Whether it's the technology that allows us to peer deep into the body or medicines that extend the lives of those with chronic diseases, it's easy to see how advances in health and medicine have touched the lives of nearly every person on the planet.
Yet considering the ubiquitous nature of these developments, it is easy to see how many people take for granted the technologies and practices that, at one point or another, almost certainly saved their own lives or the lives of people they've loved.
1.Penicillin
Everybody knows the story – or at least, should – the brilliant yet notoriously absent-minded biologist Sir Alexander Fleming was researching a strain of bacteria called staphylococci. Upon returning from holiday one time in 1928, he noticed that one of the glass culture dishes he had accidentally left out had become contaminated with a fungus, and so threw it away. It wasn’t until later that he noticed that the staphylococcus bacteria seemed unable to grow in the area surrounding the fungal mold. Fleming didn’t even hold out much hope for his discovery: it wasn’t given much attention when he published his findings the following year, it was difficult to cultivate, and it was slow-acting – it wasn’t until 1945 after further research by several other scientists that penicillin was able to be produced on an industrial scale, changing the way doctors treated bacterial infections forever. Penicillin antibiotics are historically significant because they are the first drugs that were effective against many previously serious diseases such as syphilis and Staphylococcus infections.
2.Anatomy
It is the field of anatomy that today helps medical professionals all over the world to understand and treat the human body. Diagnosis or treatment of various conditions would have been nearly impossible if mankind had no knowledge of anatomy. Although ancient texts on some anatomy topics dating back to 1600 BC in Egyptian history and 5000 BC in Vedic history, it was only in the year 1543 that Andreas Vesalius started discovering the human body in the fresh light. He created the modern text that laid the foundation of thousands of treatment methods, accessible to billions of people on the planet today.
3.X-Ray
A medical procedure that is now so common that we take it for granted, the X-Ray was discovered by accident. Its inventor was Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and on 8 Nov 1895, he discovered that his cathode ray tube could produce some unusual images. A week later, he x-rayed his wife’s hand and the resulting image was close to our modern x-rays – her bones and wedding ring were clearly visible, but the flesh was not. He named it “X-ray” as the x stood for “unknown”, but they are occasionally known as Röntgen rays in his native Germany. He was awarded the first Nobel Prize in 1901 and his invention continues to be used in hospitals everywhere.
4.Vitamins
Originally in the Western World the concept of vaccination – using small doses of disease to teach the body to protect itself from certain viruses – was a controversial one. However, it is only thanks to vaccinations that we have managed to stop the spread of many epidemics and even completely eradicate some of the world’s most deadly diseases.
5.DNA(Deoxyribonucleic acid)
As amazing as all the discoveries so far have been, there is only one which unpicks the fabric of who we are – and that’s DNA. It dictates which physical attributes about us, from eye color to genetic disease. It has played its part in IVF, forensics and so many other fields. As with many on our list, the discovery was the work of several people, but it was Francis Crick and James Watson who first produced the double-helix model and subsequently won the Nobel Prize. An amazing insight into what makes us.
6.Insulin
Before the discovery of the hormone insulin in 1920 by Frederick Banting, diabetes was a condition that would lead to a slow and unpleasant death. Today, thanks to this finding, most diabetic patients manage to live normal and full lives which have affected the lives of millions of people around the world.
7.Vaccination
Originally in the Western World the concept of vaccination – using small doses of disease to teach the body to protect itself from certain viruses – was a controversial one. However, it is only thanks to vaccinations that we have managed to stop the spread of many epidemics and even completely eradicate some of the world’s most deadly diseases.
8.MMR(Measles, Mumps, and Rubella)
Another controversial one now, with the combined vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella. It was licensed in 1971, by Maurice Hilleman and immediately had a significant effect on the number of measles cases reported, with hundreds of thousands in the US during the 1960s (1966 saw 450,000) reduced to thousands by the 1980s.
The controversy occurred much later, in 1998, when Andrew Wakefield was paid by lawyers to find a way to discredit the MMR. He did this effectively, by publishing a paper claiming that there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The research has since been entirely discredited, but the effects on vaccination rates was devastating, with the officially eliminated disease reoccurring in the US. Similarly, in the UK the number of measles cases had dropped to 56 in 1998 and was up to 1348 in 2008. There is also an epidemic in the UK in 2013, largely around Wales. MMR rates are now increasing again, thanks to emergency vaccination programs and it can be safely said that the MMR is a significant medical breakthrough.
9.Oxygen–the fine air
Even an 8 year old knows about oxygen today. When it was first discovered in the year 1772, it was known by the name ‘fine air.’ It was known to be a gas that accelerates combustion. The discovery laid the foundation of high-end combustion engines that now power vehicles, motors and other devices. When the discoverer of Oxygen, Carl Wilhelm demonstrated the action of oxygen to a French scientist, he successfully went on to discover that oxygen was also responsible for supporting the respiration in all animals!
10.Organ Transplantation
Few surgical interventions today carry as much complexity - or as much ethical significance -- as organ transplantation.
"It's such a technically complex intervention that it's an amazing thing that it can even be done," Baker said. "It ties together both surgery and immunology."
The first successful transplant operation, which took place in 1954, removed a kidney from one donor and installed it in the body of his identical twin. Other organ transplants followed, including the first liver transplant in 1967 and the first heart transplant in 1968.
Today, there are more than 90,000 people awaiting a transplant in the United States alone -- a situation that also reveals the moral considerations that come entwined with such techniques.
"It represented an important turning point in the field of medical ethics," Baker said. "It really challenged physicians' ethic of 'first, do no harm.
The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
William Osler
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