Within a few centuries of (Hippocrates) death, his writings and teachings became indiscriminately mixed with those of his followers and other Greek physicians . . .. The thread that bound the Hippocratic Corpus together, was the conviction that health and disease are strictly natural phenomena—no gods need apply. As civilizations rose and fell over the next fifteen hundred years, the kernel of medical knowledge passed from the Greeks to the Romans, from the Romans to the Muslims and from the Muslims to medieval Europe.
—Robert Adler
Science journalist
In 4000 BC Sumerian physicians recorded a method for a “urinalysis” on clay tablets, and in ancient India “physicians” were able to diagnose what we refer to today as diabetes because the affected individuals urine “tasted sweet and to which ants were attracted.”
The ancient Egyptian term for doctor or physician is “wabau.” This title, wabau, has a long history. The earliest known “physician” was Hesy-Ra. He practiced in Egypt and was the “Chief of Dentists and Physicians” to King Djoser, who reigned in 2600 BC.
The lady Peseshet (living around 2400 BC) is considered the first recognized woman doctor. She is thought to have been the mother of Akhethotep, and on a stela dedicated to her in his tomb she is referred to as imy-r swnwt, which has been translated as “Lady Overseer of the Lady Physicians” (swnwt is the feminine of swnw).
There were many specialties, ranks, and limits in the field of Egyptian medicine. Royalty employed their own swnw, even their own specialists. There were doctor inspectors, overseers, and chief doctors. Known ancient Egyptian specialists are ophthalmologist, gastroenterologist, proctologist, dentist, “doctors who supervise butchers,” and inspectors of liquids (testing fluids for poisons). The ancient Egyptian term for proctologist, neru phuyt, translates to “shepherd of the anus.”
The ancient Egyptians used flax-linen fiber and animal fiber (shreds of tendons) to suture wounds as early as 3000 BC.
The first reported artificial eye was dated back to 2800 BC. The eye was discovered in a six-foot-tall woman in the “Burnt City” in ancient Iran. The eye is hemispherical in shape and is made of tar mixed with animal fat. Its surface is covered with a thin veneer of gold, engraved with a circular iris and gold lines patterned to mimic the sun’s rays. It is thought that the woman was a prophetess and the eye was designed to glitter and give her special powers. Studies of the eye socket showed that the artificial eye was worn for the woman’s lifetime.
Ayurveda is a traditional medicine that is thought to have originated on the Indian subcontinent about 2000 BC during the Vedic Period of India. Ayurveda developed over thousands of years; however, the compendiums Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita, and a later compendium of the physician Bhela, are made up of the earliest information related to diagnosis, therapy, diet, and general health rules. Ayurveda, a Sanskrit word, translates as “the science of life,” and the system employs herbs, spices, alchemy, oils, massage, yoga, and meditation.
Egyptian medical papyri are ancient Egyptian texts written on papyrus to transmit a set of accepted medical procedures to all physicians of the time. The papyri give observations and collections of information deemed valuable and effective by the author. The papyri give details on specific diseases, diagnostic signs and tests, and remedies ranging from magical spells, amulets, herbal medicines, and surgeries.
Medical knowledge in ancient Egypt enjoyed an excellent reputation world-wide. Rulers of distant empires of Africa, Europe, and Asia would ask the Egyptian pharaoh to send their finest personal physicians to treat and heal their loved ones. Egyptians had the most advanced knowledge of human anatomy. In the mummification process the priests and technicians who preserved the mummies learned how to insert a long hooked implement through the nostrils to break through the thin skull bones of the brain case and extract the brain, and through the left groin they were able to remove the intact organs of the abdominal and thoracic cavities.
Egyptian physicians were aware of the pulse and the connection of the beating of the heart and the pulse. The original Egyptian author of the Smith Papyrus knew of the “cardiovascular system,” but he thought it was unimportant to distinguish between blood vessels, tendon, ligaments, and nerves. Egyptian physicians developed their theories of “channels” that transported air, water, and blood to the body by creating analogies with the River Nile. If the river were to become blocked, the crops, land, and livestock would all suffer—so if a person was unhealthy one of the therapies they would use was a laxative to unblock the “channels.”
In addition to prayers to the gods and kindly spirits, the Egyptian physicians recommended that one could stay healthy by practicing good personal hygiene. This included the washing of the body and the shaving of hair, including the hair of the head, body, and under the arms.
Surgery of some form was a common practice of Egyptian physicians for repairing physical injury. They recognized three categories of injuries: treatable, contestable, and untreatable.
Trauma deemed to be treatable was corrected quickly. Contestable injuries were those from which the patient could survive without surgery, so those put in this category were initially observed, and if the patient survived, surgical attempts could be performed for functional or cosmetic reasons at a later date. Surgeons of the day used knives, hooks, drills, forceps, pincers, scales, spoon, saws, and a vase with burning incense to fend off evil spirits.
Circumcision of males was the norm in ancient Egypt, as illustrated by Herodotus in his Histories. The uncircumcised cultures were frequently noted in writings, and the uncircumcised Liberians were frequently referenced, and those soldiers who returned from military campaigns would routinely bring home uncircumcised phalli as trophies. The only known depiction of the procedure in The Tomb of the Physician, the burial site of Ankh-Mahor at Saqquarra, shows adolescents or adults, not infants, undergoing the procedure.
Prosthetics, including artificial toes and eye balls, were commonly constructed and used; typically they were more for cosmetic reasons than function. In preparation for burial prosthetic parts were used to replace those lost during life.
The common practices of surgery, mummification, and autopsy for medical and religious practices brought the Egyptians a vast knowledge of human anatomy and organ function. The function of most major organs were correctly surmised and recorded. Blood was correctly described as a transportation medium for vitality (oxygen and food) and waste (carbon dioxide). The exception to these correct observations of organ and tissue function was the heart and brain, whose functions were switched.
Dentistry was an important field of medicine in Egypt, and as an independent health profession dates back to 3000 BC. The Egyptian diet was typically high in abrasives because of the milling process of grains used in bread making. Between 4000 BC and 1000 BC the degree of worn teeth significantly declined because of improvements in the milling equipment.
All mummified Egyptians have teeth in poor states of anatomical health. Dental disease could have direct or indirect participation in the individual’s cause of death. Djedmaatesankh was a musician from Thebes who died at the age of thirty-five from extensive dental disease, including abscessed teeth.
The Instruction of Ankhsheshonq contains the maxim “There is no tooth that rots yet stays in place.” There are no documents that show the procedure for the surgical extraction of teeth, nor are there any known Egyptian instruments that would be required to remove teeth. Dentures have been found; however, it is not clear if they were used during life or if they were used only for after death cosmetics. Pain would have been reduced by means of opium topically applied or swallowed as pills.
Ancient Egyptian Medical Texts
Kahun Papyrus, called the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus, is dated back to 1800 BC. It is thought to be the oldest medical text. It was discovered at El-Lahun by Flinders Petrie in 1889, translated by F. Griffeth in 1893, and published in The Petrie Papyri: Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob. The papyrus contains thirty-five separate paragraphs relating to women’s health issues, including gynecological diseases, fertility, pregnancy, and contraception.
Ramesseum Papyri consists of seventeen individual papyri that were found in the great temple of the Ramesseum. The text concentrates on diseases and examination of the eyes, gynecology, paediatrics, muscles and tendons.
The Berlin Papyrus is the largest study of the Egyptian medical papyri and was carried out by Berlin University and entitled Medizin der alten Agypter (Medicine of Ancient Egypt).
The Greater Berlin Papyrus, also known as the Brugsch Papyrus (3038 BC) was discovered by Giuseppe Passalacqua. It consists of 24 pages and is very similar to the Ebers Papyrus. It was later sold to Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (1827) along with other antiquities for the Berlin Museum. The Greater Berlin Papyrus was translated into German in 1909.
The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus is the oldest known surgical document (1600 BC). It is named for the Egyptian archeologist who purchased it in the 1860s. It is written in the ancient Egyptian hieratic script and it contains procedures written from more than1000 years earlier. It is the only surviving copy of part of an ancient Egyptian textbook on trauma surgery. The document consists of twenty two pages (17 pages on the recto and 5 pages on the verso). Forty-eight trauma cases are examined, each with a detailed description of the physical examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. An extremely important feature of the text is that it demonstrates that the heart, large blood vessels attached to the heart and liver, liver, spleen, kidneys, ureters, and bladder were all familiar anatomy to the Egyptians.
Imhotep, thought to be the first physician named, is credited with the authorship and content of the papyrus. However, the papyrus is thought to be the result of the combined efforts of many people.
The Ebers Papyrus was also purchased by Edwin Smith in 1862. It gets its name from Georg Ebers who purchased the papyrus in 1872. The text itself dates back to 1550 BC and consists of 700 remedies (most of which are plants) on 110 pages and stretches 20 meters in length, making it the longest of the Egyptian medical papyri. The Ebers Papyrus covers many subjects including migraine headaches, dermatology, gastrointestinal and digestive diseases, mental disorders, dementia, depression, parasites, tumors, trauma, dentistry, and gynecological diseases—and it makes many references to treating some diseases with religious incantations and spells.
Specific remedies from the Ebers Papyrus include:
Aloe vera – burns, gastric ulcers, skin disorders and allergies
Basil – heart remedy
Balsam Apple (Apple of Jerusalem) – laxative and liver stimulant
Bayberry – diarrhea, ulcers and hemorrhoids
Caraway – soothed digestion and breath freshener
Colchicum (Citrullus colocynthus) – also known as meadow saffron, was used for rheumatism and reducing swelling and inflammation
Dill – employed for its laxative and diuretic properties
Fenugreek – prescribed for respiratory disorders, to cleanse the stomach and calm the liver and pancreas
Frankincense – prescribed for sore throat, larynx infections, to stop vomiting, and stop bleeding
Garlic – was prescribed for the Hebrew slaves as a tonic
Licorice – used as a mild laxative, expectorant, and to relieve chest and respiratory problems
Onion – taken as a prevention for colds and cardiovascular ailments
Parsley – prescribed as a diuretic
Thyme – prescribed as a pain reliever
Turmeric – prescribed for open wounds
Poppy – prescribed for pain, anesthesia and insomnia
Coriander – prescribed for urinary complaints and cystitis
Pomegranate root and skin of the fruit – prescribed for “snakes of the belly” or tape worms; the alkaloids in the pomegranate paralyzed the worms and they could then be expelled.
