DOWN THE YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 203, 28 August 1934, Page 3

DOWN THE YEARS.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE,

DR. J. W. CRAVEN'S LECTURE.

Medicine as it has been practised down the years was described in a highly interesting lecture given by Dr. J. W. Craven, medical superintendent of the Auckland Hospital, at an institute and museum lecture in the University College Hall last evening. Sir Carrick Robertson, a member of the council of the institute, presided. Contemplation of the history of medicine would show that there was an abundance of romance in it, said Dr. Craven. To appreciate what had been done, the position of primitive man in copying what the animals did to treat wounds could be visualised. Later mankind reached a period where superstition, coupled with all manner of incantations, was considered a necessity in dealing with sickness. Disease wste regarded as an evil spirit, or the work of one, and conceptions of the supernatural dominated whatever treatment was given in cases of sickness. In cases where man considered that disease was the work of the offended spirits of the dead, he reasoned that they could be placated by burnt offerings, and it was a strange fact that iii these very burnings could be seen the beginning of the idea of

fumigation

One of numerous curious superstitions was that bad eyesight could be cured by the application of water into which had been dipped the red-hot iron of a blacksmith. There was the ease of a Turkish upholsterer who drank ca!)bage juice for typhus and recovered. The Turkish doctors pronounced cabbage juice to be a cure for typhus, but when 1 the next patient died they altered their opinion to one that the juice was good only for upholsterers suffering from typhus. In ancient Mesopotamia, music was used in the treatment of sickness. The Egyptians made no serious attempt to practise the art of surgery as it was known to-day, but there had been progress in some directions, such as embalming. The Babylonian physicians regarded disease as the work of demons, and they were not far from the truth, for to-day it was known there were demons in the form of microbes.

Surgical instruments were identified with the bronze age. The first human dissection was done at Alexandria. Up until 200 A.D. anatomy continued to advance as a study, but its progress was arrested until the Renaissance. It was in the time of Hippocrates in the fourth century B.C. that the true history of European medicine began, and the first glint of the light shining to-day in the world of medicine was apparent. Surgery was advanced under the Romans, and after the anatomists came the physiologists. Though medicine suffered declines in the dark ages, anatomy reached full importance in the 16th century. In the succeeding centuries there appeared many great figures, Pasteur and Lister, for example, making great contributions which changed the practice of surgery. In the present day, with a variety of anaesthetics, and the benefit of advanced appliances, it was hard to realise the position even little more than a century ago. Research was constant in medicine, and in all parts of the world experts were still seeking the perfect anaesthetic.