Heart disease and cancer have been reduced in Scotland.
People are living longer by 6 hours per day, 1 week a month and 3 moths per year, all of that thanks to
medical science.
Life expectation in decreasing in UK, no idea why.
1-Human Achievements:
We know about this because of the artefacts that people find:
Jewellery: 100.000 years ago, trying to make themselves unit.
Paint pot: 100.000 years ago,
Cave paintings: 40.000 years ago,
Sandals:10000 years ago, they discovered it was more comfortable.
Alcohol consumption:9000 years ago, earliest biochemical experiments (fermentation)
Shoes: 5.500 years ago
Wheel:5000 years ago
2-Prehistoric medicine:
Medical aspects associateds with this people based on archaeological findings. There are cave paintings and some artefacts.
The general idea was that diseases were caused by spirits, super natural forces. There are some evidences in the paintings that
they performance ceremonies with spirit healers or shamen to treat the sick. Natural materials were used to heal in these
ceremonies like animal blood or special plants (possible early discover of morphine, digitalis,).
Evidence of a woman buried in a cave in Spain with a hole in her skull. A hole from the inside out, a sinus that did not kill
her so someone must have been taking care of her, the reason why we do medical sciences: to care of other living beings.
2.1-Trepanning (trephining)
The earliest known form of surgery: deliberated made holes (up to 5cm across) in
ancient skulls. Deliberate operation while the subject was still alive. Bone regrowth
indicates that the subject survived the procedure.
Reason for trepanning not known but may have been to release evil spirits from sick
person (? headaches/ epilepsy).
3-Ancient Egyptian Medicine: 4.000-525 BC
We have detailed information recorded in papyrus and the discovering of the Roseta Stone in the middle of the 19 th century
allowed us to translate them.
They also thought all disease were caused by super natural forces and identified Shamans-Physicians that investigated
specific cause of disease and adopted magic rituals, talismans and starting to prepare medicines as treatments. Physicians
were often priests of the goddess, Sekhmet (god of war, pestilence, desert).
As time went on physicians became specialised: there were experts on the eyes, the stomach and bowels (intestinos), internal
fluids and “the guardian of the anus”.
This papyrus recorded the identification of the common diseases by then:
• Schistosomiasis: they lived by the Nilo. A parasite that lives in a fresh water snail and makes its way
into human beings.
• Malaria: mosquitos around the Nilo
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