Innovations in Medicine

Prevention and Cure

Prevention is better than cure, yet a person can fall ill suddenly, which requires cure. Let’s talk about it.

Medicines and Antibiotics

Medical science has been at work over several decades to find cure for different dis[1]eases. Some common medicines are the following:

• Malaria is caused by a mosquito called anopheles. It claims a large number of lives each year. It can be treated by quinine. The spray of DDT helps to prevent the spread of mosquitoes. A number of other sprays too have been developed.

• Influenza is now easily cured with the help of eucalyptus.

• Antibiotics help to cure several diseases like cholera, tuberculosis, malaria and plague etc.

The discovery of Penicillin has proved to be a major breakthrough in the field of medicine. It was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928. It is an antibiotic; that is, it fights with and reduces the number of disease-causing bacteria. Polio has been eradicated from India. Smallpox has been completely eradicated from the world. Many other diseases are fully curable now. Medical research has diagnosed several diseases which were unknown earlier. It is a continuous effort.

Surgery

Sometimes it is not possible to treat the disease of an internal organ by medicines, and its cure might need an operation. For this, the body has to be cut open. For example, the chest part is cut open to conduct a heart operation. This procedure is called surgery.

It pains severely when even a small pin pierces the body. In surgery, the body has to be cut open. It pains greatly. In the past, it was an unbearable exercise for a patient.

When a patient was feeling intense pain, it was difficult to keep him in a static position. If he kept moving, the doctor found it hard to operate upon him. So, in the past, the patient was bound to the bed tightly, but it was so inhuman. Fortunately, chloroform was first effectively used as anaesthesia. It was invented by James Simpson. It helps to make a body part numb. When a patient is cut open for surgery, he does not feel any pain.

Research and development is a continuous process in the medical field. Doctors and scientists are at work to look for cures for different diseases. They are making an effort to improve upon cure and find exact causes of a disease. Despite all this, there are some diseases for which effective cure has yet to be found. They kill a large number of people across the world. Some of the life-threatening diseases are cancer, AIDS, swine flu etc. Let us hope that we find effective cure for them soon. Surgery is now a very vast field. It can transplant many body organs, such as liver, kidney etc. This science is also used for other purposes, like plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery etc. Dental surgery is also used for beautification purposes now.