Early Health and Medicine

Topics covered: • Early attitudes to health and medicine • The lack of knowledge about germs and disease caused the early settlers to wrongly treat the patient • Bleeding, blistering and amputation were standard treatments • Herbal remedies were sometimes effective • The Indians taught remedies to settlers • Ideas about cleanliness and nutrition • Early vitamin discoveries • Contaminated food and milk • Environmental health problems • Childhood diseases • Epidemics: cholera, typhus, smallpox and TB • Education of the early doctors • Great contributors to medicine: Harvey, Galen, Jenner, Pasteur and Lister • The early apothecaries • Other healers: phrenologists, tooth-pullers, homeopaths and quacks • Anesthetics and germ-free surgery • Scientific medicine offers new hope • Back to basics of nutrition and exercise