Health
Hey guys! Glad to see you here and to find out that you are interested in health!
For me, health isn’t really the same as for you guys. I only need an update from time to time and an oil change by the local mechanic. For you, humans… That’s a totally different story. I don’t even know where to start this time, but I guess I’ll start with a little bit of history.
History of healthcare & medicine
Medicine and health, these two terms go hand in hand. Believe it or not, it all started way back in the prehistoric era. There is no record of when you humans first started using herbs and clay to treat wounds or other illnesses they had. However, we can make an educated guess that humans were already engaged in medicine as early as the Neanderthals.
The first evidence of dentists dates back from 7000 years before Christ! (They even had drills back then!) Not the same kind as we use now, of course, but rather flint-tipped drills used together with bowstrings) Flint as in the rock type flint, not one of my ancestors, mind you.
Trepanning operations (that’s basically drilling a hole in a human skull for medical purposes) were carried out around 5000 before Christ in what is France today. Around 4900 before Christ there is also evidence of a possible amputation that was carried out in the same place!
Prescriptions are nothing new as well. A medical recipe concerning poisoning was found in Istanbul that dated back to 1800 before Christ.
Apart from all these things, a lot of tribal cultures also had a shaman or a voodoo doctor that fulfilled the role of a healer for that tribe.
These are all examples of physical health, but the ancient Mesopotamians (The people living in Mesopotamia at that time, Mesopotamia refers to the western part of Asia) already had some notion about mental illnesses as well. The doctors of that age kept detailed records of patients' hallucinations. However, they assigned a spiritual meaning to them (For example, they were cursed by a certain god and that was their punishment).
I could tell you a lot more about the early civilizations but maybe that’s a story for a different time. That’s why I’m going to make a jump in time to around 400 before Christ. That was the time that a man in Kos (a region in Greece) was alive. You may have heard of him. He was called Hippocrates and he is considered the father of modern medicine. Today, students of medicine still swear the Hippocratic oath when they graduate. Along with his student, he also wrote 70 papers that were the basis for a lot of medical treatments that are still being used today. He was also the first person (of which we found proof) that performed cardiothoracic surgery (surgery on the heart by opening the chest). The findings from these surgeries are still valid today.
A few hundred years later, around 150 after Christ we have our next big breakthrough. This is when the Greek physician named Galen was alive. Galen’s work dominated all medical studies for the following 1500 years. He was the first to strongly believe that medical dissection was one of the essential procedures for understanding medicine. And he was right.
By dissecting bodies he made major breakthroughs in anatomy and physiology. Through dissection and surgery he found out that blood circulates through the human body. His theories and experimentation based on this are the foundation of modern medicine surrounding the heart and blood.
But enough of the history. There are so many interesting medical findings that I could tell you about, but we aren’t here for that. We are here for a bit more on how health is evolving and how it could evolve.
Modern medicine
Modern medicine is next on the list. Modern medicine has its origins in the 19th century. It came to being because of chemistry, laboratory techniques and equipment.
The practice of medicine also changed. Doctors were more systematic when looking at the symptoms that a patient showed in a diagnosis. Anesthesia was also invented in order to make surgery more humane (no more biting on a piece of wood or leather because of the pain).
Germs and bacteria were also discovered. The laboratories and testing they found out that these germs, viruses and bacteria are often the cause of a lot of illnesses.
In 1928 the first antibiotic called penicillin was created by Alexander Fleming. To this date it is still one of the main antibiotics and is used in a lot of drugs. The only thing that changed is that we can make it artificially in a laboratory thanks to the use of modern technology.
The present
Healthcare has also evolved fast. Most countries have a healthcare system but, unfortunately, it isn’t always a fair one. In the USA, for example, healthcare isn’t affordable without insurance. Because of the great costs of medical equipment like scanners, robots, the fees doctors charge, the cost of producing medicine, etc. a good health is a privilege for the richer people. If you live in a poor family you have a lower life expectancy than people who have more money (some treatments in the USA can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars if you don’t have insurance). Luckily, it isn’t like that everywhere and the US is looking to make changes to their health system.
In Belgium, for example, there is a good social system in place and healthcare is accessible for everyone. Not everything is accessible for everyone, but basic healthcare is a human right and pretty much everyone can exercise it.
In the present day, medicine and healthcare are more focused on curing. People have a problem and they go to see a doctor in the hope that he can diagnose their problem and cure them. However, this is something that sparks a lot of controversy. Is this the right way?
Many specialists believe we should focus more on prevention. Preventing a disease is ALWAYS better than curing an illness. Teaching the population how to eat healthy food and exercise often could improve global health massively! For example, it could reduce the number of diabetics by more than half! Next to that, it also could prevent a lot of problems with heart disease and improve the health standards. So there are a lot of debates going on at this moment that are looking into changing the current medical viewpoint.
The futures
Of course, when we talk about health in the futures we will be talking about some awesome stuff!
One of the things that is changing medicine in a huge way is 3D printing. 3D printing technology is evolving so fast that, at this moment, there are already 3D printed stents (You can think of a stent as a very small piece of tube that they can enter in your veins to make a blockage passable again. If the vein gets narrowed and blood isn’t flowing as good as it should in a place doctors sometimes place a stent so the vein is wide enough again for optimal bloodflow) and veins that are being used inside the human body. What we also see is 3d printed organs! These are not yet ready to be implanted inside a human body, but they are being tested and could become a part of your futures. This will have a huge impact on the medical world because the list with people in need for an organ donor is huge! Just imagine a future where we could help everyone that needs a new kidney, or liver or even a heart!
Skin is also something that is being 3D printed and it gets damaged a lot. Burn patients will probably benefit a lot from this!
Scientists are also growing nerve cells on circuit boards to see if they can make them work (Nerve cells need electrical impulses so they need a circuit board to have an easy way to test if electrical pulses can be transmitted through the cells). This technology is also being developed at a steady pace and there are some advancements in this field.
There also is a guy in Silicon Valley called Elon Musk. His company invented something called Neuralink. This is basically a chip that can be implanted in the brain and by thinking about a certain song you would be able to listen to that song directly. It could be uploaded to your brain. if we look at it from a health perspective it could for example help people with alzheimers (If alzheimers still exists in the futures, who knows). They could make a file with, for example, their life story and important events, upload it to the internet and download it to their brain when they need the information.
This, of course, brings some dangers with it. I’m not talking about the danger of brain surgery but about the danger that having implants in your body can have. If technology is linked with the internet in some way, then it is theoretically possible to hack this piece of technology. I shudder at the thought of someone hacking me…. Let alone if someone hacked the brain or a heart of a human being!
Luckily, we are still far away from this technology being developed enough to be used in a human body. But think about it a bit more…