Today is focused on the History of Medicine - from the original thought that evils spirits caused disease right up to the discovery of Penicillin.
So, Yesterday I got a book out of my school library, 'The History of Medicine' by John Hudson Tiner and I must say it has enlightened me to the past misconceptions of cause and effect when it comes to illness. The first page is dedicated to Hippocrates - yes, the man behind the oath.
Hippocrates is known as the 'Father of Medicine'.

Hippocrates was the first to ask his students to ask the patient if anything had changed in his diet and how he felt when the illness began. Diet was a large focus of Hippocrates, he believed 'one man's is another man's poison.'
"Desperate diseases require desperate remedies"
"Illness is sometimes stronger when a mind is troubled"
These are two more of Hippocrates beliefs, which connects to now, 2013. This week in psychology I have been studying stress and its effect on the immune system. Many studies have been done that prove that when stressed, the immune system response is dulled and the count of B and T lymphocytes decrease.
Now back to the famous oath. The Hippocratic Oath is a tradition for most physicians, swearing to practice honestly and ethically. Hippocrates, in 460 B.C. changed how physicians looked upon their own profession - it was as corrupt as any other at that point. People would pay physicians to ensure that a patient died, or to prolong their illness or even to concoct poisons.
'I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with the view to injury and wrong doing... Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick'
Galen, another famous man in the history of medicine. He was the first person to believe that nerves came from your spine, someone came to him with numbness in their hand and recovered, thanks to the advice of Galen He believed that illness was a result of the imbalance of the humors of the body.
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This caused a problem, the serious misconception of imbalance led to the bleeding out of George Washington, a rather well known occasions, but if you are in the dark I will indulge you...
He went riding and contracted a cold, his physicians, with the belief of imbalanced humors, opened his veins and drained some of his blood, his illness continued so they repeated this until they literally bled him to death.
Realistically this contrasts completely what we now know - blood is what combats infections. White blood cells.
Any way, thank you for reading today, I hope to continue this tomorrow, but I am not sure, A levels are not a walk in the park, they are more like a run through a thick forest that has booby traps, mud and large tree trunks crossing the path.
Any way, thank you for reading today, I hope to continue this tomorrow, but I am not sure, A levels are not a walk in the park, they are more like a run through a thick forest that has booby traps, mud and large tree trunks crossing the path.
Good day
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