Dying and Living Wills, Part 1

Have you stopped to think about how you'd like to die? If you haven't then maybe you should. I'm going to take you on a whirlwind tour of the history of medicine, because I want you to think about how "capable" we've become in medicine in less than 225 years, and yet how incapable we remain of beating back the inevitable, death. Ready?

Here goes...

• 1785: Digitalis is used for heart disease.


• 1796: Edward Jenner develops the first successful vaccination techniques for smallpox.


• 1816: Stethoscope invented.


• 1825: Joseph Lister first uses antiseptics on surgical instruments.


• 1818: First successful blood transfusion.


• 1860: Florence Nightingale implements the concept of hospital ward hygiene.


• 1871: Joseph Lister notices that some molds can weaken other microbes.


• 1895: Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally discovers X-rays (1st Nobel Prize winner in Physics 1901).


• 1899: Aspirin developed.


• 1920: Smallpox eradicated due to vaccination.


• 1922: Insulin discovered and used to treat diabetes.


• 1928: Alexander Flemming discovered penicillin.


• 1939: Flemming, Ernst Chain, and Howard Florey were assigned to find a cure for soldier's wound infections. They grow and isolate penicillin in large enough quantities to successfully treat infections in these wounds.


• 1953: Jonas Salk invents the polio vaccine.


• 1958: The "Bird" ventilator is introduced, CPR is invented.


• 1960: Inhalers invented for asthma; ventilators in common use in intensive care units; structure of DNA found.


• 1967: Argentinean cardiologist René Favaloro performed the first coronary artery bypass surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.


• 1972: First use of computer assisted tomography (CAT) scans.


• 1977: The first successful coronary artery angioplasty was performed by Andreas Gruentzig in Switzerland.


• 1978: First "test tube" baby born in England.


• 1982: First person is implanted with an artificial heart, the "Jarvik 7."


• 1983: The AIDS virus is identified.


• 1986: Jacques Puel and Ulrich Sigwart (France) inserted the first stent into a human coronary artery.


• 1994: The first Palmaz-Schatz coronary artery stent was approved for use in the United States.


• 2003: The Human Genome Project completes the map of DNA structure.

Stop for a moment to think about the remarkable nature of these accomplishments. Isn't it AMAZING? In 220 years of medical science we have learned that bacteria cause infections and can be cured with antibiotics, that sophisticated pictures can help us to look into the body, that we can restart a beating heart and ventilate a person not breathing on their own, and that we can surgically treat heart disease.

Still, death is inevitable. Stay tuned for Part 2....

Related Topics Heart Disease Treatment Advances, Stents, Heart Transplant