History is full of famous doctors, but what did they really accomplish?
Welcome to History Today.
In today’s episode, medical doctor and historian Professor Candid talks about his “Great Predecessors”.
Hippocrates
Hippocrates is perhaps the most famous doctor of all time and is known as the “father of medicine”. Even though the literal translation of Hippocrates is “horse-power”, Hippocrates never actually owned a car.
He also wrote his famous Hippocratic Oath on a big stone tablet, which was a total waste of time because no one swears on the Hippocratic Oath any more unless they accidentally drop it on their toe.
Galen
Galen learned all there was to know about human anatomy by studying the insides of dogs.
He was famous for being the doctor for the gladiators. And by gladiators I don’t mean those steroid-munching freaks from America who were really good at climbing cargo nets in the 90s.
I mean proper Roman gladiators. Galen could easily sew back on an arm or a leg that had been hacked off and he once famously managed to put a Christian back together who’d been eaten and shat out of a lion.
Paracelsus
Not much is known about Paracelsus. Actually that isn’t true, a whole heap is known about him but I can’t be bothered to read about it. All I know is that his real name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim but due to relentless teasing from his school friends, and his parents, he felt compelled to change it to Paracelsus. Oh and he was also really into plants.
Joseph Lister
British surgeon, medical scientist and experimental pathologist Jospeh Lister suffered from halitosis for most of his adult life and his wife Agnes was forever offering him breath mints. It made him very unhappy.
One day he decided to do something about it and invented a pleasantly minty mouthwash called Listerine which transformed the tooth-brushing lives of millions of people around the world. It’s just a shame that his wife didn’t also point out that he’d missed a bit while shaving.
Edward Jenner
Edward was a free spirit. He kicked around with dairymaids and was so familiar with their unblemished skin that he knew none of them had ever contracted smallpox. When he wasn’t drinking milk and rolling around in the hay he invented the world’s first vaccine.
Unfortunately, his idea was a little slow to take off because people believed that he was encouraging people to have sex with cows, and they were also a bit thick. A bit like RFK today.
Christiaaaaaaan Barnard
Not only does he hold the record for the most As in a name, Christiaaaaaan Barnard performed the world’s first ever human-to-human heart transplant. His patient lasted all of 18 days before succumbing to pneumonia and yet Barnard’s achievements were trumpeted around the world.
I once put up a shelf that collapsed after only 18 days and let me tell you, my wife didn’t consider that to be a success.
