Great discoveries in medicine

He was born on December 31, 1514 in Brussels and was a hereditary physician: his father served as an apothecary, and his grandfather was a doctor. He studied medicine first in Paris, then returned to the Netherlands and entered the University of Leuven. At that time, autopsies were prohibited, anatomical knowledge was drawn only from the books of Aristotle and Galen. Vesalius dared to break this tradition. While still a student, he managed to get the corpse of a hanged man, from which he dissected a complete skeleton. In 1537, the scientist received his doctorate and began teaching anatomy and surgery at the University of Padua. Anatomical material was required for research. Vesalius occasionally managed to use the corpses of executed criminals, and sometimes he had to steal the bodies of the dead buried in the cemetery in Padua together with his students. He did autopsies, accompanied the work with sketches, developed methods of dissection. After five years of hard work, the scientist finished his main treatise on anatomy. In 1543, his book "On the Structure of the Human body" was published in Basel, in which it was argued that Galen's anatomy was erroneous and written on the basis of studying animals, not people. Vesalius corrected over 200 errors of Galen in the structure of internal organs. The book was illustrated with engravings by the artist S. Kalkar, a friend of the author. The second edition (1555) remained the only textbook for medical students throughout Europe for two centuries. Vesalius was not only a recognized scientist, but also a successful practitioner, the court physician of the emperors Charles V and Philip II. But, despite his high position, he still fell into the hands of the Spanish Inquisition for his heretical beliefs. Thanks to the intercession of Philip II, Vesalius was not burned at the stake, but was sentenced to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Returning in 1564 From Jerusalem, he was shipwrecked on the island of Zante, where he died on October 15.

He was born on April 1, 1578 in Folkestone (Kent). A graduate of the medical faculty of Cambridge University, Harvey went to continue his education in the Italian city of Padua, where in 1602 he received the degree of Doctor of Sciences. Returning to England, he became professor of anatomy and surgery and court physician to King James I, and after his death to Charles I. The court career of a scientist ended after the English Revolution of 1642. Having stopped practicing, Harvey devoted the rest of his life to research in the field of embryology. He conducted his research on chicken eggs and used them so much that, according to his cook, it could be enough for scrambled eggs for the population of the whole of England. In 1628, Harvey's work "Anatomical Study of the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals" was published, which describes the large and small circles of blood circulation. The scientist proved that due to the work of the heart, the blood in the vessels is in continuous motion, and determined the direction of this movement, and at the same time refuted Galen's theory that the liver is the center of blood circulation. Harvey's views on blood circulation were not accepted by many doctors and were sharply criticized. These disputes went far beyond the professional circle and even became the subject of Moliere's comedy "The Imaginary Patient". In 1651, Harvey's embryological work "Studies on the Origin of Animals" was published. It is to him that the well-known aphorism belongs: "All life comes from an egg" In his essay, Harvey gave a complete picture of the embryonic development of a chicken and a roe deer. He died on June 3, 1657 in London.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1930). Posthumous winner of the Albert Lasker Prize in Clinical Medical Research.
The future scientist was born in Vienna in 1868. His father was a very successful newspaper publisher, as well as a talented journalist. His mother was an excellent musician on several instruments. In 1885, Karl entered the medical school of the University of Vienna. In 1891, he became the owner of a medical diploma. However, Karl was more interested in biochemistry and organics, not medicine. They became Carl's specialty. Landsteiner advanced his skills in laboratories in Germany and Switzerland, where he learned how to set up experiments perfectly and correctly interpret the results. In 1896, Karl returned to Austria. He started working at the Department of Hygiene at the University of Vienna. He narrowed his interests to immunology. Discipline was young. We can say that it was Karl Landsteiner who became its ancestor. In 1898, he began working at the Department of Pathological Anatomy of the same university. It was there that he was able to carry out all the planned experiments. Under the patronage of Anton Weichselbaum, Karl was able to become perfectly familiar with anatomy and medical pathology. At the same time, Karl continued to be interested in immunology.
Karl Landsteiner is known for discovering blood groups. The first step towards achieving this goal was to study the action of antibodies. In 1900, Karl published a paper in which he described the agglutination that occurs when the blood plasma of one person is mixed with the red blood cells of another. The researcher concluded that this phenomenon is physiological in nature. In 1901, the scientist divided human blood into three groups: A, B, C. Later, group AB was added to them, and C was renamed to O. In addition, he developed a fairly simple scheme that allowed the principles of blood transfusion to be developed. Subsequently, it was also proved that the blood type is inherited. Karl's important work was also the description of the physiological mechanisms of cold agglutination of erythrocytes. Together with J. Donat, he developed a method for diagnosing cold hemoglobinuria. In medical practice, this method is called the "Donat - Landsteiner method". In addition, Karl took a big step towards unraveling the nature of polio. The scientist came to the conclusion that the disease is caused not by a bacillus, but by an invisible virus.
In 1923, Karl received an offer to move to the USA. He was to continue his studies at Rockefeller University. The scientist accepted the offer and left for America in 1929. A year later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for "the discovery of blood groups." In 1943, the scientist died in his laboratory from a heart attack.