Persian henna – prescribed for hair loss
The Hearst Papyrus was sold to the Hearst Egyptian Expedition in 1901. It is dated at 2000 BC. The Hearst Papyrus was published for the general public in 1905; however, controversy still surrounds the authenticity of this papyri. The text concentrates on treatments for urinary system diseases, blood diseases, hair and scalp issues, and bites of insects and vermin.
The London Medical Papyrus is located in the British Museum and dates back to the reign of Tutankhamun. Its text focuses on the treatment of diseases by means of magic spells and incantations.
The Carlsberg Papyrus is the property of the Carlsberg Foundation. Its text focuses on the diseases of the eyes and pregnancy.
The Chester Beatty Medical Papyrus is named after Sir Alfred Chester Beatty who donated nineteen separate papyri to the British Museum. The remedies noted in these texts are devoted to magic as a therapy for headaches and analrectal afflictions.
The Brooklyn Papyrus focuses specifically on snake, scorpion, and tarantula bites and how to treat the venoms. The Brooklyn Papyrus is housed in the Brooklyn Museum.
Bloodletting (the practice of extracting blood from a patient to cure or prevent a disease) has been one of the most common medical practices for more than 2,000 years. A drawing from an ancient Egyptian tomb (1500 BC) shows an example of leeches being applied to a patient for the purpose of bloodletting.
The ancient practice of bloodletting enjoyed a widespread geographical popularity including places like ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptians, Greeks, Mayans and Aztecs, and India (during ancient Ayurvedic medicine).
The practice of bloodletting became even more popular after the time of the Greek philosopher and physician Galen, who taught Hippocrates that diseases occurred because of an imbalance of four humors (body fluids) of blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Galen made complex prescriptions relating to how much blood should be withdrawn related to the patient’s age and symptoms, the weather, and so forth.
In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the barber surgeons performed bloodletting with “great enthusiasm,” and physicians bled patients at every opportunity. An exceptionally large volume of blood was withdrawn from President George Washington by his physician as the treatment for a sore throat, thus accelerating the onset of his death. The practice of bloodletting was still widely used into the twentieth century and was recommended by the highly-regarded Canadian physician William Osler in the 1923 edition of his medical textbook.
Medical scholars trace the origins of Western medicine to what was considered a “radical movement” in ancient Greek society, when Hippocrates and his followers first separated the art of doctoring from the practices of witches, magicians, and priests. A century before, the “Father of Surgery” emerged from the East.
The Indian physician Sushruta (600 BC) describes cataract surgery in his book Sushruta Samhita (Treatise of Sushruta) in which he uses a curved needle to push the diseased lens back into the eye and to the side to move it out of the line of focus. The eye could no longer focus the image from all directions; nevertheless the operation was life changing and provided for the return of some vision.
Hippocrates, born on the Greek island of Kos in 460 BC, may or may not have personally written the early Greek texts of the Hippocratic Corpus. However, it is clear from these manuscripts that some physicians of the period were beginning to insist that disease be attributed to natural or material causes, such as to the patient’s environment, diet, or daily habits rather than divine intervention.
One text, On the Sacred Disease, specifically excludes mystical influences in epilepsy, which the Greeks had looked at as a strange affliction that reflected some divine curse or power, instead of understanding the seizures simply as a disease of the brain.
For the first time, the Hippocratic physicians attributed thoughts and feelings to the brain. They urged careful and close observations of individual patients, as well as low risk conservative and gentle therapies that were designed to augment the body’s own healing and restorative powers. Works of surgery do appear in the large Hippocratic corpus, amassed between 400 and 100 BC, and thus many of the Coan School were not bound to this code. Hippocrates himself could not have been the sole author of the oath.
The Hippocratic movement also demanded a high level of professionalism of doctors, a code that was to become a center piece of the legendary Hippocratic Oath (430 BC). According to Hippocratic Codes, doctors were to seek to support and never to harm their patients; doctors should be honest and well kept, protect the privacy of the houses that they enter, and avoid any type of corruption— including sexual relations with patients.
Below is an English translation the original Hippocratic Oath and covenant:
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art—if they desire to learn it—without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but to no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but I will withdraw in favor of such men (barbers) as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regards to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come, if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.
The early Greek physicians were more likely to be craftsmen and traveling “healers” than priests and the organized Hippocratic medical theories increased the likelihood of a successful outcome of their therapies. The Hippocratic approach was really good nursing care rather than priestly prayers to a celestial god begging for favor in return for a sacrifice.
In On Decorum, Hippocrates writes:
Between wisdom and medicine there is no gulf fixed; in fact medicine possesses all the qualities that make for wisdom. It has disinteredness, shamefastedness, modesty, reserve, sound opinion, judgment, quiet, pugnacity, purity, sententious speech, and knowledge of the things good and necessary for life, selling of that which cleanses, freedom from superstition, pre-excellence divine. What they (the patient) have, they have in opposition to intemperance, vulgarity, greed, concupiscence, robbery, shamelessness. This is knowledge of one’s income, use of what conducts to friendship, the way and manner to be adopted towards one’s children and money. Now with medicine a kind of wisdom is an associate, seeing that the physician has both these things and indeed most things . . .
In fact it is especially knowledge of the gods that by medicine is woven into the stuff of the mind. For in affections generally, and especially in accidents, medicine is found mostly to be held in honour by the gods. Physicians have given place to the gods. For in medicine that which is powerful is not in excess. In fact, though physicians take many things in hand, many diseases are also overcome for them spontaneously. All that medicine has now mastered it will supply thence. The gods are the real physicians, though people do not think so. But the truth of this statement is shown by the phenomena of disease, which are co-extensive with the whole of medicine, changing in form or in quality, sometimes being cured by surgery, sometimes being relieved, either through treatment or through regimen. The information I have given on these matters must serve as a summary.
. . . As all I have said is true, the physician must have at his command a certain ready wit, as dourness is repulsive both to the healthy and to the sick. He must also keep a most careful watch over himself, and neither expose much of his person nor gossip to laymen, but say only what is absolutely necessary. For he realizes that gossip may cause criticism of his treatment. He will do none at all of these things in a way that savours of fuss or of show. Let all these things be thought out, so that they may be ready beforehand for use as required. Otherwise there must always be lack when need arises.
. . . You must have prepared in advance emollients classified according to their various uses, and get ready powerful draughts prepared according to formula after their various kinds. You must make ready beforehand purgative medicines, also, taken from suitable localities, prepared in the proper manner, after their various kinds and sizes, some preserved so as to last a long time, others fresh to be used at the time, and similarly with the rest.
. . . When you enter a sick man’s room, having made these arrangements, that you may not be at a loss, and having everything in order for what is to be done, know what you must do before going in. For many cases need, not reasoning, but practical help. So you must from your experience forecast what the issue will be. To do so adds to one’s reputation, and the learning thereof is easy.
. . . On entering bear in mind your manner of sitting, reserve, arrangement of dress, decisive utterance, brevity of speech, composure, bedside manners, care, replies to objections, calm self-control to meet the troubles that occur, rebuke of disturbance, readiness to do what has to be done. In addition to these things be careful of your first preparation. Failing this, make no further mistake in the matters wherefrom instructions are given for readiness.
. . . Make frequent visits; be especially careful in your examination, counteracting the things wherein you have been deceived at the changes. Thus you will know the case more easily, and at the same time you will also be more at your ease. For instability is characteristic of the humours, and so they may also be easily altered by nature and by chance. For failure to observe the proper season or help gives the disease a start and kills the patient, as there was nothing to relieve him. For when many things together produce a result there is difficulty. Sequences of single phenomena are more manageable, and are more easily learnt by experience.
. . . Keep a watch also on the faults of the patients, which often makes them lie about the taking of things prescribed. For through not taking disagreeable drinks, purgative or other, they sometimes die. What they have done never results in a confession, but the blame is thrown upon the physician.
. . . The bed also must be considered. The season and the kind of illness will make a difference, Some patients are put into breezy spots, others into covered places or underground. Consider also noises and smells, especially the smell of wine. This is distinctly bad, and you must shun it or change it.
Perform all this calmly and adroitly, concealing most things from the patient while you are attending to him. Give necessary orders with cheerfulness and serenity, turning his attention away from what is being done to him; sometimes reprove sharply and emphatically, and sometimes comfort with solicitude and attention, revealing nothing of the patient’s future or present condition. For many patients through this cause have taken a turn for the worse, I mean by the declaration I have mentioned of what is present, or by a forecast of what is to come.
. . . Let one of your pupils be left in charge, to carry out instructions without unpleasantness, and to administer the treatment. Choose out those who have been already admitted into the mysteries of the art, so as to add anything necessary, and to give treatment with safety. He is there also to prevent those things escaping notice that happen in the intervals between visits. Never put a layman in charge of anything, otherwise if a mischance occur the blame will fall on you. Let there never be any doubt about the points which will secure the success of your plan, and no blame will attach to you, but achievement will bring you pride. So say beforehand all this at the time the things are done, to those whose business it is to have fuller knowledge.
. . . Such being the things that make for good reputation and decorum, in wisdom, in medicine, and in the arts generally, the physician must mark off the parts about which I have spoken, wrap himself round always with the other, watch it and keep it, perform it and pass it on. For things that are glorious are closely guarded among all men. And those who have made their way through them are held in honour by parents and children; and if any of them do not know many things, they are brought to understanding by the facts of actual experience.
