History of Healthcare

  • Period: 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE

    Early Beginnings

  • 3900 BCE

    Disease caused by?

    Believed diseases were caused by spirits.
  • 3600 BCE

    Treatments for sick?

    Exorcise evil spirits, early form Trephining.
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines used today

    Digitalis, chewed to strengthen and slow the heartbeat. Quinine, controls fever, relieves muscle spasms, and helps prevent malaria. Belladonna and Atropine, also help relieve muscle spasms, especially in GI pain. Morphine, effective medication for treating pain, but very addicting. Only used when nothing else helps.
  • Period: 2999 BCE to 399 BCE

    Ancient Times

  • 2900 BCE

    Ancient Egyptians

    They were the earliest people to keep accurate health records. The physicians were priests. They used medicines to heal disease, learned how to splint, treated disorders by bloodletting with leaches.
  • 1900 BCE

    Ancient Chinese

    Early medical pioneers learned to treat variety of illness and disease with stone tools, that eventually evolved into acupuncture, still used today.
  • 900 BCE

    Ancient Greeks

    The first people to study that diseases and illnesses might be caused by natural causes and not spirits. Bodies were not allowed to be to be dissected due to religious customs. Hippocrates based his research on anatomy, and wrote the standard of ethics called the Oath of Hippocrates.
  • 100

    Ancient Romans

    They were the first to organize medical care. They sent medical equipment and physicians to care for wounded soldiers. They used masks to protect themselves from infection and bad odors. They build medical building meant for the sick, and to take care of them.
  • Period: 400 to 800

    Dark Age

  • 500

    Stopped the study of medicine…

    They stopped studying medicine for 1,000 years because the church had believed life and death were in Gods hands. They had no interest in how the human body worked.
  • 700

    How did they treat disease?

    their primary treatment was prayer. medication consisted of herbal mixtures, and care was custodial.
  • Period: 800 to 1400

    Middle Ages

  • 1100

    Epidemics

    They caused millions of deaths, the Bubonic plague alone killed 60 million people. Other diseases like smallpox, diphtheria, syphilis, and tuberculosis, are not always life threatening like they were back then.
  • Period: 1350 to

    Renaissance

  • 1450

    Rebirth?

    Built universities and medical schools for research. Dissection finally accepted for the study of the body. Development of printing press, published books.
  • Period: 1501 to

    16th and 17th Centuries

  • 1515

    Leonardo Da Vinci

    Studied and recorded the anatomy of the body.
  • 1550

    Gabriele Fallopius

    discovered the fallopian tubes in the female body.
  • 1563

    Bartolommeo Eustachio

    discovcered the Eustachian tube.
  • William Harvey

    physiology, described the circulation of blood and pumping of the heart.
  • Antonie von Leeuwenhoek

    Made microscope, claimed there is life smaller than we can see. Found bacteria that caused tooth decay, found germs that that cause disease.
  • Apothecaries

    Early pharmacies made in those times.
  • Period: to

    18th Century

  • Benjamin Franklin

    discovered bifocals, found that colds could be contagious.
  • Period: to

    19th and 20th

  • Period: to

    21st Century