Fibromyalgia’s a Real Pain in The Shirt

The first “healers” were chronicled in cave paintings in what is now France. The paintings were radiocarbon-dated as far back as 27,000 years ago and depicted people using plants for medicinal purposes. This is the first recorded instance of what eventually developed into the first medical knowledge base, passed down through tribes. Trepanation – puncturing the skull to relieve pain, was done thousands of years ago with spotty success…Treat like an Egyptian: Surgery 5,000 years agoNot only were the ancient Egyptians some of the healthiest people on Earth (Homer – of Odyssey fame, not the one in the ancient Egypt Simpsons episode – credited their public health care system, as well as the dry climate) but Egyptians also performed some of the first recorded surgery: root canal (some evidence suggests teeth may have been drilled as early as 9,000 years ago in India.) Back then, being a doctor involved mastery of supernatural texts as well as later being trained in anatomy and diagnosis.“Take two frogs and call me in the morning”Some 3,000 years ago, the ancient Babylonians may have been the first to offer prescriptions. Babylonian health “experts” also had a diagnostic text that featured a number of symptoms and treatments that had worked previously.

Fibromyalgia’s a Real Pain in The Shirt

Greece and the birthplace of medical ethicsInfluenced by Egyptian and Babylonian medicine, the famed Greek “physician” Hippocrates wrote the Hippocratic Corpus which is a collection of around seventy early medical works from ancient Greece strongly associated with Hippocrates and his students. Most famously, Hippocrates invented the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still relevant and in use today.This probably won’t kill you…By the time medicine was being practiced in the 9th century Middle East, doctors started practicing in what you could call hospitals. Around this time, doctors generally knew about how to use catgut and forceps, plaster, ligature, surgical needle, saw, scalpels, and the ever calming, surgical spoon. Basically at this point, medicine was more likely to help you than harm you.Medieval Europe and the first med schools12th century Italy saw the emergence of universities and the first medical schools. At this point, being a doctor depended less on the “gospel” of pre-existing medical texts and more on applying those texts and others to a doctor’s individual experiences in the field. The ability to reliably affect a patient’s health was still hit & miss.