There are several medical breakthroughs which have marked the development and progress of the modern medical technologies. Here are ten medical breakthroughs which have resulted after some conscientious and time-consuming researches done by doctors and scientists…
1. APGAR SCORE
Virginia Apgar was one of the first American women to specialize in surgery. She graduated in 1933 and she became Columbia University’s first-ever full Professor of Anesthesiology in 1949. She specialized in anesthesia and childbirth. She invented the Newborn Scoring System also called as ‘the Apgar Score’ in 1949 that assessed the health of newborns.
2. ECG – Electrocardiogram
In 1892, another physiologist, Willem Einthoven, shares the honour with Waller for finding this new diagnostic technique - electrocardiogram. Einthoven recorded the first human electrocardiogram in Europe on 11th April, 1892 using the Lippmann capillary electrometer. He initially indicated the four observed deflections with the alphabets A, B, C and D which he later replaced by the middle alphabets: P, Q, R, S and T. In 1902, he made the first direct recording of the true human electrocardiogram, which was done using a modified string galvanometer. In 1924, Willem Einthoven was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work. Further researches later helped in upgrading this most commonly used diagnostic tool.
3. ETHER
In 1794, English physicians Richard Pearson and Thomas Beddoes used ether in the treatment of several ailments like phthisis, catarrhal fever, bladder calculus and scurvy. In 1805, American physicians used ether to treat pulmonary inflammation. The first surgical anesthetic use of ether is credited to Dr. Crawford Williamson Long of Jefferson, Georgia. On 30th March, 1842, he removed one of the two tumours from the neck of a patient under ether anesthesia.
4. DNA
In 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick suggested the now accepted first correct double-helix model of DNA structure in the journal Nature. This model of DNA was then based on a single X-ray diffraction image taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in May 1952 and also based on the information that the DNA bases were paired. In 1962, after Franklin’s death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
5. INSULIN
Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas, which was isolated in 1921-22 at the University of Toronto. Dr. Fredrick Banting, Charles Best, Professor J. J. R. Macleod and Dr. James Collip were the scientists behind this discovery. Banting and Best won the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1923.
6. IVF
In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a process by which ova are fertilized by sperms outside the womb (in vitro, which means in an artificial environment outside the living organism). IVF is a major treatment of infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. IVF first succeeded in 1978 by Dr. Edwards (an embryologist) and Dr. Steptoe (a gynecologist) in England. Since then this technology has been further refined and developed by physicians and embryologists and widely used all over the world as a treatment for infertility.
7. THE THEORY OF INHERITANCE
Mendelian inheritance (Mendelism) is a set of primary doctrines relating to the transmission of hereditary characteristics from the parent organisms to their children. They were derived from the work of Gregor Johann Mendel published in 1865 and 1866. He is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. His work was later integrated with the chromosome theory of inheritance by Thomas Hunt Morgan in 1915, and hence, these laws became the core of genetics.
8. ABO BLOOD GROUP AND Rh ANTIGEN
The ABO blood group system is widely credited to have been discovered by the Austrian scientist Karl Landsteiner, who found three different blood types in 1900. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for his work. Karl Landsteiner and Alexander S. Wiener discovered Rh factor in 1937. The Rhesus system is named after Rhesus Macaque following experiments which showed that rabbits, when immunized with rhesus monkey red cells produced an antibody that also agglutinates the
9. VACCINATION
Edward Jenner was an English country doctor and scientist who pioneered vaccination. His discovery in 1796 that inoculation with cowpox gave immunity to smallpox was an immense medical breakthrough which has saved countless lives.
10. X-RAY
On 8th November, 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovered X-rays while experimenting and began studying them. Röntgen referred to the electromagnetic radiations as ‘X’ to indicate that it was an unknown type of radiation. These rays are also known as Röntgen rays. He discovered its medical use when he saw a picture of his wife’s hand on a photographic plate formed due to X-rays. W. C. Röntgen received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery in 1901.