The world famous doctors
Medicine
is considered to be one
of the most important necessity to all of us. It is derived from the
Latin words ars medicina meaning “the art of healing”. It is a
branch of the health sciences and is the sector of public life
concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the
study, diagnosis, treatment and possible prevention of disease,
injury and other damage to a body or mind. History knows many
outstanding people who didn’t just cure patients well but also left
their works and experiences for us. We all should be proud of these
great doctors.
Hippocrates
was a famous doctor of ancient times and
is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history
of medicine.
He was born in 460 B.C. He grew up in doctor’s family. He became
famous when he was 20. He was the first person, who thought, that
doctors had to treat people in different ways not only with help of
magic. He was sure that a good doctor had to guess about patient’s
condition according to appearance. Hippocrates used herbs for
treatment. Modern medicine follows his principle “non nocere” –
don’t harm.
He
is referred to as the Western father
of medicine
in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the
founder of the Hippocratic School of medicine. This intellectual
school revolutionized
medicine
in ancient Greece.
However,
the achievements of the writers of the Corpus,
the practitioners
of Hippocratic medicine, and the actions of Hippocrates himself are
often commingled; thus very little is known about what Hippocrates
actually thought, wrote, and did. Nevertheless, Hippocrates is
commonly portrayed as the
paragon
of the ancient
physician. In particular, he is credited with greatly advancing the
systematic study of
clinical
medicine,
summing up the medical knowledge of previous schools, and prescribing
practices for physicians through the
Hippocratic
Oath
and other works.
Hippocrates
is credited with being the first physician to reject superstitions,
legends and beliefs that credited supernatural or divine forces with
causing illness. Hippocrates was credited by the disciples of
Pythagoras
of allying
philosophy and medicine. He separated the discipline of medicine from
religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment
inflicted by the gods
but rather the
product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits. Indeed
there is not a single mention of a mystical illness in the entirety
of the Hippocratic Corpus. However, Hippocrates did work with many
convictions that were based on what is now known to be incorrect
anatomy
and physiology,
such as Humorism.
Hippocratic medicine and its philosophy are far removed from that of
modern medicine. Now, the physician focuses on specific diagnosis and
specialized treatment, both of which were espoused by the Knidian
school. This shift in medical thought since Hippocrates' day has
caused serious criticism over the past two millennia, with the
passivity of Hippocratic treatment being the subject of particularly
strong denunciations; for example, the French
doctor M. S.
Houdart called the Hippocratic treatment a "meditation upon
death".
Avicenna
was a famous doctor of Moslem world. He was born in 980 in Bukhara.
When he was 10, he read many books of Arabian authors. When he was
18, he was well known as good doctor. Avicenna treated leaders of
states. He wrote many philosophical and medical books. The most
important Avicenna’s research is “Medical canon”. It was basic
medical textbook till the end of 17th
century.
His
first appointment was that of physician to the emir,
who owed him his recovery from a dangerous illness (997). Ibn Sina's
chief reward for this service was access to the royal
library
of the Samanids,
well-known patrons of scholarship and scholars. When the library was
destroyed by fire not long after, the enemies of Ibn Sina accused him
of burning it, in order for ever to conceal the sources of his
knowledge. Meanwhile, he assisted his father in his financial
labours, but still found time to write some of his earliest works.
When
Ibn Sina was 22 years old, he lost his father. The Samanid
dynasty
came to its end in December 1004. Ibn Sina seems to have declined the
offers of Mahmud
of Ghazni,
and proceeded westwards to Urgench
in the modern Uzbekistan,
where the vizier,
regarded as a friend of scholars, gave him a small monthly stipend.
The pay was small, however, so Ibn Sina wandered from place to place
through the districts of Nishapur
and Merv
to the borders of Khorasan,
seeking an opening for his talents. Qabus,
the generous ruler of Dailam
and central Persia,
himself a poet and a scholar, with whom Ibn Sina had expected to find
an asylum, was about that date (1012) starved to death by his troops
who had revolted. Ibn Sina himself was at this season stricken down
by a severe illness. Finally, at Gorgan,
near the Caspian
Sea,
Ibn Sina met with a friend, who bought a dwelling near his own house
in which Ibn Sina lectured on logic
and astronomy.
