MEDICINE INVENTIONS

WHO INVENTED MEDICINE?

The invention of medicines dates back to centuries. It was in around 3000 B. C. that the Egyptians used remedies to fight diseases and they also performed basic surgeries by general examination of the patient and mainly the guess work and magic worked. In Greece Hippocrates was considered as the father of the medicine. He was the one to classify diseases and the first to perform the chest surgery. He is well known for the Hippocratic Oath as the doctors till date, take this oath.  The Romans were the one who marked the science of surgical instruments; they used the instruments and developed the cataract operations.

Later in the medieval period the medicines field faced a period of downfall. People had more faith in magic and witchcraft. Then again the knowledge of medicine rekindled with researchers such as Vesalius, Thomas Brown and Servetus etc. who were the strong believers of medicines and totally against the superstitions.

The history of medicine faced renewal in 1865 when Joseph Lister brought the importance of antiseptics to the public. And then one by one people like Gregor Mendel with Mendel’s law, Louis Pasteur along with Charles had theories of germs, development of X-Ray’s and ECG’s, antibiotics and penicillin, Crick and Watson with DNA, ailments for cancer, heart and kidney diseases all contributed to the history of medicines.

The continual changes in the history of medicines seem to be so promising so as to eradicate the diseases in the times to come.

WHO INVENTED DEFBRILLATOR?

Defibrillator was invented by William B. Kouwenhoven in 1930. William studied the relation between the electric shocks and its effects on human heart when he was a student at John Hopkins University School of Engineering. His studies helped him to invent a device for external jump start of the heart. He invented the defibrillator and tested on the dog. It was in 1947; Dr. Carl Beck tested the technique on the human patient and saved his life. This was a new phase in the medical field and thereafter defibrillator passed through many stages of improvement. In the year 1962, Lown and Neuman made use of a defibrillator that was powered by DC current and was more reliable and safe.

Defibrillator is made use of in cases of irregular heart beating. The person might suffer from this irregularity due to heart surgery, cardiac problem or heart attacks. The use of defibrillator helps in restoring the normal heart beat and functioning of the heart.

The invention of modern and portable defibrillator has facilitated the lifeguards and other rescue people such as police, fire fighters to save number of lives in the times of emergency. They are so compatible and easy to use that any person can use it without any special training for the same. The machine is so designed so as to judge that whether the patient needs its treatment or not. If the same is not required it will not pass on the shock to the patient.

WHO INVENTED BIONICS?

Jack. E. Steele created bionics in 1958. Jack was working at the Aeronautics Division House at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. He worked as a doctor in the rank of a colonel in Air Force. He served for twenty years as the doctor. When he gave the term bionics he did not refer to the same as the term got popularity later. The biological systems when entered the engineering department to solve their problems, the new field was termed as biomimetics.

Bionics captured the attention of science fiction writer Martin Caidin. He wrote a book referring to the topic in 1972 which became the base for the famous T. V. serial “The Six Million Dollar Man” which brought good amount of popularity to bionics.

Bionics is eventually the deep study of nature and to use it (flora and fauna) adding technical points to it. It is mainly imitating natural manufacturing methods, copying natural techniques and mechanism and study of social behavior of the organisms.

Some common examples of bionics are Velcro, Cat’s eyes reflectors, Resilin, Coating paints etc.

In the field of medicines bionics has given to human beings artificial limbs that are a blessing to people with amputated limbs. The latest development in the field is the “i-Limb-Hand” launched by a Scottish company in the year 2007.

WHO INVENTED PACEMACKER?

The first heart pacemaker was invented by a Canadian scientist John Hoops in the year 1950. Hoops completed his training as an electrical engineer from the University of Manitoba when he was just 21 and started working with the national research council in 1941. In 1949 Hoops started his research on hypothermia where he worked with radio frequencies to increase the temperature of the body and understood that cooling stopped the working of heart and it could be restarted by artificial stimulation. This discovery led to the invention in 1950 of that of a pacemaker. The first pacemaker was too big to fit in human body internally. It was first tested in 1949 at the University of Toronto’s Department of Surgery on a dog. The earliest form of catheter electrodes used vacuum tubes that were later replaced by transistors. The first implant of pacemaker in human was done in 1958.

Hoops himself became a heart patient and in 1984 he had pacemaker implanted so as to keep his heart regulated but by then it was considered a normal surgery. He got his pacemaker replaced after thirteen years of his first surgery.

Though he retired from his work in 1979 but he continued serving the school children and his writings on biomedical engineering. Hoops also served as the President of Ontario Heart Foundation. He also wrote a book “Passing Pulses, The Pacemaker and Medical Engineering: A Canadian Story”. The father of biomedical engineering died on November 24, 1998.