KnowSoda
ScienceHealth & Medicine
History of Medicine: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Ancient Medicine
Ancient Egyptians set broken bones and wrote medical texts. In Greece, Hippocrates argued that illness had natural causes, not curses from the gods.
Key fact
Doctors’ Hippocratic Oath is named after him.
The Four Humours
For about 2,000 years, doctors believed health depended on balancing four body fluids, or humours. Bloodletting was one common, and harmful, result.
Key fact
Bloodletting was still used in the 1800s.
Discovering Anatomy
In 1543, Andreas Vesalius published a detailed atlas of the human body based on real dissections, correcting many ancient errors.
Key fact
In 1628, William Harvey showed that the heart pumps blood around the body.
Germ Theory
From the 1860s, Louis Pasteur and then Robert Koch showed that many diseases are caused by germs. That changed medicine, food safety and hygiene.
Key fact
Pasteurisation, heating milk to kill germs, is named after Pasteur.
Anaesthesia
Before the 1840s, surgery was done with the patient fully awake. Ether and chloroform changed that, making longer, safer operations possible.
Key fact
Queen Victoria used chloroform during childbirth in 1853.
X-Rays & Scans
In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays, letting doctors see inside the body without cutting. Today, CT and MRI scanners build detailed 3D images.
Key fact
One of his first X-ray images showed his wife’s hand, ring and all.
Modern Milestones
The 20th century brought insulin (1921), antibiotics, the first heart transplant (1967) and IVF (1978). Average lifespans rose dramatically.
Key fact
Global life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900.
Fun facts
Ancient skulls with healed holes show that people survived having their heads drilled, thousands of years ago.
Words like “melancholy” and “phlegmatic” come from the humours: black bile and phlegm.
Dissections were once public events: people bought tickets to watch them in anatomy theatres.
Agar, still used to grow bacteria in labs, was suggested by Fanny Hesse, who used it at home to set jellies.
The first public operation under ether, in Boston in 1846, took place in a room now called the Ether Dome.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, many shoe shops had X-ray machines to show how shoes fitted.
Before insulin, type 1 diabetes was usually fatal.
Story: Sold for a Dollar
Sold for a Dollar
1921, Toronto. Surgeon Frederick Banting and student Charles Best spend a hot summer trying to extract insulin.
In January 1922, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson, dying of diabetes, gets the first injections. He recovers.
The discoverers sold the patent to their university for one dollar each. They wanted insulin to reach everyone.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
-
Question 1 of 10
Hippocrates believed diseases had natural causes.
Show the answer
True. Not punishments from the gods.
-
Question 2 of 10
Bloodletting was once a common treatment.
Show the answer
True. For centuries.
-
Question 3 of 10
William Harvey described how blood circulates.
Show the answer
True. In 1628.
-
Question 4 of 10
Pasteurisation is named after Louis Pasteur.
Show the answer
True. He developed the method.
-
Question 5 of 10
Surgery was once done without anaesthetic.
Show the answer
True. Surgeons had to work as fast as possible.
-
Question 6 of 10
X-rays were discovered in 1895.
Show the answer
True. By Wilhelm Röntgen.
-
Question 7 of 10
The first human heart transplant was in 1967.
Show the answer
True. In Cape Town, South Africa.
-
Question 8 of 10
The Hippocratic Oath is named after a Roman emperor.
Show the answer
False. It’s named after the Greek physician Hippocrates.
-
Question 9 of 10
The four humours theory is how medicine works today.
Show the answer
False. It was abandoned as science advanced.
-
Question 10 of 10
Vesalius based his anatomy only on ancient books.
Show the answer
False. He studied real human bodies.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. History of Medicine has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Science Museum (London) — Brought to Life: exploring the history of medicine
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Hippocrates, Vesalius, Harvey, Pasteur, Röntgen
- Nobel Prize — Insulin (1923)
- World Bank / Our World in Data — Life expectancy
- James Lind Library — Lind’s 1747 scurvy trial; the 1948 MRC streptomycin trial
- American Chemical Society — Discovery and development of penicillin
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Karl Landsteiner; René Laennec and the stethoscope
