Although the early decades of the nineteenth century were a virtual continuation of medical developments in the previous century, two particular advances (anesthesia and the …
Medical History — The Eighteenth Century
It is often thought that the eighteenth century—with its insistence on a rational and scientific approach to all the historic issues confronting mankind—succeeded in sweeping …
Medical History — The Seventeenth Century
Called the “Age of the Scientific Revolution,” the seventeenth century represents a major turning point in the history of science. Instead of asking why things …
The Renaissance
Even in the desperate depths of the Middle Ages, social, economic, and cultural events were underway which would burst forth in the mid-fifteenth century in …
Medieval Medicine: The Dark Ages
The Fall of Rome to the Goths in 476 and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks are often cited as marking the …
The Greek Physician Galen
The Greek physician Galen (c. 129-c. 200) was probably the most influential writer of all time on medical subjects. For nearly fifteen hundred years his …
Ancient China
In ancient Chinese cosmology, the universe was created not by divinities but self-generated from the interplay of nature’s basic duality: the active, light, dry, warm, …
Hippocrates
Over many centuries, the warrior heroes, the medical craftsmen, and the gymnasts of ancient Greece had accumulated a store of pragmatic information on maintaining health; …
Medicine in Roman Times
Greek medicine after Hippocrates reached a peak in Alexandria and shortly afterward began to infiltrate Rome, which exercised hegemony over the Greek world after 146 …