this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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39
What was the first effective cure for a disease in history? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Maggot therapy goes back thousands of years

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Cool. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

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/

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It always looked suspiciously like ida pingala sushumna to me

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Chimpanzees are known to put special plants on wounds to heal them better, so my guess is that other animals do it also to some degree. Cows eating special plants for their stomach, chickens eating small rocks and sand, hell even dogs and cats eating some plants to fix their stomach.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"Fix". If I'm 10 minutes late with my dog's breakfast he decides he needs to eat half my lawn.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

20 minutes later and you do not have to mow.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

That's clever, but I'd rather mow than mop.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Not so much a disease as an occupational hazard though...

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (3 children)

It was a lot more brutal and had a much lower success rate back then. But the fact that we find so many skulls with evidence of trepanning means that prehistoric humans must have considered the low success rate worth the risk. What's interesting is there's no way they actually knew what trepanning could help with, since it's to do with intracranial pressure. So in the same way the medieval cure for everything was bleeding, whether or not the disease had anything to do with blood, trepanning seems to have been the proverbial hammer for which everything looks like a nail.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Something I read in an off hand comment was that some people believed it got evil spirits out

This information assuming I’m remembering correctly is mostly educated speculation so don’t quote me on this

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I mean, even on a mild headache you feel like the inside of your head is swallen, even if you don't know what a brain is. Imagine a traumatic fall, fever and constant pain. After the tenth time you see that happening you grab a stone and try nad fix it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Head injuries would have been common, bleeding on the brain was probably easily recognisible in warriors for which it would help. How they discovered that it helps.. nice

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

i can't imagine that increased intracranial pressure feels good. maybe one guy was like 'my head feels like it's gonna explode', and some other guy was like, 'i've got an idea'. or maybe someone happened to get just the right kind of second head injury shortly after their first head injury that somehow made them get better. it's a lot of unrecorded things happening back then. if only they had invented writing and wrote it down.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Limeys figured out scurvy around 1600

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Saying consuming vitamin c is the cure for vitamin c deficiency is like saying water is the cure for dehydration.

If that’s the standard for β€œcures” then animals figured out the cure for dehydration before humans even existed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

The British then forgot why they gave everyone citrus, screwed it up and started getting scurvy again.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Humans have been using amputation for over 30,000 years.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

oh yeah for gangrene and stuff

that's a good answer

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (2 children)

There was the cowpox vaccine in 1798

and I suppose we have had effective pain-control (opium) for a very long time

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago
  1. Anyway, the cowpox vaccine was an improvement on smallpox variolation, which was known to the Chinese at least by 1549.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if it counts as a cure or more of a prevention, but smallpox was eradicated in 1980 through vaccines!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

There was effective medicine before 1980