Hippocrates First Surgery Research Paper

Before Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, emerged as a major figure in the reformation and beginning of modern medicine, ancient civilizations and tribes all across the globe had their own specialized methods of healing. Some cultures, such as the Egyptians, advanced their techniques at incredible speeds, but eventually they began relying on the written word of others instead of personal experience when treating illness and disease. This led to a major decline in the growth of medicine and almost all exploration of new ideas and cures ceased. Mankind was, for a long time, inspired by magic and the idea that evil spirits cause disease, and this led to the main method of treatment, exorcising demons. Although the exact date of when medicine …show more content…
It is guessed that the very first surgery, or one of the first, was an amputation scenario in which the surgeon discovered that his infected finger should be amputated. In a sense, surgery was the first true division of medicine due to its effectiveness. The earliest and most ubiquitous surgeries were on the brain, which may seem paradoxical because of early man’s limited knowledge of the body. However, these types of operations were often very successful and proved to help patients’ symptoms in most cases. In fact, the surgery, trepanning, was quite common in many different societies and locations, and the technique was always the same, according to skeletal remains. Most people who had this procedure experienced painful headaches and fevers, but people at the time believed that a demonic presence was inside the patient and that trepanning would rid them of the angry spirit. The process of trepanning could have been used for other reasons besides illness, perhaps for magical purposes, but nonetheless, evidence proves that this was one of the earliest medical practices that had some solidity in fact and