The Huangdi Neijing, the “Yellow Emperor’s Inner Cannon,” is the oldest and most revered medical classic in China and is thought to have been assembled by a collection of authors between 300–200 BC. The collection is comprised of two primary works, the Su Wen (Basic Questions) and Ling shu (Spiritual Pivot), that each contains 81 chapters. According to Chinese scholar Paul Unschuld, the Huangdi Neijing “plays a role in Chinese medical history comparable to that of the Hippocratic writings in Europe. Progress and significant paradigm changes have reduced Hippocrates to the honored originator of a tradition that has become obsolete. In contrast, many practitioners of Chinese medicine still consider the Su Wen a valuable source of theoretical inspiration and practical knowledge in modern clinical settings.”
The text is composed of questions put forth by the legendary Yellow Emperor and which are answered. The first text, the Su Wen, poses medical theories and diagnostic procedures; the second text, the Ling Shu, is a collection of acupuncture therapies.
Older Chinese medical texts highlighted the demonic genesis of disease, the Neijing, deals with natural causes of disease including diet, age, lifestyle, and emotions. Additionally, the text proposed other forces and concepts of disease, including yin and yang and qi (life energy or energy flow). The Neijing additionally deals with normal and abnormal functioning of the human body plus diagnostic approaches and original therapies.
According to the Neijing, humans are made up of five “viscera” that are the heart, spleen, lungs, liver, and kidneys and six “bowels” that are the gall bladder, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, urinary bladder, and Triple Burner (the three zones of the chest and abdomen). The organs communicate through meridians or channels that are not physical structures, but rather energetic communications that can be influenced by the insertion of acupuncture needles that can support or depress energy flow.
For thousands of years, the history of pharmacy (the art of compounding and dispensing drugs) paralleled the history of pharmacognosy: the science of compounding drugs from herbs and flowers. In the first century AD, Pedanius Dioscorides, an army surgeon, accumulated and organized all of the known medical uses of plants, herbs, flowers, and elements into a manual that was to be translated and read for more than 1,500 years. Arabs were the first to copy and preserve this remarkable collection of data, which became the basis for Islamic pharmacology, that was again retranslated into Latin.
In modern times a hospital is thought of as an institution—a building full of doctors, nurses, operating rooms, emergency rooms, and a place to have one’s babies—that is capitalized by public funds, corporations, universities, and charities. In the early days of the hospital concept, the system was funded by religious orders and charitable nobility. In ancient Egypt and Greece temples served as centers for the sanctioned healing arts.
King Pandukabhaya of Sri Lanka (400 BC) ordered the construction and operation of “lying-in homes” and hospitals. King Ashoka of India (250 BC) funded numerous hospitals that were permanently staffed with physicians and nurses. During the sixth and seventh centuries the Academy of Gundishapur in the Persian Empire became one of the first teaching hospitals hosting numerous students that were mentored and supervised by physicians.
In 325 AD the First Council of Nicaea caused the Church to provide care for the poor and travelers by constructing hospitals in every cathedral town. The purpose of the early hospitals was to administer to the sick and suffering and to save souls.
The Vienna General Hospital (VGH) opened its doors in1784 and became the world’s largest hospital with more than 2,000 beds. The VGH provided services in the areas of general medicine, surgery, venereal disease, and contagious diseases. It also bragged of a lying-in facility for delivery babies, a tower for the insane, and an orphanage.
Johann Frank, a German physician, was an important leader in the early development of hospitals by encouraging them to keep records. His Complete System of Medical Policy, published in 1779, dealt with hygiene and public health issues.
Dioscorides, a Greek physician, was born in Turkey and practiced in Rome during the reign of Nero. He traveled constantly, collecting and describing as many as 600 different plants in a five volume work entitled De Materia Medica (Regarding Medical Matters), 70 AD, in which he included accurate botanical drawings. His instructions were practical and contained dosages and recipes for compounding the final medicinal products and instructions for the patients.
Dioscorides described the preparation and uses of opium and cannabis (marijuana) for pain and peppermint and wild blackberries for improving digestion. His treatments included concoctions for ulcers, nematodes, and antidotes for specific poisons and hundreds of other remedies.
John Mann, a chemist, noted, “The major triumph and novelty of Dioscorides’ herbal (book) was his ordering of plants according to their pharmacological properties, rather than their botanical family. Many of his plant extracts were undoubtedly effective; for example, those of henbane and mandrake containing tropane alkaloids (naturally occurring nitrogen-containing organic molecules), which were used for pain relief, but his use of hemlock is less convincing: “it prevents the breasts of a virgin growing larger.”
Anatomist Andreas Vesalius’s study of anatomy began with his goal to recover the ancient wisdom of Hippocrates and Galen from the medieval vulgarizations. Vesalius, an ethnic Greek was born in AD 129, and in similar fashion as his predecessor Leonardo da Vinci, who had performed dissections “in the service of science and art,” Vesalius used every opportunity as a professor in Padua and later in Bologna to dissect cadavers, often stolen from graveyards or the gallows.
Vesalius was only 30 years old when he published his first book, On the Fabric of the Human Body, a text that contained seven volumes and was based on his anatomy lectures in Padua. The text was richly illustrated with engravings from the workshop of the Italian painter Titian. Vesalius’s book is considered to be an “exemplar of Renaissance flowering in scientific learning, artistic technique and printing acumen.” It contains detailed and accurate relationships of the skeleton, musculature, cardiovascular system, and urinary and reproductive tracts with labels in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The book is considered an artistic work as well as an anatomical landmark. Drawings depict cadavers or skeletons posed in pastoral landscapes or village scenes. One classic drawing, features a skeleton with its face turned up toward the heavens, leaning on a shovel and gesturing towards a freshly dug grave.
Galen of Pergamon was born in the second century (130–210 AD), and other than Hippocrates, no other Greek physician has influenced the direction of Western medicine more than he. During the peak of the Roman Empire, Galen’s medical knowledge, anatomical descriptions, and the shear volume of writings dominated his followers for more than 1,000 years: “he synthesized medical works of the Hippocratics, Aristotelian biology, and Platonic philosophy, creating a system of medical theory and practice that dominated Western and Islamic medicine until the 19th century.”
According to his written records, Galen employed as many as 20 scribes at a time to keep up with his dictations, and his animal dissections increased the understanding of organ systems:
Upon the occasion of my first visit to Rome I (Galen) completely won the admiration of the philosopher Glaucon by the diagnosis which I made in the case of one of his friends. Meeting me one day in the street he shook hands with me and said: ‘I have just come from the house of a sick man, and I wish that you would visit him with me. He is a Sicilian physician, the same person with whom I was walking when you met me the other day.’ Galen asked, ‘What is the matter with him?’ When coming nearer to me he said, in the frankest manner possible: Gorgias and Apelas told me yesterday that you had made some diagnoses and prognoses which looked to them more like acts of divination than products of the medical art pure and simple. I would therefore like very much to see some proof, not of your knowledge but this extraordinary art which you are said to possess.’ At this very moment we reached the entrance of the patient’s house, and so, to my regret, I was prevented from having any further conversation with him on the subject and from explaining to him how the element of good luck often renders it possible for a physician to give, as it were offhand, diagnoses and prognoses of this exceptional character.
Just as we were approaching the first door, after entering the house, we met a servant who had in his hand a basin which he had brought from the sick room and which he was on his way to empty upon the dung heap. As we passed him I appeared not to pay any attention to the contents of the basin, but at a mere glance I perceived that they consisted of a thin sanio-sanguinolent fluid, in which floated excrementitious masses that resembled shreds of flesh—an unmistakable evidence of disease of the liver. Glaucon and I, not a word having been spoken by either of us, passed on into the patient’s room. When I put out my hand to feel the latter’s pulse, he called my attention to the fact that he had just had a stool, and that owing to the circumstance of his having gotten out of bed, his pulse might be accelerated. It was in fact somewhat more rapid that it should be, but I attributed this to the existence of an inflammation. Then, observing upon the window sill a vessel containing a mixture of hyssop and honey and water, I made up my mind that the patient, who was himself a physician, believed that the malady from which he was suffering was a pleurisy; the pain which he experienced on the right side in the region of the false ribs (and which is also associated with inflammation of the liver) confirming him in this belief, and thus inducing him to order for the relief of the slight accompanying cough the mixture to which I have called attention.
It was then that the idea came into my mind that, as fortune had thrown the opportunity in my way, I would avail myself of it to enhance my reputation in Glaucon’s estimation. Accordingly, placing my hand on the patient’s right side over the false rib, I remarked: ‘This is the spot where the disease is located.’ He, supposing that I must have gained this knowledge by simply feeling his pulse, replied with a look which plainly expressed admiration mingled with astonishment, that I was entirely right. “And,” I added simply to increase his astonishment, “you will doubtless admit that at long intervals you feel impelled to indulge in a shallow, dry cough, unaccompanied by an expectoration.” As luck would have it, he coughed in just this manner almost before I had got the words out of my mouth. At this Glaucon, who had hitherto, not spoken a word, broke out into a volley of praises.
‘Do not imagine,’ I replied, ‘that which you have observed represents the utmost of which medical art is capable in the matter of fathoming the mysteries of disease in a living person. There still remain one or two other symptoms to which I will direct your attention.’ Turning to the patient I remarked: ‘When you draw a longer breath you feel a more marked pain, do you not, in the region which I indicated; and with this pain there is associated sense of weight in the hypochondrium?’ At these words the patient expressed his astonishment and admiration in the strongest possible terms. I wanted to go a step farther and announce to my audience still another symptom which is sometimes observed in the more serious maladies of the liver (scirrhus, for example), but I was afraid that I might compromise the laudation which had been bestowed upon me. It then occurred to me that I might safely make the announcement if I put it somewhat in the form of a prognosis. So I remarked to the patient: ‘You will probably soon experience, if you have not already done so, a sensation of something pulling upon the right clavicle.’ He admitted that he had already noticed this symptom. ‘Then I will give just one more evidence of this power of divination which you believe that I possess. You, yourself, before I arrived on the scene, had made up your mind that your ailment was an attack of pleurisy, etc.’
Glaucon’s confidence in me and in the medical art, after this episode, was unbounded.