The first inhabitants of the Earth — microbes - appeared 3.9 billion years ago, when there was practically no oxygen on the planet. Gradually, they populated all habitable niches - from glaciers to geysers, and also managed to create colonies inside large organisms. Just five centuries ago, people could only see what was accessible to the naked eye, and until the XVII century. No one suspected that microscopic organisms lived very close by. The man who discovered the world of microorganisms was Anthony van Leeuwenhoek. The son of an industrialist and a merchant from Delft, he also sold cloth, but his innate curiosity constantly pushed him to explore the world around him. For 20 years, Leeuwenhoek mastered the art of grinding and polishing glasses from opticians, visited alchemists and pharmacists, finding out from them secret ways to melt metals from ores, learned how to handle gold and silver. Holland has always been famous for masters of optics, but Leeuwenhoek has achieved unprecedented success. He inserted his lenses into small frames made of copper, silver or gold, which he himself pulled out on fire, amid smoke and smoke. As a result, his microscopes, consisting of only one lens, turned out to be much stronger than those that had several magnifying glasses. Anthony claimed that he had designed 200 devices — very inconvenient, but they gave an increase of up to 270 times.
Of course, having such microscopes at his disposal, Leeuwenhoek began to point lenses at everything that came to hand: whale muscle fibers, scales of his own skin, sheep, beaver and moose hairs, which turned into thick shaggy "logs" under the glass. Looking at the bull's eyes, Anthony admired the delicate structure of the lens. Having planted a fly's brain on a thin needle of a microscope, he looked at the details of this "monstrous" organ with admiration. He studied cross-sections of different tree species, studied plant seeds…
At some point, it occurred to him to point his lens at a drop of clear rainwater. Impressed by what he saw, Leeuwenhoek wrote to his daughter: "There are small animals in the rainwater. They're swimming! They're playing! They are a thousand times smaller than any creature that we can see with a simple eye! Look! Do you see? That's what I discovered!"
In 1673, the researcher ventured to send detailed descriptions and sketches of his observations to the Royal Society of London— the most authoritative scientific organization of that time. The letter under the heading "A List of Some Observations Made With the Help of a Microscope Invented by Mr. Leeuwenhoek Regarding the Structure of Skin, Meat, etc., Bee Stings, etc." surprised and amused venerable scientists. Some researchers have previously expressed vague guesses about the existence of some small creatures responsible for the spread and occurrence of infectious diseases. But all these guesses remained at the level of hypotheses for a long time, because no one had ever seen the mysterious "animals". And the ignorant Leeuwenhoek somehow miraculously managed to open the veil into the hitherto unknown world of microorganisms that play a huge role in nature and human life.
Despite all doubts, academics eventually recognized the merits of the Dutchman, and in 1680 the Royal Society elected him a full member. Leeuwenhoek became a world celebrity, but he did not stop there and discovered more than 200 species of different microorganisms. Later, during an international expedition to the Sargasso Sea, about 1,800 more microbes were discovered. The fact that microbes are the cause of all infectious diseases was first confidently stated by the French scientist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).

