There was the cowpox vaccine in 1798
and I suppose we have had effective pain-control (opium) for a very long time
- Anyway, the cowpox vaccine was an improvement on smallpox variolation, which was known to the Chinese at least by 1549.
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We have evidence of trepanning (drilling holes in the skull) going back to the flint tools time period. We still use this today to release pressure after a bleed in the skull.
Go check out the alledged link between the snake wrapped staff that’s used to represent medicine and the treatment for guinea worms. Googling puts that theory with the Ebers papyrus from 1500 BC if it’s true!
It always looked suspiciously like ida pingala sushumna to me
Confusingly, there’s actually two similar staves that get mixed up. The helix patterned one with two winged snakes I think you have in mind is called the Caduceus, but the the single wingless version I meant is the staff of Aesculapius (multiple spellings out there).
Oh
Animals were doing it long before humans even existed. Some birds will “bathe” in an ant nest because the formic acid excreted by the ants rids them of parasites. There’s even a word for it - zoopharmacognosy.
Long before recorded history, people knew what plants were helpful to treat or cure various maladies. Who knows what possessed the first human to chew on willow bark to relieve pain or reduce a fever? The earliest documentation of it was 400 BCE by Hippocrates, but it was probably common knowledge for much longer than that. The Chinese have been using various herbs to treat disease for at least 3000 years.
Limeys figured out scurvy around 1600
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The Edwin Smith Papyrus, a papyrus made to treat traumatic brain injury or TBI, is the very first written work made to remedy a medical condition in a way that doesn’t depend on sorcery, written around 2000 BC. It gives a detailed account on some but not all do’s and dont’s of such injuries. I cite this because it actually suggests Egypt knew better than those of us alive today.
Cool. Thanks.
There is this recent paper about ants, https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/call-the-ant-doctor-amputation-gives-injured-ants-a-leg-up-on-infections/
Maggot therapy goes back thousands of years
I’m not sure if it counts as a cure or more of a prevention, but smallpox was eradicated in 1980 through vaccines!
There was effective medicine before 1980