Galen was born in what became the western coast of Turkey. He traveled widely prior to taking up residence in Rome. Human dissection was illegal at that time, so his anatomical research was based on pigs, dogs, and Barbary apes (monkeys). He used live dissections (vivisection) to prove the brain could control muscle group movement by cutting nerves. Loss of the ability to vocalize could be accomplished by cutting the laryngeal nerve. To prove that the kidneys produced urine he tied off the ureters and noted that the kidneys would swell with the accumulation of urine that could not be passed into the bladder; and as physician to the gladiators, he could look into the catastrophic wounds of battle to observe human anatomy. He eventually became physician to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Galen envisioned himself as a gifted diagnostician and “heir to the best of the Hippocratic tradition (then over 500 years old).” However, not all of Galen’s medical philosophy, treatments, and anatomical findings were one hundred percent correct: after pondering Hippocrates’s views that disease was the result of “an imbalance of the four humors (liquids) of blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm” he postulated that an imbalance of each separate humor could be related to a human temperament. In other words, he postulated that an abundance of black bile could be related to a melancholic personality.
Galen additionally incorrectly thought that “venous blood was created and pumped by the liver” and that “the arterial blood originated in the heart,” and he believed that “blood passed from the left and right side of the heart through invisible pores.”
The pursuit of philosophy was an essential part of the training of physicians. After the Roman Empire fell, Galen’s influence not only continued; his writings and theories spread through the Arab world and then later into the European Middle Ages and on into the twentieth century.
One of the most notable physicians in medieval medicine and of the Islamic world was Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Rhazes (865–925 AD), who was born in Persia (Iran) and is known to the West as “Rhazes.” He wrote 200 books during his active professional life covering such topics and specialties as philosophy, alchemy, and medicine.
The first of Rhazes’s books was a work on pediatrics and is lionized for extensive descriptions and observations that separated smallpox and measles as separate diseases. He was the first to correlate wounds and lesions of the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system to clinical symptoms.
As well as scholarly books, Rhazes wrote books for the average person who wanted to participate in self-help. In his view on medical ethics he stated that “The doctor’s aim is to do good, even to our enemies . . . My profession forbids us to do harm to our kindred, as it is instituted for the benefit and welfare of the human race.”
Rhazes was well known for contradicting earlier physicians of fame, including Galen, when he determined that they were incorrect in their theories and pontifications. He also laid severe criticism on religious prophets and religions, including Islam. According to legend, Rhazes rejected a physician who volunteered to remove his cataracts, exclaiming, “I have seen enough of the world.” He died blind and generally unhappy.
One of Rhazes pivotal works is Kitab al-hawi fi al-tibb (Comprehensive Book of Medicine, 900 AD), a complete collection of the practice of medicine and observations that his students compiled following his death. This book inspired generations of physicians of the Islamic world, including the revered Avicenna, author of the five volume Cannon of Medicine.
The barber pole, denoted by its red, white, and blue helical stripes, has been employed for centuries as a symbol and marker of the barber’s trade. This tradition dates back to a time during which a barber, in addition to trimming hair, extracted teeth and performed various surgical procedures, including bloodletting, the practice of draining the patient’s blood to encourage healing.
The theory is that the classic barber pole originated from the practice of hanging damp bloody bandages, typically partially cleaned, outside the barber shop on a pole, and as they blew in the wind around the pole, they resulted in the helical pattern that became an advertisement for the barber.
In 1096 French barber-surgeons formed an official brotherhood. In 1210, in an effort to separate academic surgeons from barber-surgeons, the College de Saint Come et Saint Damien of Paris required that the academic surgeons wear long robes and barber-surgeons to wear short robes. The legendary French surgeon, Ambrose Pare began his career as a barber-surgeon and through study and apprenticeship became the most celebrated surgeon of the European Renaissance.
In 1540 the barber-surgeons and academic surgeons in England combined forces to create a single guild: the United Barber-Surgeons Company. However, the two divisions of surgeons were limited in their practices. The barber’s division was required to display the blue and white pole, and the barbers were forbidden to provide advanced surgical procedures, although they were still allowed to extract teeth and perform bloodletting. The academic surgeons were required to display poles featuring red and white stripes and could perform advanced surgical procedures, but they were forbidden to cut hair and shave clients.
Paracelsus was one of the most controversial medical figures of the 16th century. He was the consummate outsider, who was hated by the “orthodox” physicians of his time. He has been elevated to “the first modern medical scientist” and is also revered by many generations of occultists because of his interest in and writings about mysticism.
Paracelsus was born in Einsiedein, Switzerland, in 1493. His full name was Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. There has been an enormous volume of literature written about him. There are two differing views of Paracelsus: the first, is that of medical scholars, the second is that of occultists.
Paracelsus’ father, Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, studied medicine in Tubingen, Germany, and moved to Einsiedein where he practiced medicine and then to Villach in Carinthia, Austria, and it was here that Paracelsus grew up.
It is believed that Paracelsus earned his medical doctorate in 1515 at the medical school located at Ferrara in northern Italy. He then practiced medicine until his death at age forty-eight. Over a ten-year period, Paracelsus traveled, studied, and practiced medicine in Rome, Naples, Sicily, southern Spain, Portugal, Paris, and London. He then traveled to Stockholm, Moscow, and Greece.
Paracelsus arrived in Salzburg in1524, moved to Strasburg, and took up a position as the town physician and Professor of Medicine in Basel in 1526. Upon his arrival in Basel, he was called to the house of a very well-known scholar and printer, Johannes Frobenius, whose right leg was gangrenous. The local physicians could only recommend amputation as the correct course of treatment. However, Paracelsus was able to save the man’s leg.
When he arrived at Basel, his reputation for great medical ability, unorthodox views, and a short temper preceded him. Instantly he was met with serious opposition from both the local apothecaries, whose medical knowledge and skills were quite backward, and from the local medical practitioners, whose views were considered to be very conservative compared to Paracelsus, whose practices were considered at the very least unorthodox!
To fight back, Paracelsus handed out a printed brochure that announced that he was going to give free two hour lectures daily on his own medical experiences and “not on the methods of out of date authorities.”
Paracelsus announced a second innovation: He was going to give regularly scheduled lectures on surgery, and they were going to be in German rather than in the traditional Latin. Paracelsus’ innovative approach to training and marketing to his patients was highly successful and it specifically upset the barber-surgeons, who historically were the ones doing surgery.
The barber-surgeons and the entire population of the town’s physicians united against Paracelsus. They didn’t like his approach to medicine and they didn’t like him. For his part, Paracelsus regularly let them know that he held only contempt and disgust for their approach to medicine and surgery.
After only eleven months in Basel, Paracelsus left rather abruptly (did the town’s doctors and barber-surgeons threaten to charge him with witchcraft and sorcery?) and moved to Alsace. At this time, Paracelsus became an itinerant physician. Throughout the following thirteen years until his death in 1541, he moved to and practiced medicine in sixty-two different towns in Germany and Austria.
Paracelsus wrote papers and articles almost obsessively, and of the twenty-four of his publications printed between 1529 and 1541, at least sixteen were “astrological prognostications.” He was not interested in being an astrological prophet as much as he was interested in astrological medicine and how the weather affected human health.
In a well-known piece from his Pargranum, composed well after he departed Basel, Paracelsus rails against those physicians he had contempt for and he considered to be archaic: “Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana, and all the rest of you, after me and not I after you! Even in the most distant corner there will not be one of you on whom the dogs will not piss. But I will be the king and mine will be the kingdom . . ”
Jolande Jacobe, noted in her 1951 writings on Paracelsus titled Paracelsus: Selected Writings: “Paracelsus regarded medicine as an art and is considered today to be the first modern medical scientist, and as the precursor of microchemistry, antisepsis, modern wound surgery, homeopathy, and many additional ultra-modern achievements.”
Paracelsus was thought by his followers, to be above all, a physician and he based his idea of medicine on four tenets: (1) a philosophical approach; (2) astronomy (medical astrology); (3) alchemy (as a servant of the art of medicine rather than the pursuit of transmutation of base metals into gold; (4) personal moral purity of the physician himself.
Paracelsus believed fully that Nature heals and that the physician can only assist Nature. During his lifetime Paracelsus was considered the “pox of physicians.” He was publically hated and in many cases simply ignored by his contemporaries. He died in poverty at the age of forty-eight in Salzburg on September 24, 1541. Yet he lives on in his many books and publications. Some originals were still being published in 1618.
The Jewish physician Faraj ben Salim translated Katib al-hawi into Latin in 1279, and after it was printed in 1486 under the title Liber Continens, its influence spread. Katib al-hawi is remarkable, not only because of its size, but also for its comprehensive discussions of the practices of Greek, Arabian, and Indian physicians, whose works would otherwise have been lost to the world.
Also influential to Western medicine in Medieval Europe was al-Rhazes’ medical textbook entitled Al-tibbs al-Mansuri (Medicine Dedicated to Mansur).
Ibn Sina, frequently referred to by his Latinized name, Avicenna, was a Persian philosopher-physician who in 1025 penned perhaps the most famous medical book of Medieval Islamic societies, Al-Qanum fi al-tibb (The Canon of Medicine), which was the basis for medical philosophy and teaching for the next 700 years. The second book of this five-volume series presents more than 760 drugs that Ibn Sina judged to be useful, with standards for determining efficacy that laid out the basic tenets of experimental medicine:
· Each drug, unadulterated and unspoiled, should be tested in patients with a single condition.
· The investigator should begin with the smallest dose.
· Efficacious drugs should have a consistent effect.
Ibn Sina believed in investigating the roots of illness. In The Canon of Medicine he wrote, “The knowledge of anything since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health.”
Historian Lawrence Conrad writes that the Canon “covered the various fields of medicine with a precision and thoroughness that gave it authoritative sway over the discipline for hundreds of years, and it ranks as one of the most impressive and enduring achievements of Islamic science.” The iconic Canadian physician, William Osler, described Avicenna as the “author of the most famous medical textbook ever written” and noted that the Canon persisted as “a medical bible for a longer time than any other work.”
