Medical Technology

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Medical Technology
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• Medical Technology has changed over the years.
• As we gain more knowledge, ways of treating
  disease and injuries improves.
• To give you an idea, here are some ways problems
  were dealt with in the past.

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Old Battlefield Hospital
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Todays Battlefield Hospital
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Trephine (1800s)This trephine was a
hand-powered drill with a cylindrical blade that
was used to bore into the skull. The spike in the
center was used to start the procedure and to
hold the blade in place while cutting.
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Tonsil Guillotine (1860s)This method of
removing tonsils worked much like a traditional
guillotine, slicing off the infected tonsils.
This "double guillotine" design meant that both
tonsils could be removed at the same time. Tonsil
guillotines were replaced by forceps and scalpels
in the early 20th century due to the high rate of
hemorrhaging and the imprecise nature of the
device, which often left tonsil remnants in the
mouth
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Amputation Knife (1700s)Knives used for
amputations during the 18th century were
typically curved, because surgeons tended to make
a circular cut through the skin and muscle before
the bone was cut with a saw. By the 1800s,
straight knives became more popular because they
made it easier to leave a flap of skin that could
be used to cover the exposed stump.

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Artificial Leech (1800s)Bloodletting with
leeches was such a popular treatment for a range
of medical conditions that an artificial leech
was invented in 1840 and was used frequently in
eye and ear surgery. The rotating blades would
cut a wound in the patient's skin, while the
cylinder would be used to produce a vacuum that
sucked up the blood.
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Old Prosthetic Arms
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New Prosthetic Arms
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Studying the Stomach

• Dr. Beaumont is able to study digestion in a
  living human stomach when a trapper on Mackinaw
  Island blows a hole into his stomach and lives.
  Dr. Beaumont would put pieces of food into the
  stomach and then remove them to see what happened.

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• Chinese people had been using plants for
  medicinal purposes for 4500 years and some of
  these had been brought to Europe. Many domestic
  plants, such as foxglove and marshmellow, were
  also used to cure illnesses. As well as these,
  doctors believed in the power of powders said to
  be made from strange ingredients such as horn
  from the mythical unicorn, and bezoar stone
  (recently made famous in J.K.Rowling's Harry
  Potter books), which was claimed to be the tears
  of a stag turned to stone. Live worms, fox lungs
  (for asthma), spiders' webs, swallows' nests and
  the skulls of executed criminals were also highly
  sought after ingredients.
• Why did doctors use leeches?
• Leeches are a type of slug-like worm, used for
  thousands of years to reduce blood pressure and
  cleanse the blood. A leech placed on the skin
  will consume four times its own weight in blood,
  and with the blood the toxins that produce
  diseases. While the leech is sucking it releases
  a chemical called hirudin, which prevents
  coagulation, or clotting of the blood. Fevers
  were thought to be the result of too much blood
  in the body doctors deliberately cut veins or
  used leeches to release this 'bad' blood.