The Medicine of Antiquity
The healer was a priest because, in the end, his appeal to the gods and how persuasive his appeal to them would be, depended on the health and life of the sick. The healer was a priest because, ultimately, the patient’s health and life depended on the favor of the gods and how persuasive his or her appeal to them would be. In a Pyrenean cave, there is a rock painting of such a Cro-Magnon healer, dressed in an animal skin, with deer antlers on his head.
At that time, people accumulated empirical knowledge about the properties of certain plants and minerals. This knowledge was often erroneous, i.e., plants were ascribed properties which they did not have, but there were also correct data. For example, the Incas discovered the tonic effect of cacao beans, the therapeutic properties of mate, and the narcotic effect of coca leaves. Such information was accumulated, laying the foundation for future pharmacology. It should be noted that many of the discoveries of our ancient ancestors are also used in modern medicine.
Medicine of the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages, especially the early and middle ages, are perceived as a dark time of decline in scientific medical knowledge, plunging Europe into epidemics that wiped out entire settlements. Doctors at this time were regarded with great wariness, more as servants of the devil, steeped in magic than as people helping society, hygiene was declared harmful (one of the popular theories of that time in Europe was that one should wash as little as possible, since water was the source of disease). The main remedy was prayer, and the real doctor was the priest. Europe paid dearly for this scientific regression, it paid with terrible epidemics of plague, typhus, cholera and other severe infections. It was only in the late Middle Ages that the situation began to change. It was only in the late Middle Ages that the situation began to change, as the understanding of where severe infections came from, the awareness of the importance of hygiene (for example, the famous German commitment to cleanliness came from there, when townspeople were severely punished for being unsanitary), doctors were no longer demonized and they were able to return to a scientific medical approach.
The Challenges of Time
As we can see, medicine as a science has taken a long path of development that was by no means linear. But even mistakes, although costly, ultimately served science – for example, chemistry, and then pharmacology, evolved from alchemy, which had as its goal the search for immortality.
Nevertheless, it is too early to put an end to the development of medicine. Time has thrown up new challenges. Thanks to the increase in life expectancy, the structure of diseases has changed, and people began to fall ill with things that previously they simply did not live to see. But new challenges also mean new breakthroughs, new discoveries, and new achievements.