The first individual to correctly describe the route of pulmonary circulation was a Muslim physician, Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), who was born near Damascus, Syria, and worked in Cairo, Egypt. Pulmonary circulation is the passage of blood from the right ventricle of the heart through the pulmonary artery into the lungs. After the blood is oxygenated in the lung via passage through capillaries to the pulmonary veins back to the left atrium, then to the left ventricle and then out to the body proper through the aorta.
Al-Nafis was particularly adamant about not parroting theories of past physicians. He wrote in his 1242 remarks called Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna’s Cannon: “In determining the use of each organ we shall rely necessarily on verified examinations and straightforward research, disregarding whether our opinions will agree or disagree with those of our predecessors.”
For example, al-Nafis denied the prevailing wisdom of the Greek physician, Galen, and the Persian physician, Avicenna, both of whom believed that blood passed from one side of the heart to the other through invisible pores in the heart wall separating the left from the right side.
Al-Nafis knew there were no such pores as Galen proposed between the right and left sides of the heart. Instead al-Nafis recorded, “The blood from the right chamber must flow through the vena arteriosa (pulmonary artery) to the lungs, spread through its substances, be mingled there with air, pass through the arteria venosa (pulmonary vein) to reach the left chamber of the heart and there form the vital spirit.” His then radical view was developed when he was age 29 and was not added to until 1628, when the English physician William Harvey published his complete theory of the continuous cycle of blood throughout the entire body.
Al-Nafis compiled and wrote passages for 300 volumes of the medical encyclopedia The Comprehensive Book on Medicine, of which 80 volumes were officially published.
Just as Copernicus posed the idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe, an English physician, William Harvey, had the daunting job of convincing his skeptical colleagues that the beating heart, not the liver, is the power behind the circulation of blood.
With his demonstration of the circulation of blood, Harvey (1578–1657 AD) could have revised and replaced the Galenic version of physiology. Different from the contemporary revelations in astronomy and physics, Harvey’s correct and accurate revelations of circulation failed to have a dramatic effect on medical education or practice. However, his anatomical research and experimentation in animals advanced medical science by leaps and bounds.
Harvey’s efforts reversed a prevailing theory that had lasted for a thousand years. This prevailing theory at the beginning of the 17th century was that the liver converted food into “natural blood,” which circulated through veins and the heart and to all of the body’s tissues, where it was consumed. The arterial system carried air, breath, and was separate from the venous circulation, even though it was supplied with a tiny amount of blood through holes in the septum separating the heart’s four chambers.
Harvey’s careful deductions and experiments proved this could not be so. A cut artery spurted blood and pumped blood in the same pattern and timing with the heart’s beat.
In a live dissection of a snake, a pinched artery appeared to engorge the heart, compared with a pinched vein that made the heart shrink and go pale.
Harvey also calculated that the small amount of blood entering arterial system from the heart in a single hour equaled a multiple of a person’s entire blood volume—far more than could be expected from a liver.
In 1628 Harvey published his famous book, On the Motion of the Heart, noting that the movement of blood through the body is circular and that the pulsing heart itself drives the circulation of blood in an endless cycle:
Thus far we have spoken of the quantity of blood passing through the heart and the lungs in the centre of the body, and in like manner from the arteries into the veins in the peripheral parts and the body at large. We have yet to explain, however, in what manner the blood finds its way back to the heart from the extremities by the veins, and how and in what way these are the only vessels that convey the blood from the external to the central parts; which done, I conceive that the three fundamental propositions laid down for the circulation of the blood will be so plain, so well established, so obviously true, that they may claim general credence. Now the remaining position will be made sufficiently clear from the valves which are found in the cavities of the veins themselves, from the uses of these, and from experiments cognizable by the senses.
The celebrated Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente, a most skillful anatomist, and venerable old man, or, as the learned Riolan will have it, Jacobus Silvius, first gave representations of the valves in the veins, which consist of raised or loose portions of the inner membranes of these situated at different distances from one another, and diversely in different individuals; they are connate at the sides of the veins; they are directed upwards or towards the trunks of the veins; the two—for there are for the most part two together—regard each other, mutually touch, and are so ready to come into contact by their edges, that if anything attempt to pass from the trunks into the branches of the veins, or from the greater vessels into the less, they completely prevent it; they are farther so arranged, that the horns of those that succeed are opposite the middle of the convexity of those that precede, and so on alternately.
The discoverer of these valves did not rightly understand their use, nor have succeeding anatomists added anything to our knowledge: for their office is by no means explained when we are told that it is to hinder the blood, by its weight, from flowing into the inferior parts; for the edges of the valves in the jugular veins hang downwards, and are so contrived that they prevent the blood from rising upwards; the valves, in a word, do not invariably look upwards, but always towards the trunk of the veins, invariably towards the seat of the heart. I, and indeed others, have sometimes found valves in the emulgent veins, and in those of the mesentery, the edges of which were directed towards the vena cava and vena portae. Let it be added that there are no valves in the arteries, and that dogs, oxen, etc., have invariably valves at the divisions of their crural veins, in the veins that meet towards the top of the os sacrum, and in those branches which come from the haunches, in which no such effect of gravity from the erect position was to be apprehended. Neither are there valves of the jugular veins for the purpose of guarding against apoplexy, as some have said; because in sleep the head is more apt to be influenced by the contents of the carotid arteries. Neither are the valves present in order that the blood may be retained in the divarications or smaller trunks and minuter branches, and not be suffered to flow entirely into the more open and capacious channels; for they occur where there are no divarications; although it must be owned that they are most frequent at the points where branches join. Neither do they exist for the purpose of rendering the current of blood more slow from the centre of the body; for it seems likely that the blood would be disposed to flow with sufficient slowness of its own accord, as it would have to pass from larger into continually smaller vessels, being separated from the mass and fountain head, and attaining from warmer into colder places.
But the veins are solely made and instituted lest the blood should pass from the greater into the lesser veins, and either rupture them or cause them to become varicose; lest, instead of advancing from the extreme to the central parts of the body, the blood should rather proceed along the veins from the centre to the extremities; but the delicate valves, while they readily open in the right direction, entirely prevent all such contrary motion, being so situated and arranged, that if anything escapes, or is less perfectly obstructed by the cornua of the one above, the fluid passing, as it were, by the chinks between the cornua, it is immediately received on the convexity of the one beneath, which is placed transversely with reference to the former, and so is effectually hindered from getting any farther.
And this I have frequently experienced in my dissections of the veins: if I attempted to pass a probe from the trunk of the veins into one of the smaller branches, whatever care I took I found it impossible to introduce it far any way, by reason of the valves; whilst, on the contrary, it was most easy to push it along in the opposite direction, from without inwards, or from the branches towards the trunks and roots. In many places two valves are so placed and fitted, that when raised they come exactly together in the middle of the vein, and are there united by the contact of their margins; and so accurate is the adaption, that neither by the eye nor by any other means of examination, can the slightest chink along the line of contact be perceived. But if the probe be now introduced from the extreme towards the more central parts, the valves, like the floodgates of a river, give way, and are most readily pushed aside. The effect of this arrangement plainly is to prevent all motion of the blood from the heart and vena cava, whether it be upwards towards the head, or downwards towards the feet, or to either side towards the arms, not a drop can pass; all motion of the blood, beginning in the larger and tending towards the smaller veins, is opposed and resisted by them; whilst the motion that proceeds from the lesser to end in the larger branches is favored, or, at all events, a free and open passage is left for it.
But that this truth may be made more apparent, let an arm be tied up above the elbow as if for phlebotomy. At intervals in the course of the veins, especially in laboring people and those whose veins are large, certain knots or elevations will be perceived, and this not only at the places where a branch is received, but also where none enters: these knots or risings are all formed by valves, which thus show themselves externally. And now if you press the blood from the space above one of the valves, and keep the point of a finger upon the vein inferiorly, you will see no influx of blood from above; the portion of the vein between the point of the finger and the valve will be obliterated; yet will the vessel continue sufficiently distended above the valve. The blood being thus pressed out, and the vein emptied, if you now apply a finger of the other hand upon the distended part of the vein above the valve, and press downwards, you will find that you cannot force the blood through or beyond the valve; but the greater effort you use, you will only see the portion of vein that is between the finger and the valve become more distended, that portion of the vein which is below the valve remaining all the while empty.
It would therefore appear that the function of the valves in the veins is the same as that of the three sigmoid valves which we find at the commencement of the aorta and pulmonary artery, to prevent all reflux of the blood that is passing over them.
Farther, the arm being bound as before, and the veins looking full and distended, if you press at one part in the course of a vein with the point of a finger, and then with another finger streak the blood upwards beyond the next valve, you will perceive that this portion of the vein continues empty, and that the blood cannot retrograde, precisely as we have already seen the case to be; but the finger first applied, being removed, immediately the vein is filled from below, (and the arm returns to its original architecture). That the blood in the veins therefore proceeds from inferior or more remote to superior parts, and towards the heart, moving in these vessels in this and not in the contrary direction, appears most obviously. And although in some places the valves, by not acting with such perfect accuracy, or where there is but a single valve, do not seem totally to prevent the passage of the blood from the centre, still the greater number of them plainly do so; and then, where things appear contrived more negligently, this is compensated either by the more frequent occurrence or more perfect action of the succeeding valves, or in some other way: the valves, in short, as they are the free and open conduits of the blood returning to the heart, so are they effectively prevented from serving as its channels of distribution from the heart.
But this other circumstance has to be noted: The arm being bound, and the veins made turgid, and the valves prominent, as before, apply the thumb or finger over a vein in the situation of one of the valves in such a way as to compress it, and prevent any blood from passing upwards from the hand; then, with a finger of the other hand, streak the blood in the vein upwards till it has passed the next valve above, the vessel now remains empty; but the finger being removed for an instant, the vein is immediately filled from below; apply the finger again, and having in the same manner streaked the blood upwards, again remove the finger below, and again the vessel becomes distended as before; and this repeat, say a thousand times, in a short space of time. And now compute the quantity of blood which you have thus pressed up beyond the valve, and then multiplying the assumed quantity by one thousand, you will find that so much blood has passed through a certain portion of the vessel; and I do now believe that you will find yourself convinced of the circulation of the blood, and of its rapid motion. But if in this experiment you say that a violence is done to nature, I do not doubt but that, if you proceed in the same way, only taking as great a length of vein as possible, and merely remark with what rapidity the blood flows upwards, and fills the vessel from below, you will come to the same conclusion.