Several of Ibn Sina's treatises were written for this patron; and the
commencement of his Canon
of Medicine
also dates from his stay in Hyrcania.
Meanwhile,
he had written to Abu Ya'far, the prefect
of the dynamic city of Isfahan,
offering his services. The new emir of Hamadan, hearing of this
correspondence and discovering where Ibn Sina was hidden,
incarcerated him in a fortress. War meanwhile continued between the
rulers of Isfahan and Hamadãn; in 1024 the former captured Hamadan
and its towns, expelling the Tajik mercenaries.
When the storm had passed, Ibn Sina returned with the emir to
Hamadan, and carried on his literary labors. Later, however,
accompanied by his brother, a favorite pupil, and two slaves, Ibn
Sina escaped out of the city in the dress of a Sufi
ascetic.
After a perilous journey, they reached Isfahan, receiving an
honorable welcome from the prince.
Ambroise
Pare is father of
modern surgery. He was born in 1516 in France. Pare took part in war.
He had rich practice in operation. He invented the way to stop
bleedings. Surgeons use famous Thread of Pare in present time.
Ambroise
Paré used a solution of egg
yolk,
oil of roses, and turpentine
for war wounds
instead of boiling oil and cauterization. He ran out of boiling oil
while treating some patients, and used an old method he had heard
before. He treated the rest of the patients with the ointment of egg
yolk, oil of roses and turpentine and left them overnight. When Paré
returned the following morning he discovered that the soldiers
treated with the boiling oil were in agony, whereas the ones treated
with the ointment had recovered because of the antiseptic properties
of turpentine. This proved his methods effective. However, they were
not widely used until many years later. He published his first book
'The method of curing wounds caused by arquebus and firearms' in
1545.
During
his work with injured soldiers, Paré documented the pain experienced
by amputees which they perceive as sensation in the amputated limb.
He believed that Paré
was also an important figure in the progress of obstetrics
in the middle of the 16th century. He revived the practice of podalic
version,
and showed how even in cases of head presentation, surgeons with this
operation could often deliver the infant safely, instead of having to
dismember the infant and extract the infant piecemeal.
In
1552, Paré was accepted into royal service of the
Valois
Dynasty
under Henry
II;
he was however unable to cure the king's fatal blow to the head,
which he received during a tournament in 1559. Paré stayed in the
service of the Kings of France to the end of his life in 1590,
serving Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III.
William
Harvey was born in
1578 in England. He discovered circulation of the blood in body of
people and animals. He was professor of anatomy and surgery in
London.
William
Harvey's masterpiece is his Exercitatio
Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
(An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in
Living Beings); published in 1628 in the city of Frankfort
(host to an annual book fair that Harvey knew would allow immediate
dispersion of his work), this 72 page book contains the matured
account of the circulation of the blood.
Opening with a simple but clear dedication to King
Charles I,
the quarto has 17 chapters which give a perfectly clear and connected
account of the action of the heart
and the consequent movement of the blood
around the body in a circle. The illustrations that Harvey used,
detailed as they may be, they simply do not 'stand a chance' against
those created after the introduction and confirmation of the
microscope
(used by such men as Leeuwenhoek);
having only a mere lens at his disposal, Harvey was not able to reach
perfect images and thus had to resort to theory – and not practical
evidence – in certain parts of his book. After the first chapter,
which simply outlines past ideas and accepted rules regarding the
heart
and lungs,
Harvey moves on to a fundamental premise to his treatise, stating
that it was extremely important to study the heart
when it was active in order to truly comprehend its true movement; a
task which even he found of great difficulty.
This
initial thought led Harvey's ambition and assiduousness to a detailed
analysis of the overall structure of the heart
(studied with less hindrances in cold-blooded animals.) After this,
Harvey goes on to an analysis of the arteries,
showing how their pulsation depends upon the contraction of the left
ventricle,
while the contraction of the right
ventricle
propels its charge of blood into the pulmonary
artery.
