Medicine and surgery through the ages
STANFORD T. SHULMAN, MD
aFall 1997
THE STAMPS CHOSEN for display in this issue of The Child's Doctor portray several major early figures in the history of medicine. The gray-brown Hungarian stamp shows Galen (130–201a.d.), considered the greatest Greek physician after Hippocrates and founder of experimental physiology. Galen was born at Pergamum, in Asia Minor (now Turkey), and studied medicine in Pergamum, Corinth, Smyrna and Alexandria. He moved to Rome where he attended Emperor Marcus Aurelius, lectured in anatomy, and became the most skilled practitioner of the time. His vast medical writings were based on a system that combined Hippocrates' theory of the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile), Pythagoras' theory of the four elements (earth, air, fire and water), and his own idea of a spirit of “pneuma” penetrating all the parts. For nearly 14 centuries after his death, through the Middle Ages, Galen remained the final authority on everything relating to anatomy, physiology and disease.
Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) known as the Rambam and honored on the brown souvenir sheet from Antigua and Barbuda, was born in Cordoba, Spain. Driven to Morocco, Palestine and then Egypt by religious persecution, he died in Cairo where he was physician to the Moslem sultan, Saladin. Maimonides was a highly distinguished theologian, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and physician, and he is generally regarded as the greatest of the Jewish physicians of the Middle Ages. He was a Galenist whose philosophic contributions were more innovative than his medicine. He classified medicine into three divisions: preventive medicine; healing of the sick; and care of the convalescent, including invalids and the aged. His Guide for the Perplexed (1190), On Poisons and Their Antidotes (~1200), Treatise on Asthma (1190) and Guide to Good Health (1198) are among his most noteworthy works, although he is most remembered for completely codifying and interpreting Biblical, Talmudic, and Rabbinical literature. A grateful patient wrote:
Ambrose Paré (1510–1590), born at Bourg Hersent (now part of Laval) in northwestern France, is portrayed in the blue French stamp. Paré became the greatest surgeon of his time even though he began as a lowly apprentice barber-surgeon in the provinces. Indeed, Paré has been called one of the three greatest surgeons of all time. His contributions were made primarily as an army surgeon and notably included the treatment of gunshot wounds without bathing them (painfully) in boiling oil (1545), the use of ligatures rather than cautery for hemostasis (1552), probably the first description of transmission of infection by flies, and in obstetrics the demonstration that podalic version was feasible and practical. Paré participated in 20 military campaigns and wrote 20 books, which greatly influenced the future of surgery. In addition, he fathered a son in 1583 at the age of 73! Paré was noted for his humility, stating in his most famous work (Apologie and Treatise of Voyages), with regard to bandaging wounds without boiling oil: "Je le pansais, Dieu le guérit." ["I bandaged them, God healed them."]
