The Past
Europe: Centuries of medical innovation
CAPTION: Hippocrates treating a patient
Greece and Rome
In 400 BC, when the Greek civilization was most prosperous, the sick and ill prayed to Asdepius, the god of healing. Around that time, a Greek physician by the name of Hippocrates declared that disease and sickness had natural, not supernatural, causes. Hippocrates studied medicine as science and art, instead of as religion. After 300 BC, Rome dominated several societies including Egypt and Greece. The Romans adapted methods of medical treatment from them. They promoted public health by building aqueducts and improving their sewage systems. Another important Greek physician is Galen, who experimented with animals and turned his discoveries into theories. He is known as the founder of experimental medicine. Although many of his theories were proven false, Galen influenced doctors of his time.
Middle Ages
Some of the world’s most sophisticated advances came from the Islamic Empire during the 400s to 1500. A Persian physician named Rhazes contributed to the first accurate systems of measles and smallpox. Avicenna Anarabphys wrote an encyclopedia named Canon of Medicine that had all of the medical knowledge known during his time. During this period, many hospitals and the first university medical school was established. In the 1000s, a medical school was set up in Saverno, Italy. It became the center of medicine in Europe from the 1000s to the 1100s.
Renaissance
The movement between the 1300s to the 1600s was known as the Renaissance, or rebirth. During the Renaissance, studies of art, literature, history, science and medicine gained new interest. Before, the punishment for dissection was severe, but during the Renaissance, laws were relaxed. Leonardo da Vinci dissected corpses to study. In total, he made 750 drawings and studies of the human anatomy. Andreas Vesalius, a physician and professor of medicine in Italy wrote the first textbook on human anatomy called On the Structure of the Human Body.