The Evolution of Medical Technology Throughout the Years

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Recommended: Medieval medicine and modern medicine historians

Medical technology has changed drastically throughout the years, with the first records of people healing one another dating back to ancient Egypt and Babylonia, though other civilizations scattered around the world, such as China or India discovered similar uses of medical knowledge around the same time. Scientists and doctors learned the art of observing and recording symptoms, and comparing them with others, resulting in an increase of understanding of disease and illness. Medical practices have evolved from the crude use of stone tools to cut small holes into skulls to relieve pressure on one’s brain, to complex robotic pieces that perform such a task with limited to no physical human contact. Many of the newest breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatment have come to be within the last ten years, and continue to constantly change.
The first recorded uses of medicine date back to the times of ancient Egypt, a time where the line between the real and the supernatural were blurred- a papyrus was found containing spells believed to heal and diagnose people, followed by a section on the uses of certain herbs to heal one’s malady, containing descriptions of the signs of the illness. Illness, however, remained mysterious until the Enlightenment around the 16th and 17th centuries, when Robert Hooke’s invention of the microscope allowed the unseen to finally be revealed, marking the beginning of an age of revolutionary science and medicine. Charles Darwin came along in the 1800s, changing the world with his observations and theories of natural science, including the way people thought of the human body. Gregor Mendel came up with ideas that would become the foundations of modern genetics. Louis Pasteur and Robert Kuch recorded informat...

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