Whilst doing this, the physician reiterates the fact that these two
ventricles
move together almost simultaneously and not independently like had
been thought previously by his predecessors. This discovery was made
while observing the heart
of such animals as the eel
and several other types of fish;
indeed, the general study of countless animals was of utmost
importance to the physician: among the ones already cited, we can add
the study of the snail,
the invisible
shrimp,
the chick
before its hatching and even the pigeon. A digression to an
experiment can be made to this note: using the inactive heart
of a dead pigeon
and placing upon it a finger wet with saliva,
Harvey was able to witness a transitory and yet incontrovertible
pulsation. He had just witnessed the heart's
ability to recover from fatigue.
This
process was later performed on the human body (in the image on the
left): the physician tied a tight ligature onto the upper arm of a
person. This would cut off blood
flow from the arteries
and the veins.
When this was done, the arm below the ligature
was cool and pale, while above the ligature
it was warm and swollen. The ligature was loosened slightly, which
allowed blood
from the arteries
to come into the arm, since arteries are deeper in the flesh than the
veins. When this was done, the opposite effect was seen in the lower
arm. It was now warm and swollen. The veins
were also more visible, since now they were full of blood.
Harvey then noticed little bumps in the veins,
which he realized were the valves
of the veins,
discovered by his teacher, Hieronymus
Fabricius.
Harvey tried to push blood
in the vein
down the arm, but to no avail. When he tried to push it up the arm,
it moved quite easily. The same effect was seen in other veins
of the body, except the veins
in the neck. Those veins
were different from the others - they did not allow blood
to flow up, but only down. This led Harvey to believe that the veins
allowed blood
to flow to the heart,
and the valves
maintained the one way flow.
It
is also important to state how Harvey had theorized the existence of
capillaries:
however, unable to discern them due to the age in which he lived in
and the consequent scarcity of instruments at this disposal (as I
have already mentioned, he had but a mere lens with which to conduct
experiments), the physician was never truly capable of understanding
how blood
passed from the arterioles
into the venules.
It is also important to cite how many men had actually come close to
the discovery of the circulation of the blood:
ranging from the Greek Europhiles,
Ibn
Al-Nafis,
Renaldus
Columbus,
Michael
Servetus
and to Andrea
Cesalpino
(just to cite a few), we can truly say that this renowned discovery
was only a matter of time. However, all of these men had only
theorized the circular (systemic) circulation of the blood;
it was William Harvey who truly determined the validity of this fact
through experimental means.
Malpigi
was Italian doctor. He made many researches by microscope. He was the
first specialist, who described blood’s vessels. Also Malpigi
described structure of skin, kidneys and lungs.
Malpighi
used the microscope
for studies on skin,
kidney,
and for the first interspecies comparison of the liver.
He greatly extended the science of embryology.
The use of microscopes enabled him to describe the development of the
chick
in its egg,
and discovered that insects
(particularly, the silk
worm)
do not use lungs
to breathe, but small holes in their skin called tracheae.
Later he falsely concluded that plants had similar tubules. However,
he observed that when a ringlike portion of bark was removed on a
trunk a swelling of the tissues would occur above the ring. He
correctly interpreted this as growth stimulated by food coming down
from the leaves, and being blocked above the ring. He was the first
to see capillaries and discovered the link between arteries and veins
that had eluded William
Harvey.
Malpighi
is regarded as the founder of microscopic anatomy and the first
histologist.
Many microscopic anatomical structures are named after him, including
a skin layer (Malpighi
layer)
and two different Malpighian
corpuscles
in the kidneys
and the spleen,
as well as the Malpighian
tubules
in the excretory system of insects.
He
also studied chick
embryo development with detailed drawings and discovered taste
buds
of human tongue. Some of his studies he made by vivisection.
He also studied the anatomy of a brain
and concluded that this organ is a gland.