And now I may be allowed to give in brief my view of the circulation of the blood, and to propose it for general adoption.
Since all things, both argument and ocular demonstration, show that the blood passes through the lungs and heart by the force of the ventricles, and is sent for the distribution to all parts of the body, where it makes its way into the veins and porosities of the flesh, and then flows by the veins from the circumference on every side to the centre, from the lesser to the greater veins, and is by them finally discharged into the vena cava and right auricle of the heart, and this in such a quantity or in such a flux and reflux thither by the arteries, hither by the veins, as cannot possibly be applied by the ingesta, and is much greater than can be required for mere purposes of nutrition; it is absolutely necessary to conclude that the blood in the animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion; that this is the act or function which the heart performs by means of its pulse; and that it is the sole and only end of the motion and contraction of the heart.
Just a few years after Harvey had died, Italian physician Marcello Malpighi employed a microscope to observe microscopic capillaries that provided the connections between the arterial circulation and the veinous return circulation to the heart.
Approximately during the same period as Harvey’s dramatic revelation of circulation being driven by the heart rather than the liver, Newton proposed his law of universal gravitation (1687). According to his famous law, every massive particle in the universe is attracted to every other particle with a force that is directly related to the sum of their masses and is inversely related to the square of the distance between them. Within these relationships, proportionality is held constant in this theory at all places and all times—thus it is known as the “universal gravitational constant.”
Further, Newton’s laws of motion consist of three physical laws that describe the relationship between forces acting on a body and its motion due to these forces:
1. A body remains at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by a force.
2. The acceleration of a body is proportional to the force causing the acceleration and is inversely proportional to its mass.
3. When a force acts on a body due to another body, an equal and opposite force acts simultaneously on that body.
Taken in their totality, these laws were significant in that they established the concept of a clockwork universe, which drove the science of astronomy and physics for the next 200 years. In this view, the universe was similar to a clock wound up by God and set in motion in such a manner to assure that everything ran as the perfect machine.
Deists grabbed onto the God-clock theory quickly and “delighted in the concept that God simply set the wheels of the universe in motion.” Newton, on the other hand, became frustrated, fearing that this view of his theory would lead to atheism.
In 1774 English chemist and theologian Joseph Priestly conducted a now legendary experiment in which he proved that plants take in a gas that animals give off (carbon dioxide) and that plants give off a gas that animals take in (oxygen). Priestly took a mouse and placed it in an enclosed glass container until the mouse collapsed. When he put a plant in the container with the mouse, the mouse survived, thereby proving that the plant was producing something that enabled the mouse to live. At the time, Priestly did not know that the gases were, as we know today, “oxygen” and “carbon dioxide.”
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a healing art that is based on the ancient alchemist’s belief that “like cures like.” The healing art of modern homeopathy came from the work and studies of the German physician, Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843).
Hahnemann began his use of homeopathy in 1790 when he, like Paracelsus, had become frustrated with the then standard medical treatments of bloodletting, and purging and blistering with liquid mercury.
Hahnemann first became enthralled with the Cinchona bark that was used successfully to cure malaria. He observed and recorded that consuming the bark produced a malaria-like fever. He then began to look at other substances that when ingested produced the symptoms of the disease he wanted to cure—“like cures like!”
According to the theory and principles of homeopathy, the “mother tincture” or the basic substance has to be diluted and “secussed,” meaning to be vigorously shaken. The more diluted the remedy the more potent it becomes. Many homeopathic remedies are so diluted that the quantity of the active substance falls below Avagadro’s number and it can no longer be detected by analysis.
The goal of the homeopath is to restore the balance of the patients “vital force” or energy much like the philosophy of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). Homeopathy gained the public’s interest and credibility world-wide during the 19th century. The homeopathic hospital in London demonstrated a considerably higher survival rate than the allopathic medical hospitals during the cholera epidemic of 1854. Did that mean that the homeopathic remedies were more effective or that the bloodletting and purging with mercury were more dangerous?
Dr. Wilhelm Heinrich Schuessler (1821–1898), a physician from Oldenburg, Germany deduced that minerals, “tissue salts” or “cell salts,” were the basic stuff of all human flesh and even life itself. Schuessler, who studied medicine and related sciences at the most highly regarded schools of Paris, Berlin, Geissen, and Prague, is considered the “father and founder of the science of biochemistry.”
Schuessler was quided and influenced by the highly regarded German chemist Liebig, who postulated that the human body is composed of “cells” which are complex building blocks that are composed of organic material, water, and “salts” or minerals.
Schuessler methodically cremated the corpses of indigent humans dying in German hospitals and analyzed the resultant ash. With the limited number of analytical methods available in his day he was only able to identify 12 “cell salts.” Given the meager amount of information he had access to, and given the fact that some of his mineral deficiency to disease relationships were incorrect, Schuessler demonstrated great insight for realizing the connection between mineral deficiencies and imbalances and their relationship to chronic degenerative disease.
Schuessler, heavily influenced by Hahnemann and his low dose homeopathic approach, employed his “cell salts” as a homeopathic remedy rather than a high dose nutritional supplement which severely reduced the effectiveness of his “cell salts.”
Anesthesia
“John Wayne anesthesia,” meaning a shot of whiskey and a blunt force to the head, was the anesthesia of the day until the mid-19th century. It is impossible to contemplate how anyone could have tolerated a dental extraction, limb amputation, or crude abdominal surgery, appendectomy, hysterectomy, or bullet removal before the advent of anesthesia.
Surgeons of the day had to be bold, fast, and be able to work regardless of the patient’s terrified screams. A covey of nurses had to be numerous enough or strong enough to restrain the patients active attempts to flee or fight the surgeon’s efforts.
By the mid-1840s, surgeons had few methods of reducing surgical pain except for the surgeon to use a knockout punch, whisky, or mesmerism (hypnosis) to dull the patients pain and fear. Many subjected to these early attempts at surgery died of simple shock: “The surgery was a success, but the patient died!”
The modern era of surgical anesthesia came in 1844, when a Connecticut dentist by the name Horace Wells attended a parlor trick demonstration of intoxication on a volunteer by means of administering a “laughing gas” of nitrous oxide.
During the demonstration one volunteer suffered a severe laceration of his leg, yet he did not complain or withdraw his leg from the resulting pain.
Wells was so impressed with the laughing delirium and anesthesia produced by inhaling nitrous oxide, that he immediately proposed trying the gas on a dental patient during tooth extraction. The anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide had been recognized for decades, since volunteers could be pricked with pins without resulting pain or withdrawing their punctured hand. However, medical minds of the day initially failed to recognize the anesthetic value for the patient.
Wells failed attempt at using nitrous oxide during a tooth extraction at the Massachusetts General Hospital drew contempt from the observing physicians when the patient screamed in pain.
The concept of anesthesia came when Wells’ dental associate, William Morton, extracted an infected tooth with the patient anesthetized, not with the laughing gas, but instead with ether, another inhalant gas that produced a deeper anesthesia.
When the patient awakened, he was surprised that his bicuspid had already been removed!
Morton anesthetized a second patient with ether during an operation to remove a neck tumor. The surgeon upon completing the surgery, turned and exclaimed to his attending colleagues: “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.”
Anesthesia quickly advanced from a parlor curiosity to a well-accepted advancement in surgical technique. To get surgeons and the general public to accept anesthesia for surgery, Queen Victoria of England was anesthetized with chloroform during the deliveries of her eighth and ninth children in 1853 and 1857.
Osteopathy
In 1892 osteopathy began in a small school in Kirksville, Missouri. The school was started by Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, a former Civil War Army surgeon, who had lost most of his children during the war from the ravages of infectious diseases.
According to Still’s philosophy, most diseases were caused by mechanical interference of nerves and blood and blood flow, and they were curable by manipulation of “deranged, displaced bones, nerves, muscles—removing all obstructions—thereby setting the machinery of life moving.”
In his autobiography Dr. Still claimed that he could “shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a ‘wring’ of its neck.” Surgery and pharmaceuticals of the day were harmful and dangerous, and people resisted bloodletting, rectal feeding, and toxic drug cocktails that included large doses of mercury and arsenic. Dr. Still noted that “in Missouri and Kansas where the doctors were shut out, the children did not die.”
Originally, the osteopathic physician was trained in physical manipulation and diet, however, in the 20th and 21st centuries an American trained D.O., or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, is educated and practices in much the manner as an MD (medical doctor).
Chiropractic Medicine
The formal practice of chiropractic (DC) began in 1895 when Daniel David “D.D.” Palmer reported that he had improved a patient’s hearing by physically “manipulating” a man’s spine. Palmer, a former bee keeper and grocer, claimed he had gotten the idea for chiropractic from the spirit of a deceased physician.
In 1909 Palmer wrote, “Chiropractors have found in every disease that is supposed to be contagious, a cause in the spine. In the spinal column we will find a subluxation that corresponds to every type of disease. If we had one hundred cases of small-pox, I can prove to you where, in one, you will find a subluxation and you will find the same conditions in the other ninety nine. I adjust one and return his functions to normal . . . There is no contagious disease. . . . There is no infection.”
From the 20th century through the 21st century chiropractic has been successfully employed to relieve musculoskeletal disability and pain through manipulation. Traditional chiropractors, or “Straight” practitioners, limit their practice to spinal and cervical (neck) manipulation that relieves subluxations of the vertebrae, which in turn relieves pressure on the cervical and spinal nerves—thus relieving symptoms such as peripheral neuropathies, neck, back, and joint pain.
“Mixers” are chiropractors that have added herbal medicines and nutritional supplements to their style of practice.
