Decker- History of healthcare timeline

  • Period: 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE

    Early beginnings

  • 3900 BCE

    Disease caused by?

    Evil spirits
  • 3600 BCE

    Treatments for sick?

    -Exorcisms to remove evil spirits
    -Trephining, where the doctor would remove part of the cranium to exorcise demons
    -Would also use different types of medicine
  • 3100 BCE

    Medicines used today?

    -Digitalis, used to treat heart conditions, comes from foxglove plant.
    -Quinine, controls fever, relieves muscle spasms, and helps prevent malaria, comes from the bark of a cinchona tree
    -Belladona and Atropine, would relieve muscle spasms, especially pain in the digestive tract (GI), made from poisonous nightshade plant.
    -Morphine, treated severe pain, made from opium poppy
  • Period: 2999 BCE to 399

    Ancient times

  • 2900 BCE

    Ancient Egyptians

    -They were the first people to keep accurate health records, able to identify diseases by doing so.
    -The priests acted as physicians
    -They used medicine to heal disease, would splint fractures, and would treat disorders by bloodletting with leeches
  • 1900 BCE

    Ancient Chinese

    -Were the first to use acupuncture therapies, used a variety of stone tools to treat many diseases and illnesses.
  • 990 BCE

    Ancient Greeks

    -believed that illnesses may have natural causes rather than spiritual causes, they determined this by being the first to study causes of diseases.
    -Religious customs did not allow dissection
    -Hippocrates used his knowledge of anatomy based on the observation of the external body, he found that disease wasn’t cause by supernatural forces. Hippocrates also wrote the oath of Hippocrates which is a oath that physicians still take.
  • Period: 400 to 800

    Dark age

  • Period: 800 to 1400

    Middle Ages

  • Period: 1350 to

    Renaissance

  • Period: 1501 to

    16th and 17th centuries

  • Period: to

    18th century

  • Period: to

    19th and 20th centuries

  • Period: to

    21st century