In terms of modern endocrinology this deduction is correct because
neurotransmitter substances represent paracrine hormones, and the
hypothalamus of the brain has long been recognized for its
hormone-secreting capacity. He was also among the first to study
human fingerprints.[1]
His
treatise 'De polypo cordis' (1666) was important towards
understanding how blood clots and its composition. He may have been
the first person to see red blood cells under a microscope. He
described how the form of a blood clot differed in the right vs. the
left sides of the heart.
In
addition to his anatomical studies, he was one of the rare
contemporary scholars who studied plants;
he published his findings in a book Anatomia
Plantarum
in 1671. It was the most exhaustive study of botany at the time. The
Royal Society published it the next year. The great Swedish botanist
Linnaeus
named the genus Malpighia
in honor of Malpighi's work on plants; Malpighia
is the type
genus
for the Malpighiaceae,
a family of tropical and subtropical flowering plants.
After
the dissection of a black male, Malpighi
made some ground-breaking headway into the discovery of the origin of
black skin. Malpighi found that the black pigment was caused by a
layer of mucus just beneath the skin[2]
Galler
was born in 1708 in
Holland. He was founder of physiology. He discovered mechanism of
breathing, voice and speech.
Edward
Jenner
was English doctor. He discovered vaccination from smallpox. He began
use vaccination for protecting to infectious diseases.
In
this time smallpox
was greatly feared, as one in three of those who contracted the
disease died, and those who survived were often badly disfigured.
On
14 May 1796, Jenner tested his theory by inoculating James
Phipps,
a young boy of 8
years, with material from the cowpox blisters of the hand of Sarah
Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom
whose hide hangs on the wall of the library at St George's medical
school (now in Tooting). Blossom's hide commemorates one of the
school's most renowned alumni. Phipps was the 17th case described in
Jenner's first paper on vaccination.
Jenner
inoculated Phipps with cowpox pus in both arms on the same day. The
inoculation was accomplished by scraping the pus from Nelmes'
blisters onto a piece of wood then transferring this to Phipps' arms.
This produced a fever and some uneasiness but no great illness.
Later, he injected Phipps with
variolous
material,
which would have been the routine attempt to produce immunity at that
time. No disease followed. Jenner reported that later the boy was
again challenged with variolacious material and again showed no sign
of infection.
He
continued his research and reported it to the Royal Society, who did
not publish the initial report. After improvement and further work,
he published a report of twenty-three cases. Some of his conclusions
were correct, and some erroneous – modern microbiological and
microscopic methods would make this easier to repeat. The medical
establishment, as cautious then as now, considered his findings for
some time before accepting them. Eventually vaccination was accepted,
and in 1840 the British government banned variolation – the
use of smallpox itself – and provided vaccination –
using cowpox – free of charge.
Jenner's
continuing work on vaccination prevented his continuing his ordinary
medical practice. He was supported by his colleagues and the King in
petitioning Parliament and was granted £10,000 for his work on
vaccination. In 1806 he was granted another £20,000 for his
continuing work.
In
1803 in London he became involved with the Jennerian
Institution, a society
concerned with promoting vaccination to eradicate smallpox.
In 1808, with government aid, this society became the National
Vaccine Establishment. Jenner became a member of the Medical and
Chirurgical Society on its foundation in 1805, and subsequently
presented to them a number of papers. This is now the Royal
Society of Medicine.
In 1806, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Returning
to London in 1811 he observed a significant number of cases of
smallpox after vaccination occurring. He found that in these cases
the severity of the illness was notably diminished by the previous
vaccination. In 1821 he was appointed Physician Extraordinary to King
George IV,
a considerable national honour, and was made Mayor of Berkeley and
Justice of the Peace. He continued his interests in natural history.
In 1823, the last year of his life, he presented his Observations
on the Migration of Birds
to the Royal Society.
Jenner
was found in a state of apoplexy
on 25 January 1823, with his right side paralysed. He never fully
recovered, and eventually died of an apparent stroke (he had suffered
a previous stroke) on 26 January 1823, aged 73. He was survived by
one son and one daughter, his elder son having died of tuberculosis
at the age of 21.