Naturopathic Medicine
Naturopathy is practiced by naturopathic physicians (ND). What distinguishes naturopathic medicine from allopathic medicine is that its “practice” emerges from its underlying principle—FIRST DO NO HARM. Naturopathic medicine claims Hippocrates as its father and recognizes an inherent healing capacity of the body. Naturopathic physicians emphasize the prevention of disease through clean living; good diet; supplementation of nutrients when necessary to ensure the body’s optimum health, maintenance, and repair; exercise; practicing a religious faith; and when necessary the employment of noninvasive therapies such as treatment with nutritional supplements, herbs, message, hydrotherapy, acupuncture, TCM, naturopathic manipulation, homeopathy, counseling, gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics, minor surgery, and—rarely—prescription drugs and other medications.
The “scope” of practice of naturopathic medicine in modern times varies widely from state to state depending on the strength and oppressiveness of the allopathic (aka: orthodox medicine) medical lobby at the time naturopathic medicine was introduced into that state. As taught, naturopathy covers the full practice of medicine. Therefore NDs are “primary care physicians,” excluding the practice of major surgery and the everyday prescribing of most legend drugs.
Naturopathic medicine is taught in accredited naturopathic colleges and universities and is licensed and/or regulated in several countries, such as Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and numerous American states including Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, Florida, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, and perhaps others.
Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis
Next to Freud, the most influential psychiatrist in the 20th century was Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). He was born in Kesswil, a Swiss village located near the falls of the Rhine River. His grandfather, a Rosicrucian freethinker, was alleged to be the illegitimate son of Goethe. He had been exiled from Germany and then moved to Switzerland where he became a professor of medicine and surgery at Basel.
Jung’s father was a very orthodox pastor whose pastime was psychology. Jung, himself, earned a medical degree at the University of Basel and then, as Freud had done, he studied psychological medicine in Paris. He returned to Switzerland and took a position as a lecturer in the Psychiatric Clinic of Zurich University.
In 1907 Jung heard Freud speak and initially became one of his most rabid disciples, but soon Jung’s own clinical observations led him to reexamine many of Freud’s basic principles. Jung believed that Freud gave too much weight to sexual repression as a cause of mental illness. Instead, Jung taught that “greater importance should be attached to the effects of emotional conflicts and to the stresses and strains of the patient at the time of his breakdown.” Jung’s book, The Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), was filled with criticisms of Freud’s theories which lead to a major falling out between the two men.
Jung referred to his own theories and treatments as “analytical psychology” and left the term “psychoanalysis” to Freud. Over the years of his clinical work, Jung came to believe that one of the most common causes of a nervous breakdown was a “loss of religious faith.” The majority of Jung’s later studies were filled with topics that both his supporters and critics “dismissed as antiquated superstition and unworthy of a genuine scientist’s interest or attention”: alchemy, astrology, spiritualism, and popular folklore. Jung believed that, “Even if these beliefs were wholly false, the reasons for their widespread prevalence called for a psychological investigation.”
Jung performed a statistical study of nearly 500 marriages and 1,000 horoscopes. These were paired off in a variety of ways and comparisons were looked at through the astrological charts of individuals both with their spouses and with other members of the group. Jung then looked carefully at the horoscopes of the married and the unmarried couples and discovered a number of noteworthy connections—primarily a tendency for the married woman’s Moon to be in conjunction with the husband’s Sun. While appearing to be arguing the opposition’s case, by his saying that the connection could not be causally related, he however, unlike naysayers of astrology, posited that the connection could not be denied and must be accounted for.
Jung’s interest and eventual belief in astrology heartened professional astrologers throughout the world and promoted a modern resurgence of astrology as a force to be dealt with.
Jung had a profound impact on how Alcoholics Anonymous became so effective. He suggested that recovering alcoholics place themselves in a regimented religious atmosphere “of their own choice.” This spiritual approach positively transformed many alcoholics who were unsuccessful when they employed other methods.
In 1928 Jung, along with Richard Wilhelm, who was an authority on Chinese philosophy, published The Secret of the Golden Flower. The secret, according to Jung, was that “man is a cosmos in miniature, and is not divided from the Great Cosmos by any fixed limits; Tao, the Undivided, all-embracing ONE, gives rise to two opposite reality-principles—Darkness and Light, Yin and Yang.”
Jung had observed that alchemy “has been called the dream of primitive medicine” and that it should not be considered “a bogus science practiced by mercenary charlatans.” Philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, physicians such as Sir Thomas Browne, and deeply revered scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton had studied alchemy.
Much like Gnosticism, alchemy had developed in the Hellenistic culture of Alexandria in Egypt. The Egyptian metallurgist had accumulated the trade secrets of extracting the “noble metals” (gold and silver) for the wealthy and the less costly alloys for those who could not afford the real thing. The processes performed in the laboratory followed the principles of Aristotelian physics and Alexandrian Neoplatonism, which had significant influence on early Christian doctrine. The leading concept was that the world of man (microcosm) reflected the macrocosm (the universe as a whole).
Mesopotamian astrology, as a result, became inexorably linked to alchemy. Each metal was linked to a celestial counterpart: gold was linked to the sun, silver with the moon, quicksilver with mercury, and so forth. To accomplish these tasks for transmutation, 12 successive laboratory processes, associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac, were required. The astronomical symbols were used to represent the primary chemical ingredients and processes.
Jung indicates that the explanatory theories were described in terms of “fanciful analogies.” Later alchemists were commonly physicians and they compared the chemical processes of alchemy to human physiology and medicine. Jung also believed that, “lowlier animals had to be sacrificed, cleansed, and burned before they could live again as part of the human body, so too, the humbler metals had to be ‘killed, washed and fired’ before emerging as the nobler metals such as gold and silver.”
Ideas and philosophies were introduced from the ancient Chinese alchemist who looked at the transmutation of lower metals into gold and silver as of secondary importance. Their goal was to “supplement” the practice of herbal medicine which was designed to cure minor ailments, with a pill or elixir (that is, the panacea) prepared from minerals and metals which might confer “immortality.”
All of the Chinese theories of alchemy reappear in the thoughts and writings of Paracelsus, and Jung asserted that Paracelsus should be considered the founder of iatrochemistry (the application of chemistry to medical theory) and the founder of psychological medicine because he professed to cure physical and psychical disorders as well.
Jung was among the first to recognize the fact that modern historians of chemistry now totally recognize that alchemy had both an exoteric popular belief and an esoteric secretly shrouded belief. The exoteric alchemy practices and beliefs were centered on the philosopher’s stone—the magical substance that would convert, lead, tin, and copper, not into a compound or alloy but into the purified silver and gold. The esoteric or mystical alchemy was devoted to these “mundane transmutations as symbolic of a devotional system by which sinful man could be transformed into a perfect and immortal being.”
Medical Education in the United States
In 1900 medical school training in America was extremely primitive. Lofty admission requirements were totally absent; often the only requirement was a high school degree for admission. An important milestone in medical education in America happened in 1914 with the publication of “Medical Education in the United States and Canada,” an investigation by Abraham Flexner.
Medical education in America in the 20th and 21st centuries has been directed by the results of Flexner’s report. Flexner, a retired university president, visited each of the 155 medical schools in the United States and Canada. The Flexner report was conducted at the behest of and funded by the oil baron John D. Rockefeller and the steel magnet Andrew Carnegie. Flexner compared the curriculum and the student populations of the various types of medical schools. A few of the medical schools, including Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Wake Forest University School of Medicine, received an excellent evaluation score; however, Flexner gave significant numbers of “proprietary” schools an extremely negative score.
The proprietary schools were in fact “trade” schools that had no university or college affiliations, dissection was not offered, and many instructors were non-academic local practitioners. They were:
1. those medical schools considered “straights”—ones that employed mercury to blister (applications of mercury to the skin) and prescribed oral doses of liquid mercury to purge the illness
2. those medical schools that prescribed herbs as plant medicines
3. those schools that preferentially prescribed homeopathy
4. those medical schools that preferentially pursued a healthy diet and lifestyle
Flexner’s recommendations included a minimum requirement of a high school education and two years of basic sciences obtained through studies at a college or university for consideration for admission, and only 16 of the 155 schools visited could meet the recommendations. Flexner also suggested that medical education should be a four year study with two years of basic medical science and two years of medical training.
Flexner further stated that, “An education in medicine involved both learning and learning how; the student cannot effectively know, unless he knows how.” The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) was developed in 1928 to provide a standardized admission test for medical school admission.
Following the report most medical schools, unable to comply with Flexner’s standards, closed, thus leaving 66 operating in America by 1935. A major negative of the Flexner report was that small medical schools that supported “alternative” medical theory closed for lack of funding, lack of students and lack of political support.
After receiving Flexner’s report, the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Institute decided to fund the straight medical schools because prescription drugs were made from petroleum products. The funding of the straight medical schools created a migration of a majority of the medical students to the more highly funded schools and the closing of almost all other healing professions.
During this same period of time of the Flexner Report, the straight medical doctors were busy in the halls of politics legislating themselves into a protected monopoly—with no government oversight, self-policing, no competition, and unlimited funds through private or government insurance.
The straight medical group also killed off all of their competition by becoming intimately involved with politics. By the late 1920s straight medical doctors ruled the practice of medicine in America, and all other forms of medicine were aggressively and legislatively deemed to be “quackery.” Governments at the city, county, state and federal level, and the military only recognized MDs as “legitimate” physicians. Insurance by law could only pay MDs, thus choking off all other healers availability to patients.
In the early 1930s, a Cleveland dentist by the name of Dr. Weston A. Price for years traveled to remote parts of the world to study the dental health of peoples unaffected by Western civilization. His purpose was to search for the raw materials responsible for good dental health. His investigations revealed that dental caries and malformed dental arches that created crowded and misaligned teeth are the result of nutritional deficiencies, not inherited genetic defects.
The cultures that Price studied included isolated villages in Switzerland, Gaelic villages in the Outer Hebrides, indigenous peoples of North and South America, Melanesian and Polynesian South Sea Islanders, African tribes, Australian Aborigines, and New Zealand Maori. Wherever he went, Dr. Price found that beautiful straight teeth freed from decay, good physiques, a general resistance to disease, and fine characters were typical of native groups on their traditional diets, rich in essential nutrients.
