About medicines in prehistoric times come from archaeologists who have excavated and explored ancient sites.

Our ideas about medicines in prehistoric times come from archaeologists who have excavated and explored ancient sites. experience .8000 BC: Prehistoric medicineIn 8000 BC: Prehistoric medicine, cave paintings and symbolic artifacts found by archaeologists suggest the earliest humans believed in spirits and supernatural forces. Animals, the stars, the land in which they lived and dead ancestors all inhabited a spirit world that was connected to their everyday life.
Spirit healers would perform ceremonies and cast spells to treat the sick. We also believe that they dispensed the first medicines. Drinking the blood of a wild animal killed in the hunt would give hunters special powers or eating special plants known only to the shaman could treat sickness. It is possible that these treatments would sometimes have a beneficial effect and it is thought that drugs like digitalis and morphine were first discovered in this way.2000 BC: Egyptian medicinesIn 2000 BC, the ancient Egyptians built pyramids to bury their Pharaohs and worshipped gods who ruled every aspect of their lives. The goddess Sekhmet was believed to cause or cure diseases and priests played a large part in Egyptian medicine.The Egyptians had doctors who specialized in treating particular parts of the body as well as researching the properties of herbal medicines. Their detailed records of the symptoms and treatments of illnesses formed some of the first medical text books.
As today, the Egyptians suffered from the common cold. Here is a remedy taken from an ancient papyrus:To make them feel better, the patient should be given the milk of a mother who has given birth to a boy. The following spell was to be made to get rid of the cold:
May you flow out, catarrh, son of catarrh, who breaks the bones, who destroys the skull, who hacks in the marrow, who causes the seven openings in the head to ache.”
Papyrus” 450 BC to 300 AD: Greeks and RomansIn 450BC to 300AD, Greece was home to one of the earliest civilizations. Writing, mathematics, philosophy and the arts all flourished. The Greeks believed in many different gods but they also tried to understand their world in a much more scientific way.Possibly the most famous name in medicine belongs to the Greek philosopher Hippocrates’s. He is seen as the father of modern medicine and gives his name to the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take.
Hippocrates went against this conventional thinking and looked on the body as having a balance between four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. If a person was ill, it meant that there was an imbalance in their humors and so they would take a treatment to return the balance back to normal. This often included bleeding or induced vomiting. This radical approach took medicine out of the spiritual world and the four humors formed the basis of medical treatments well into medieval times. Blood, Phlegm, Black Bile, and Yellow were introduced during this time period.
500 – 1400 AD: The middle AgesMedicine in the middle ages was dominated by religion. Sickness was believed to be a punishment from God for sins committed and the only way to cure someone was to pray for their forgiveness. Doctors in the middle ages were usually priests or other religious scholars. The patients were given food and comforted by religious nursing staff but little else was done to cure their illness.Surgery was a crude practice during the middle ages but operations such as amputations, setting broken bones, replacing dislocations and binding wounds were relatively common. Opium was sometimes used as an anesthetic while wounds were cleaned with wine to try and prevent infections700 – 1500 AD: Arabic medicinesFor many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Arabic world was the centre of scientific and medical knowledge.
The Renaissance was a period in European history during which there was a revival in the ideas of ancient Rome and Greece. Culture, art, science and medicine were studied by aristocrats and scholars who prized themselves on their education. Ideas flourished and the newly invented printing press allowed books to be produced quickly.
Bubonic plague moved along trade routes from China and killed more than a third of Europe’s population. When the Spanish colonized South America, they brought smallpox which killed many native Aztecs and Incas.
1700 – 1900: 18th and 19th centuries
The industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries saw a massive change in the way people lived and how this affected their health. People moved from small villages and an agricultural lifestyle to live in towns and cities that sprang up around the new factories, where they could work. many died diseases such as cholera, tuberculosis, measles and pneumonia – infections that could spread quickly and easily in these conditions.1900 – 2000: The 20th century
In 1901, the average life expectancy in the United Kingdom was 47 years. By the year 2000 it had risen to 77 years. New medicines, improved air quality and better public hygiene have contributed to this 64% increase in the life-expectancy. The twentieth century has seen some major advances in healthcare. These have included the development of:Penicillin: the discovery and development of antibiotics by Fleming, Florey and Chain. insulin: Banting and Best’s work to show that insulin can be used to treat diabetes. DNA: the human genome project is unlocking the secrets held within our DNA. It will lead to a much better understanding of the genetic basis for many diseases and may enable the development of new cures in the 21st Century.
2000 and beyond: 21st century medicine
Knowledge built up over the centuries has led to modern treatments that are based on a molecular understanding of how the body works. The ethical and moral concerns of modern society will continue to shape the development of treatments.
ref
://resources.schoolscience.com
://www.historylearningsite.com
://library.duke.edu