Morton
was American dentist. He invented the method of anaesthetization
during operations. He removed sufferings of his patients and proved
that science could conquer pain.
Born
in Charlton, Massachusetts, William T. G. Morton was the son of James
Morton, a farmer, and Rebecca (Needham) Morton. William found work as
a clerk, printer, and salesman in Boston
before entering Baltimore
College of Dental Surgery
in 1840. In 1841, he gained notoriety for developing a new process to
solder false teeth onto gold plates.[2]
In 1842, he left college without graduating to study in Hartford,
Connecticut
with dentist Horace
Wells,
with whom Morton shared a brief partnership. In 1843 Morton married
Elizabeth Whitman of Farmington,
Connecticut,
the niece of former Congressman Lemuel
Whitman.
Her parents objected to Morton's profession and only agreed to the
marriage after he promised to study medicine. In the autumn of 1844,
Morton entered Harvard
Medical School
and attended the chemistry lectures of Dr. Charles
T. Jackson,
who introduced Morton to the anesthetic properties of ether. Morton
then also left Harvard without graduating.
On
September 30, 1846, Morton performed a painless tooth extraction
after administering ether to a patient. Upon reading a favorable
newspaper account of this event, Boston surgeon Henry
Bigelow
arranged for a now-famous demonstration of ether on October 16, 1846
at the Massachusetts
General Hospital.
At this demonstration Dr. John
Collins Warren
painlessly removed a tumor
from the neck of a Mr. Edward Gilbert Abbott. Following the
demonstration, Morton tried to hide the identity of the substance
Abbott had inhaled, by referring to it as "Letheon",
but it soon was found to be ether.
A
month after this demonstration, a patent
was issued for "letheon", although it was widely known by
then that the inhalant was ether. The medical community at large
condemned the patent as unjust and illiberal in such a humane and
scientific profession. Morton assured his colleagues that he would
not restrict the use of ether among hospitals and charitable
institutions, alleging that his motives for seeking a patent were to
ensure the competent administration of ether and to prevent its
misuse or abuse, as well as to recoup the expenditures of its
development. Morton's pursuit of credit for and profit from the
administration of ether was complicated by the furtive and sometimes
deceptive tactics he employed during its development, as well as the
competing claims of other doctors, most notably his former mentor,
Dr. Jackson. Morton's own efforts to obtain patents overseas also
undermined his assertions of philanthropic intent. Consequently, no
effort was made to enforce the patent, and ether soon came into
general use.
In
December 1846, Morton applied to Congress
for "national recompense" of $100,000, but this too was
complicated by the claims of Jackson and Wells as discoverers of
ether, and so Morton's application proved fruitless. He made similar
applications in 1849, 1851, and 1853, and all failed. He later sought
remuneration for his achievement through a futile attempt to sue the
United States government. The lawyer who represented him was Richard
Henry Dana, Jr.
In
1852 he received an honorary degree from the Washington University of
Medicine in Baltimore, which later became the College of Physicians
and Surgeons.
Morton
performed public service yet again in the autumn of 1862 when he
joined the Army
of the Potomac
as a volunteer surgeon, and applied ether to more than two thousand
wounded soldiers during the battles of Fredericksburg,
Chancellorsville,
and the Wilderness.
Morton
was in New York City in July 1868 when he went to Central
Park
to seek relief from a heat wave, where he collapsed and died soon
after. He is buried at Mount
Auburn Cemetery
in Watertown
and Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
In
1871, a committee of those involved in raising the aforementioned
national testimonial published The
Historical Memoranda Relative to the Discovery of Etherization
to establish Morton as the inventor and revealer of anesthetic
inhalation and to justify pecuniary reward to Morton's family for the
"fearful moral and legal responsibility he assumed in pursuit of
this discovery.[7]
Morton's
life and work were later to become the subject of the 1944 Paramount
Pictures
film The
Great Moment.