When Dr. Price analyzed the foods consumed by these isolated cultures he reported, “by comparison to the American diet of his day, they provided at least four times the water-soluble vitamins, calcium and other minerals, and at least ten times the fat-soluble vitamins from animal foods such as butter, fish eggs, shellfish, organ meats, and animal fats—the very cholesterol-rich foods now shunned by the American public as unhealthful.” Price felt that these healthy t raditional cultures knew instinctively what researchers of Dr. Price’s day had only recently discovered: “That these fat-soluble vitamins, vitamins A and D, were vital to health as they were required as catalysts for efficient mineral absorption and protein utilization.” Without them, humans cannot absorb minerals, no matter how abundant they may be found in the human diet.
Dr. Price discovered an additional fat-soluble nutrient, which he labeled “Activator X,” that is present in fish livers and shellfish, organ meats, and butter made from milk from cows that eat rapidly growing green grass in the Spring and Fall. All primitive cultures had a source of Activator X, now thought to be vitamin K2, in their diets.
The remote cultures that Dr. Price investigated understood the importance of preconception nutrition for both parents. Many cultures required a period of special feeding before conception, in which nutrient-dense animal sources of nutrition were preferentially given to young men and women. The same special diets were also considered important for pregnant women, lactating women, and children. Price noted that these special diets were rich in minerals and in the fat-soluble activators typically found in animal fats—the vitamins A, D, E, and K.
The remote peoples that Price initially photographed were noteworthy for “their fine bodies, ease of reproduction, emotional stability, and freedom from degenerative diseases typical of the civilized moderns subsisting on the displacing foods of modern commerce, including sugar, white flour, pasteurized milk, low-fat foods, vegetable oils, and convenience items filled with extenders and additives.”
The discoveries, theories, and conclusions of Dr. Price are noted in his classic work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. His book contains dramatic photographs of handsome, healthy, primitive peoples and illustrates in an unforgettable manner the physical degeneration that occurs when humans abandon nourishing traditional diets in favor of modern convenience foods.
Price documented the classical characteristics of traditional diets:
1. The diets of healthy, non-industrialized peoples contain little or no refined sugar, white flour, canned foods, low-fat milk, hydrogenated vegetable oils, protein powders, synthetic vitamins, or artificial colorings.
2. All traditional cultures regularly consume animal food including fish, shellfish, land and water fowl, land and sea mammals, poultry eggs, dairy products, reptiles, and insects. The whole animal is consumed: muscle meat, organ meat, bones, fat.
3. The diets of healthy, non-industrialized peoples contained a least four times the minerals and water soluble vitamins, ten times the fat soluble vitamins found in animal fat (vitamin A, vitamin D, and Activator X (vitamin K2) as the standard American diet.
4. All traditional cultures cooked some of their food; however, all consumed a portion of their animal foods raw.
5. Primitive and traditional tribal diets have diets rich in fermented vegetables, fruit, drinks, dairy products, meats, and condiments.
6. Seeds, grains, and nuts are soaked, sprouted, and fermented.
7. Total fat content of traditional tribal diets varied between 30 to 80 percent of calories; however, only four percent of calories came from polyunsaturated oils that were found in whole grains, legumes, nuts, fish, animal fats, and vegetables. The remainder of the fat calories was in the form of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.
8. Traditional diets contained nearly equal amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids.
9. All traditional diets contained salt.
10. All traditional cultures consumed animal bones and gelatin-rich bone soup.
11. Traditional cultures typically provide nutrient-rich animal foods for prenatal nutrition, pregnant and lactating women, and growing children.
Being a dentist, Price was particularly interested in the differences in the facial structures of those peoples consuming “native diets” and those whose parents had adopted the “civilized diets of devitalized processed foods.” In contrast to this, he consistently found that “Those consuming the original cultural diets had a wide handsome face with plenty of room for the dental arches. Those born to parents consuming the modernized diet had narrowed faces, crowded teeth and a reduced immunity to disease.”
Price was an astute observer and noted quite correctly that as isolated tribal cultures were negatively impacted by the availability of modern packaged foods. However, he did not stress enough the associated changes and universal negative impact of electricity and natural gas on the human diet and nutrition. With the availability of modern sources of fuel and energy, wood, the previously universal fuel, had been displaced, and the historical source of dietary minerals—wood ashes—had been abandoned forever.
People had been using plant minerals or “wood ashes” as their source of dietary minerals since the beginning of time and the taming of fire. Then, at 3:00 PM in the afternoon, Monday September 4, 1882, everything changed. This was the moment in history when Thomas Edison pulled the switch and fired up the first commercial electric generating plant in the world. The event took place on Pearl Street in New York City on the bluff overlooking the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
While electricity sources contributed to the rapid advance of industry, the use of electricity as the source of fuel for heat, cooking, and light eliminated the individual families’ traditional source of supplemental dietary minerals that was found in wood ashes! Sears catalogues touted the availability of electric stoves and the advantages of kitchen cleanliness compared with the dusty, dirty, wood stove and the necessity to take the wood ashes outside every day.
As wood disappeared as the universal fuel, the general health of the industrialized cultures declined, as no one thought or even considered for one moment how to replace the lost source of nutritional minerals. In contrast, the agricultural industry had learned that a constant stream of dietary minerals was essential for livestock health, reproduction, and profitability. The lack of dietary minerals for livestock resulted in financial disaster because of increased frequency of disease and decrease in production of healthy offspring, meat, dairy, and eggs.
Mineral-poor diets in farm, laboratory, and pet animals resulted in infertility, increased rates of birth defects, and reduced feed-conversion to meat, milk, eggs, and litter size. Farmers went out of business without the serious supplementation of dietary minerals.
Agricultural universities began to accumulate data on the diseases that were produced in animals from specific mineral deficiencies in the embryo, in the developing young, and over time in the reproductive-age and the longevity of older individual animals.
The advent of health insurance for humans began to separate the lines of thinking between veterinarians and physicians. Veterinarians were required to prevent and cure diseases on a herd and flock basis by nutritional supplementation. In contrast to the treatment of animals, the human medical system, with the availability of “health insurance,” began to ease the discomforts and symptoms of degenerative diseases with long-term therapies that were paid for by insurance. The combination of electricity and health insurance became the “perfect storm” that would destroy the health of modern man.
In 1954, at Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, doctors led by surgeon Joseph E. Murray performed the world’s first successful organ transplant. They removed a healthy kidney from one man and implanting it into his identical twin who was suffering from kidney failure.
This initial transplant success produced a stream of organ transplants and, of equal importance, a large number of research projects that looked at the immunological problems of organ transplants. Researchers attempted several approaches to the problem of rejection, such as radiating the recipient’s immune system and suppressing the immune system with pharmaceuticals.
Our Medical System in the United States
In 1998 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) surveyed American hospitals and found that hospitals caused 2 million infections per year in hospital patients, of which 90,000 died. One must ask: “How on earth can this breach of basic hygiene happen”? The answer is “elementary, my dear Watson.” Doctors wear the same slacks, the same panty hose, the same white coat, and the same shoes room to room dragging with them pee, poop, pus, mucus, slime, bacteria, viruses, yeast, and molds. In contrast to this, SPF disease-free pigs are protected by a federal law that requires employees and visitors alike to disinfect their boots and clothes between entries to different pig pens. We treat pigs in a barn with more awareness and care for hygiene than we do humans in American hospitals!
In 1993, 85,000 cases of hospital infections attributed to Clostridium dificil were recorded in American hospitals. By 2010, seventeen years later, the infection rate increased by 400% to 360,800. There was no incentive for the individual doctors or the medical system to improve hygiene and eliminate hospital infections—after all, no one had their license suspended or revoked and insurance paid!
In 1998, 3,000 serious mistakes were recorded in American veteran’s hospitals which resulted in 700 veterans “killed” who had escaped death at the hands of a foreign enemy.
In the year 2006 the CDC noted that pharmaceutical errors resulted in 1.5 million fatalities and permanent injuries in American hospital patients. These negative events were not the result of side effects of the drugs, but rather decimal point problems by the prescribing doctors and fulfillment errors by the pharmacists.
In 2007 the CDC and the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that medical doctors kill, injure, and infect 15 million medical patients each year in America alone: 5.8 million in hospitals and 9.2 million in private offices and clinics. How many Americans would fly commercial airlines if they knew that 15 million airline passengers were killed, injured, or infected each year by careless pilots and flight attendants? Nobody would fly!
In 2010 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Inspector General reported that 15,000 Medicare patients die each month in American medical hospitals. That’s 180,000 Medicare patients killed each year by medical doctors in their workplace!
Included in the hospital fatalities during minor procedures in the years 2011 and 2012 were three iconic figures: Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame, Dick Clark from American Bandstand and astronaut Neil Armstrong (first man to set foot on the moon).
Andy Rooney, age 92, was was killed by “complications of a minor medical procedure (a colonoscopic exam).”
Dick Clark, age 82, was killed by complications of a “minor prostate procedure.”
Neil Armstrong of NASA, age 82, was killed by “complications of (an elective) cardiovascular procedure.”
The medical profession in America kills and injures more people each year than the mafia has in 1,000 years. As a protected self-policing monopoly few doctors get their licenses suspended or revoked and fewer are prosecuted for any injuries, infections, or deaths inflicted upon their customers. There are no incentives to protect the patient—after all—insurance pays!
Despite spending more money each year for health care than all of the nations in the world combined, as of 2012, following the guidance and treatment procedures of the medical profession, America ranks 92nd in healthfulness. This means 91 other nations are healthier than Americans. America ranks 60th in longevity, and there are 59 other nations whose peoples live longer than Americans. And God forgive us—we rank 41st in live births and first-month survivability of our babies.
And by following the advice of medical doctors and the U.S. government, we became the number one nation in the world with the greatest rates of obesity, and one out of three elderly die of dementia by 2012. This is hardly a testimony to their theory on how to achieve and maintain good health and maximum life spans.