---
title: "History of medicine"
chunk: 17/17
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:03.179404+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

"By 1944 most casualties were receiving treatment within hours of wounding, due to the increased mobility of field hospitals and the extensive use of aeroplanes as ambulances. The care of the sick and wounded had also been revolutionized by new medical technologies, such as active immunization against tetanus, sulphonamide drugs, and penicillin."
During the second World War, Alexis Carrel and Henry Dakin developed the Carrel-Dakin method of treating wounds with an irrigation, Dakin's solution, a germicide which helped prevent gangrene.
The War spurred the usage of Roentgen's X-ray, and the electrocardiograph, for the monitoring of internal bodily functions. This was followed in the inter-war period by the development of the first anti-bacterial agents such as the sulpha antibiotics.

==== Nazi and Japanese medical research ====
Unethical human subject research, and killing of patients with disabilities, peaked during the Nazi era, with Nazi human experimentation and Aktion T4 during the Holocaust as the most significant examples. Many of the details of these and related events were the focus of the Doctors' Trial. Subsequently, principles of medical ethics, such as the Nuremberg Code, were introduced to prevent a recurrence of such atrocities. After 1937, the Japanese Army established programs of biological warfare in China. In Unit 731, Japanese doctors and research scientists conducted large numbers of vivisections and experiments on human beings, mostly Chinese victims.

=== Institutions ===

==== World Health Organization ====
The World Health Organization was founded in 1948 as a United Nations agency to improve global health. In most of the world, life expectancy has improved since then, and was about 67 years as of 2010, and well above 80 years in some countries. Eradication of infectious diseases is an international effort, and several new vaccines have been developed during the post-war years, against infections such as measles, mumps, several strains of influenza and human papilloma virus. The long-known vaccine against Smallpox finally eradicated the disease in the 1970s, and Rinderpest was wiped out in 2011. Eradication of polio is underway. Tissue culture is important for development of vaccines. Despite the early success of antiviral vaccines and antibacterial drugs, antiviral drugs were not introduced until the 1970s. Through the WHO, the international community has developed a response protocol against epidemics, displayed during the SARS epidemic in 2003, the Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 from 2004, the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and onwards.

=== People ===

== Contemporary medicine ==

=== Antibiotics and antibiotic resistance ===
The discovery of penicillin in the 20th century by Alexander Fleming provided a vital line of defence against bacterical infections that, without them, often cause patients to suffer prelonged recovery periods and highly increased chances of death. Its discovery and application within medicine allowed previously impossible treatments to take place, including cancer treatments, organ transplants, to open heart surgery. Throughout the 20th century, though, their overprescribed use to humans, as well as to animals that need them due to the conditions of intensive animal farming, has led to the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

=== Robotics ===

=== HIV First death ===

The early 21st century, facilitated by extensive global connections, international travel, and unprecedented human disruption of ecological systems, has been defined by a number of noval as well as continuing global pandemics from the 20th century.

==== Past ====
The SARS 2002 to 2004 outbreak affected a number of countries around the world and killed hundreds. This outbreak gave rise to a number of lessons learnt from viral infection control, including more effective isolation room protocols to better hand washing techniques for medical staff. A mutated strain of SARS would go on to develop into COVID-19, causing the future COVID-19 pandemic. A significant influenza strain, H1N1, caused a further pandemic between 2009 and 2010. Known as swine flu, due to its indirect source from pigs, it went on to infect over 700 million people.

==== Ongoing ====
The continuing HIV pandemic, starting in 1981, has infected and led to the deaths of millions of people around the world. Emerging and improved pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) treatments that aim to reduce the spread of the disease have proven effective in limiting the spread of HIV alongside combined use of safe sex methods, sexual health education, needle exchange programmes, and sexual health screenings. Efforts to find a HIV vaccine are ongoing while health inequities have left certain population groups, like trans women, as well as resource limited regions, like sub-Saharan Africa, at greater risk of contracting HIV compared with, for example, developed countries.
The outbreak of COVID-19, starting in 2019, and subsequent declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the WHO is a major pandemic event within the early 21st century. Causing global disruptions, millions of infections and deaths, the pandemic has caused suffering throughout communities. The pandemic has also seen some of the largest logistical organisations of goods, medical equipment, medical professionals, and military personnel since World War II that highlights its far-reaching impact.

=== Personalised medicine ===
The rise of personalised medicine in the 21st century has generated the possibility to develop diagnosis and treatments based on the individual characteristics of a person, rather than through generic practices that defined 20th century medicine. Areas like DNA sequencing, genetic mapping, gene therapy, imaging protocols, proteomics, stem cell therapy, and wireless health monitoring devices are all rising innovations that can help medical professionals fine tune treatment to the individual.

=== Telemedicine ===
Remote surgery is another recent development, with the transatlantic Lindbergh operation in 2001 as a groundbreaking example.

=== Institutions ===

=== People ===

== Themes in medical history ==

=== Racism in medicine ===
Racism has a long history in how medicine has evolved and established itself, both in terms of racism experience upon patients, professionals, and wider systematic violence within medical institutions and systems. See: medical racism in the United States, race and health, and scientific racism.

=== Women in medicine ===

Women have always served as healers and midwives since ancient times. However, the professionalization of medicine forced them increasingly to the sidelines. As hospitals multiplied they relied in Europe on orders of Roman Catholic nun-nurses, and German Protestant and Anglican deaconesses in the early 19th century. They were trained in traditional methods of physical care that involved little knowledge of medicine.

== See also ==

== Explanatory notes ==

== References ==

== Further reading ==

== External links ==

 Texts on Wikisource:
Senfelder L (1911). "History of Medicine". Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10.
The history of medicine and surgery as portrayed by various artists
Directory of History of Medicine Collections Archived 2013-09-16 at the Wayback Machine, Index to the major collections in the United States and Canada, selected by the US National Institute of Health
Newsletter / Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine Archived 2024-05-02 at the Wayback Machine. Date: [1988-1997], Wellcome Collection