Introduction *
Jamie Bartram, Rachel Baum, Peter A. Coclanis, David M. Gute, David Kay, Stéphanie McFadyen, Katherine Pond, William Robertson, Michael J. Rouse in Routledge Handbook of Water and Health, 2015
Just as the emergence of the ‘germ theory’ of disease and its relationship to the attributes of water played a substantive role in the establishment of the science of public health and the discipline of epidemiology, so today water continues to provide a development space for emerging ideas and concepts. One example is the demand for evidence from randomized control trials (RCTs) to inform evidence-based policy and practice. As RCTs became acknowledged as the ‘gold standard’ source of evidence for clinical practice, such trials were subsequently demanded for other health interventions. However, they are quite costly and some contemporary water-related evidence calls into question the value for money of some of the evidence they provide. This is especially true for interventions which themselves have complex ‘upstream’ determinants, in policy, behaviour and programming (Rehfuess et al., 2009). A further complexity is that water interventions do not sit neatly and tidily within any one sector or discipline and they require inter-sectoral activity and interdisciplinary communication to be conducted effectively.
An Herbal Renaissance
David J. Owen in The Herbal Internet Companion, 2001
Several factors contributed to the general disappearance of herbal medicines from pharmacy shelves. The end of the nineteenth century saw the rise of scientific medicine and the growth of new disciplines, such as experimental physiology and physiological chemistry. The germ theory of disease revolutionized the treatment of infectious diseases. Major advances in organic chemistry led to the introduction of synthetic chemical drugs, such as the sulfonamide antimicrobials, and the rise of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Pharmacologically based chemical therapeutics with a biochemical emphasis began to displace other types of healing systems. In 1910, Abraham Flexner published his famous report Medical Education in the United States and Canada, which recommended that the quality of medical education should be improved by integrating scientific principles and techniques into treatment methods and medical school curricula. The Flexner Report had enormous influence and resulted in the closing of many medical schools that did not subscribe to the biochemical theory of medical treatment.4 Prior to Flexner, approximately 150 medical schools existed in the United States and Canada, but his report was sufficiently damning that more than half of those schools, which he considered “trade schools,” closed. Alternative systems of healing, such as homeopathic medicine and eclecticism, disappeared from center stage.
Global health
Kevin McCracken, David R. Phillips in Global Health, 2017
Although medical vaccines and therapies came into play only at the tail end of the Western world's ‘old’ infectious disease era, medical science played an important part in the way that it informed public and individual health practices. Validation of the ‘germ theory of disease’ (i.e. that microorganisms are the cause of many diseases) in the late nineteenth century through the work of Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and other medical researchers led to new understandings and approaches to improving population health. Legislation and public works to improve water supplies, sewage and garbage disposal and food hygiene now had a firm scientific foundation. Public health officials also used the new microbiological knowledge in campaigns to improve the personal health behaviours of individuals, such as washing hands before cooking and eating, cleaning cooking equipment, protecting food from flies and other insects, sterilizing bottles and milk, improving ventilation in homes, and isolating family members infected with contagious diseases. Broad social and economic improvements affecting food availability and quality, housing standards and general education also helped.
Facts and ideas from anywhere
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2019
William C. Roberts
In 1850, the US had 40,755 people calling themselves physicians, more per capita than the country would have in 1970. Few had formal medical education, and many were charlatans. The stethoscope appeared in 1816. The first dental school opened in Baltimore in 1839. Anesthesia came in the 1840s. Clean water supplies in urban areas greatly reduced epidemics of water-borne diseases such as typhoid and cholera, which had ravaged cities for centuries. In the 1850s and 1860s, it was discovered that many diseases were caused by specific microorganisms, as was the infection of wounds, surgical and other. The germ theory of disease, the most powerful idea in the history of medicine, converted medicine into a science. Most of the advances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, were preventive rather than curative. Louis Pasteur and others, using their new knowledge of microorganisms, began developing vaccines: rabies, whooping cough, and diphtheria. And then vitamin deficiencies such as pellagra began to decline in the early 20th century. When milk pasteurization began to be widely mandated around that time, the death rate among children plunged. In 1891, the death rate for American children in the first year of life was 125 per 1000. By 1925, it had been reduced to 16 per 1000 and life expectancy of Americans began to dramatically rise.
The Texas Society of Pathologists: molded by the legacy of pathology and focused on excellence in medicine for 100 years and beyond
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2021
L. Maximilian Buja
Pathology developed as a medical science along with physics, chemistry, anatomy, histology, physiology, biochemistry, and microbiology in Europe after the Renaissance.10,11 In the 18th century, stalwarts, including Giovanni Battista Morgagni and Carl von Rokitansky, established the scientific investigation of causes of disease based on performance of numerous meticulous autopsies.10–14 In the mid-19th century, the next great advance in pathology was led by Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). Virchow is the quintessence of the prepared mind succeeding by being at the right place (Germany) at the right time (improved light microscope).15 In 1858, Virchow established the scientific discipline of cellular pathology with his publication “Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebenlehre.” The title, “Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology,” captures the essence of cytopathology, surgical pathology, and autopsy pathology as practiced today. The 19th century saw other major developments of relevance to pathology. Claude Bernard advanced the field of physiology and established the importance of biological experimentation in medicine.16 Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch were instrumental in formulating the germ theory of disease and the science of microbiology. Élie Metchnikoff and Julius Cohnheim among others made important observations providing a foundation for cellular physiology and immunology.17,18
Masks, Politics, Culture and Health
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2020
Jacquelyn H. Flaskerud
But in the case of a pandemic such as COVID-19, why do some countries take to wearing masks and others do not? The reasons are many and include cultural, political and health-related concerns. Cultural reasons are cited for covering the face in many East Asian countries, specifically China, Korea and Japan. Yang (2014) relates that the underlying reason could be philosophical: All three countries have been broadly influenced by Taoism and the health precepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in which “qi”—breath and breathing—are seen as a central element in good health. So breathing is critical to maintain good qi in the body. Meanwhile, the intake of “feng,” or noxious wind, is considered the most potent and common of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s external causes of disease. The bottom line is that in East Asia, the predilection toward using face coverings to prevent exposure to bad air is something that predates the germ theory of disease, and extends into the very foundations of East Asian culture (Yang, 2014).