Overview of the Development of Western Medicine
What the people of today call Western medicine, the full name of which is "modern and contemporary Western medicine", originated in the Western countries in the modern period, and was developed by scholars in the Western countries in the modern period after they discarded the medicine of the ancient Western countries. Since it originated in the West, we are accustomed to calling it Western medicine. In China in the past it was called New Medicine, as opposed to Old Medicine (TCM).
After the Renaissance, Western medicine began the transition from empirical to experimental medicine. 1543, Vesalius published his Treatise on the Construction of the Human Body, which established the science of human anatomy. This signaled both the resurrection of an ancient discipline at a new level and the beginning of a new journey in medicine.
In the 17th century, the application of experiments and measurements began to put the life sciences on a scientific track, marked by Harvey's discovery of the circulation of blood. With the rise of experimentation, the emergence of many scientific instruments, microscope is one of them, microscope to bring people to a new level of understanding. 18th century Mogany put the understanding of disease by the symptoms pushed to the organ, the establishment of pathological anatomy, for the study of biological causes of disease opened the way, in addition, the invention of cowpox inoculation, the public **** some of the problems of health and social medicine attracted people's attention.
By the middle of the 19th century, the German pathologist Virchow (Virchow) advocated cytopathology, which explained the causes of disease as changes in cellular form and configuration. Cytopathology confirmed the microscopic material basis of disease, enriched and developed morphopathology, and opened up a new phase of pathology.
In the second half of the 19th century, Pasteur proved that fermentation and infectious diseases were caused by microorganisms, and the German Koch (Koch R.) discovered Vibrio cholerae, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and Bacillus anthracis, etc., and improved the methods of culturing bacteria and bacterial staining methods, and the majority of the major disease-causing organisms were discovered successively in this period. Pasteur also used the method of weakening the virulence of microorganisms first vaccine research, thus creating the classical immunology, later, in the Pasteur Institute of the Russian Mechnikov (Mechnikovl I.) systematic elaboration of the phenomenon of swallowing divorced and the immunity of certain infectious diseases phenomenon.
In clinical medicine, the 19th century, diagnostics has made great progress, percussion method in the clinical application; Laennec (Laennec R.) invented the stethoscope; many clinical diagnostic aids, such as blood pressure measurement, body temperature measurement, body cavity mirror examination are in the 19th century began to be applied. 19th century after the mid-19th century, anatomical development and anesthesia, antiseptic and aseptic method. application, the development of foreign science, played a decisive role in the rapid development of this science from the beginning.
Toward the end of the 19th century, body cavity surgery was generally developed, so that many clinical specialties (such as gynecology, urology, ophthalmology, etc.) in addition to the conduct of internal disposition, surgical methods also gained an important position. Pharmacology, in the early 19th century, some of the active ingredients of plant drugs have been extracted. To the end of the 19th century, aspirin was synthesized, and then the synthesis and refinement of various drugs continue to develop.
In the 19th century, preventive medicine and medical countermeasures to protect health has gradually become a matter of legislation and administration. Labor hygiene, nutrition and food hygiene, school hygiene arose one after another. the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, hygiene in the division of social hygiene, which aims to study the health of the people, the causes of morbidity and mortality and the methods of fighting them. In addition, Britain Nightingale (Nightingale F.) founded the School of Nursing in 1860 to disseminate its nursing ideas and raise the status of nursing, making nursing a science.
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Origins of Western Medicine
Early in the history of mankind, medicine emerged as a philosophy. Humans came up with a variety of medical theories based on their understanding of their own bodies. Ancient Western medicine originated in Ancient Greece, and its founder was Hippocrates. Ancient Western medicine's "four fluids doctrine" holds that the human body is composed of blood, mucus, yellow bile, black bile, and that each part is interconnected, and that the body is filled with a variety of fluids, and that the balance of these fluids is the basic condition for the body to survive, and that the balance of these fluids is the basic condition for the body to survive. the basic conditions for survival, their balance or not is reflected in the color, temperament and disposition;
At the same time, the medicine of the ancient Western countries also emphasized the interconnection of the mind and the body, the human body and nature, and attached great importance to maintaining good health, believing that health is mainly dependent on the influence of factors such as lifestyle, mental and emotional state, environment, diet, exercise, peace of mind and willpower; the medical system of the ancient Western countries s medical system required that doctors should pay special attention to the study of the specificity and uniqueness of each patient's individual health, so it focused on the patient rather than the disease, and emphasized active cooperation between the patient and the doctor.?
By the 17th century, the doctrine of the "four humors" had come under severe attack, as it was considered an empty theory without any material basis. Since then, scholars in Western countries have rejected the ancient Western medicine and adopted the correct research methodology to develop a new system of medicine based on science and experimentation in the modern period, which is the modern and contemporary Western medicine, and the Western medicine that is being developed today in various countries and nations all over the world.
Scientific progress has made modern Westerners realize that nature has its own laws of motion, which cannot be explained by people's will or conjecture, but can only be expressed clearly by mechanical theories and in geometrical and mathematical language. This mechanistic point of view greatly promoted the development of medicine, people began to think that the body's discomfort does not vary with the individual, in fact, any disease is due to some kind of injury within the body, drugs and surgery can cure or alleviate the disease.
Late in the 20th century, the "socio-psycho-biological" model of integrative medicine emerged in modern Western countries, and with the development of systems biology and systems biotechnology, the 21st century began to move towards the post-genomic era of systems medicine and personalized health care.
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