Medical inventions that changed the world
Winter season can be pleasant and comfortable, but it can still be unhealthy without proper precautions.
It is a wonderful experience to feel the cold wind blow through our warm body but, without taking the necessary steps, one might become sick and suffer due to it.
The following information indicates some of the scientific innovations that have made life better and safer.
Spectacles
Spectacles are abundant nowadays, but do you know their inventor’s birthplace remains a mystery.
The earliest appearance of wearable glasses emerged in Italy during the 13th century. Several scholars and monks in that era used an initial prototype of present spectacles which lacked arms.
With a round shape, they were either balanced on the nose or were held before the eyes. However, with more signs of myopia among people in the later years, it became popular.
Vaccines
The initial purpose of medicine since ancient days was to heal sick people.
However, according to Edward Jenner, a British doctor, medicines might be able to prevent sickness. In the year 1976, he observed that cowpox among milkmaids prevented them from getting a more deadly pathogen – smallpox.
With the same properties, cowpox was curable, but smallpox was not.
Draining smallpox blisters from the hands of a milkmaid Sarah Nelmes, he injected it into the hands of the son of Jenner’s gardener. Consequently, he also injected a tiny amounts of smallpox pus into the same person’s arm.
The boy recovered in a few days while showing mild fever symptoms, and thus came the smallpox vaccine.
Antibiotics
In 1928, Fleming was researching the bacterium Staphylococcus, found in the nose, skin, and armpit of humans.
On a September morning, Fleming found a strange fungus on his staph cultures from the genus Penicillium. Although it kept the far staph colonies untouched, it ruined the close ones.
The name penicillin came to it after its initial identity as a bacteria-killing substance. The full name of its discoverer was Alexander Fleming.
X-Ray Imaging
On 8th November 1895, there was an accident in the laboratory that belonged to the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen.
As an effort to figure out a way for locating broken bones or shrapnel, the discovery opened doors for daily clinical diagnosis.
X-rays in present times have multiple applications in medical science, security posts, and other places.
Thermometer
Earlier, people used to have a device known as a “thermoscope” to detect fever. In later years, different inventors brought separate versions of the “thermoscope”.
Galileo Galilei was one such pioneer who was able to develop a thermoscope capable of detecting temperature variations (although not very accurately).
The thermoscope was a device that indicated a rise in temperature without proper measurable value.
In 1714, Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the standardized-scale thermometer to show precise temperature variations.
Organ transplantation and Donation
Organ transplantation can be considered as one of the most complicated procedures in the history of medicine.
After coming to an understanding of the various blood types, doctors examined the properties underlying immunity rejection and the compatibility factor between donors and recipients.
Did you know? In 1954, kidney was the very first organ transplanted, while the first skin transplant happened in 1869.