The
first use of ether as an anesthetic is commemorated in the Ether
Monument
in the Boston
Public Garden,
but the designers were careful not to choose sides in the debate over
who should deserve credit for the discovery. Instead, the statue
depicts a doctor in medieval Moorish robes and turban.
Raymon
was born in Berlin. He was the first doctor, who used the electrical
current as a medical method. He became the founder of
electrophysiology.
Heinrich
Herman Robert Koch
(11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician.
Koch
was born in 1843 in Hamburg. The invention he had made showed that
bacteria were the reasons of most of diseases. He learned how to find
the bacteria that caused tuberculosis .
He
became famous for isolating Bacillus
anthracis
(1877), the Tuberculosis
bacillus
(1882) and the Vibrio
cholera
(1883) and for his development of Koch's
postulates.
He was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine
for his tuberculosis findings in 1905. He is considered one of the
founders of microbiology—he
inspired such major figures as Paul
Ehrlich
and Gerhard
Domagk.
Heinrich
Hermann Robert Koch was born in Clausthal,
Germany as the son of a mining official. He studied medicine under
Friedrich
Gustav Jakob Henle
at the University
of Göttingen
and graduated in 1866. He then served in the Franco-Prussian
War
and later became district medical officer in Wollstein
(Wolsztyn),
Prussian
Poland.
Working with very limited resources, he became one of the founders of
bacteriology,
the other major figure being Louis
Pasteur.
After
Casimir
Davaine
showed the direct transmission of the anthrax
bacillus between cows, Koch studied anthrax more closely. He invented
methods to purify the bacillus from blood samples and grow pure
cultures. He found that, while it could not survive outside a host
for long, anthrax built persisting endospores
that could last a long time.
These
endospores,
embedded in soil, were the cause of unexplained "spontaneous"
outbreaks of anthrax. Koch published his findings in 1876, and was
rewarded with a job at the Imperial Health Office in Berlin in 1880.
In 1881, he urged the sterilization
of surgical instruments using heat.
In
Berlin, he improved the methods he used in Wollstein, including
staining and purification techniques, and bacterial growth media,
including agar
plates
(thanks to the advice of Angelina and Walther
Hesse)
and the Petri
dish,
named after its inventor, his assistant Julius
Richard Petri.
These devices are still used today. With these techniques, he was
able to discover the bacterium causing tuberculosis
(Mycobacterium
tuberculosis)
in 1882 (he announced the discovery on 24 March). Tuberculosis was
the cause of one in seven deaths in the mid-19th century.
In
1883, Koch worked with a French research team in Alexandria,
Egypt,
studying cholera.
Koch identified the vibrio
bacterium that caused cholera, though he never managed to prove it in
experiments. The bacterium had been previously isolated by Italian
anatomist Filippo
Pacini
in 1854, but his work had been ignored due to the predominance of the
miasma
theory of disease.
Koch was unaware of Pacini's work and made an independent discovery,
and his greater preeminence allowed the discovery to be widely spread
for the benefit of others. In 1965, however, the bacterium was
formally renamed Vibrio
cholera Pacini 1854.
In
1885, he became professor of hygiene
at the University
of Berlin,
then in 1891 he was made Honorary Professor of the medical
faculty
and Director of the new Prussian
Institute for Infectious Diseases
(eventually renamed as the Robert
Koch Institute),
a position from which he resigned in 1904. He started traveling
around the world, studying diseases in South Africa, India, and Java.
Probably
as important as his work on tuberculosis, for which he was awarded a
Nobel Prize (1905), are Koch's
postulates,
which say that to
establish that an organism is the cause of a disease,
it must be:
- found in all cases of the disease examined
After
Koch's success the quality of his own research declined (especially
with the fiasco
over his ineffective TB cure "tuberculin"),
although his pupils found the organisms responsible for diphtheria,
typhoid,
pneumonia,
gonorrhoea,
cerebrospinal meningitis,
leprosy,
bubonic
plague,
tetanus,
and syphilis,
among others, by using his methods.
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