When medical specialties were created

More than any other time period in history, Early Greece was instrumental in constructing the world that we know today.

One can not reject the unbelievable importance of modern medicine, nor the truth that we are exceptionally fortunate to be alive at a time when we have such a comprehensive and accurate understanding of what makes us ill and why. However, it is also crucial to keep in mind that that understanding did not just emerge out of the ether, it is the result of lots of thousands of years of development. Actually, the story of contemporary medicine starts two and a half thousand years ago in Early Greece with the birth of the scientific method and a substantial variety of advances that completely enhanced the way that we thought about illness. It was also where a huge variety of important books on things like botany and anatomy were composed, books which formed the basis for additional developments in the art and science of medication for thousands of years to come.

There are some times in history that have actually continued to capture the creative imagination of people all over the world again and again throughout the ages. Of all of them, maybe the most influential has been Early Greece. Often described as the cradle of western civilisation, we owe a huge amount to the Early Greeks in terms of art, philosophy, and the sciences. In fact, when it pertains to the sciences, it is here, over two and a half thousand years ago, that the structures were laid for some of the most crucial cornerstones of modern-day life, such as healthcare. Although the importance of medicine has actually been well understood for centuries, the Ancient Greeks were the very first to institutionalise it in such a way that their discoveries and theories were the basis for the types of medicine practiced for over one and a half thousand years, and still, in many methods, underpins the work done by people like Róbert Wessman and Paul Hudson today.

Today, it is tough to picture a world without science. Science is the basis for whatever that we know about how the cosmos works, how our world works, and even how our physical bodies work. It might be easy to forget just how crucial that is, but we owe our long and healthy lives, in lots of ways, to the clinical endeavours of people like Vas Narasimhan. That precise, scientific method of doing things did not simply spring out of nowhere, we in fact owe it, and the work of Doctors of Medicine that it has enabled, to the Early Greeks. Before the Greeks, superstitious notion and religion were practically inseparable from healthcare, but as the viewpoint of reasoning was elevated in their society, it generated a mode of testing and observation that has entirely changed the world-- science.