At our January monthly meeting Dr Richard Marks, a freelance Historian, took us through the history of medicine from the Egyptians and Greeks through to the Victorians. While thinking evolved from elements to humours to biology over time our ancestors got quite a lot of things right. For example the Egyptians washed their hands, wounds and instruments in cooled boiled water and honey to reduce the risk of infection. Sadly this practice fell by the wayside over time and it wasn’t adopted as medical practice until the late 1800’s. Some other older practices, such as the use of leeches to maintain blood flow and maggots to remove infected tissue, are also being used again.
Initially there weren’t many places you could study to become a physician and women weren’t welcome. Barbers were the first surgeons, the red part of the traditional red and white barbers pole. In those days surgery was done in public without anaesthetics or antiseptics and barbers used the same instruments regardless of whether they were trimming a bread or treating a wound and probably didn’t clean them in between! By 1745 Doctors needed a medical degree to practice and to apply to the Royal College of Surgeons. Having achieved a higher level of knowledge and training surgeons adopted the title of Mr or Miss rather than Doctor to distinguish themselves from Doctors.
Many changes in medical practice were driven by the Navy and Army who tended to encounter diseases and injury before the homebound medics. The Crimean War lead to the development of the first pre-fabricated hospitals, designed by Brunel, these became the MASH units of today. The advent of anaesthetics starting with Humphrey Day’s discovery of laughing gas, followed by Ether in 1842 and then chloroform made surgery painless. But, it took Lister and the use of carbolic acid as an antiseptic to reduce the risk of infection, this was enhanced by removing audiences and staff wearing white scrubs which could be boiled. Surgical gloves came along in 1889 followed by face masks.
Finally Richard took us through the era of germ theory when Pasteur and Koch proposed that microbes were responsible for disease and infection. These studies were enhanced by the industrial era which made mass produced microscopes more readily available and affordable. Other changes in Victorian times were the standardisation of medication in terms of contents and dosage, hand-washing using chlorinated water, and the foundation of the Institute of Nursing which trained the first qualified nurses who served in the Crimea.
Medicine has come a long way over human history, something we can all be grateful for.