He opened a new direction of chemistry – stereochemistry. He was a professor of chemistry and physics, a member of the Paris, French, and St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He made an invaluable contribution to medicine, chemistry, biology. Louis Pasteur was born in Dol, France, on December 27, 1822 in the family of a tanner. He was educated at a college in Arbois, where he became a teacher's assistant. Later he worked as a junior teacher in Besancon. On the advice of teachers, in 1843 he entered the Paris Higher Normal School, from which he graduated in 1847. He was a professor of physics at the Lyceum of Dijon (1847-1848), after that he was a professor of chemistry at the University of Strasbourg (1849-1854) and the University of Lille (since 1854). In 1856, Louis Pasteur received the position of director of the academic department at the Higher Normal School, where he was reforming education.
As a student, Pasteur made his first discovery in the field of chemistry. In 1848, studying tartaric acid crystals, he came to the conclusion that they consist of asymmetric molecules. Dividing the crystals into two parts, he discovered that they were optical antipodes. This discovery formed the basis of a new direction in chemistry – stereochemistry.
Studying the fermentation process, in 1857 Louis Pasteur proved its biological nature. In his research, he came to the conclusion that fermentation is obtained as a result of the action of microorganisms - bacteria deprived of oxygen. In 1861, Pasteur proposed a method for preserving liquid products by heat treatment, which later became known as "pasteurization".
Since 1865, Louis Pasteur began to study the causes of the silkworm disease in the south of France. The scientist found effective methods to combat this disease and saved sericulture. And since 1876, Pasteur has devoted himself entirely to immunology. He studied such diseases as anthrax, puerperal fever, cholera, rabies and others. In the course of research, he found that diseases are caused by certain kinds of pathogens. In 1881, he developed a vaccine against anthrax, and in 1885 – against rabies. Thus, he took the first serious step in the history of vaccination.

It all started in 1981 with the registration by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta (USA) of several cases of atypical diseases – Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia. The diseases were considered rare and did not occur in people with normal immunity.
Events developed rapidly, the number of reported cases grew and by the end of 1981, at least 128 people died from this disease in the United States.
So already in 1982 a new syndrome was described - acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It was suggested about its infectious nature, about the ways of transmission - sexually, with blood, as evidenced by new cases of infection (in sexual partners of both sexes and with blood transfusion).
It was necessary to identify the infectious agent. Several scientific groups worked on this task. The fastest results were achieved by the groups of R. Gallo (USA) and L. Montagnier (France).
The team of Dr. R. Gallo in 1980 was the first to isolate the human retrovirus (HTLV-I), which causes rare, aggressive T-cell leukemia, and in 1982 — the closely related HTLV-II virus, which causes leukemia of a more chronic type. It was Gallo who suggested that AIDS causes a virus of this type, since it also affects the cells of the immune system and causes a similar picture of the disease with a long asymptomatic period. In 1983, in the laboratories of Montagnier and Gallo, a new retrovirus was isolated from AIDS patients, named HTLV-III and LAV, respectively.
Since July 1986, it has been called HIV/HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus / human immunodeficiency virus). The main theory of the origin of HIV is natural. Several strains of the monkey immunodeficiency virus (Simian immunedeficiency virus) are known to science. Each strain is characteristic of one primate species. Transmission of the virus from a monkey to a human could have happened quite a long time ago - this is evidenced by retrospective studies, but the virus spread over the territory of the African continent only in the late 70s of the 20th century and by now it has conquered all countries.
It can be stated that the study of a new disease took place at an incredibly fast pace:
A new disease was identified (1982)
A new virus has been identified (1983)
Methods of serological diagnostics were developed (1985)
The first clinical trials of the drug were conducted (AZT, 1985)
1985 - The first International AIDS Conference was held in Atlanta (USA).
1986 - Head of the US Department of Health (US Surgeon General) Everett Co-op has published the first official report on the AIDS problem. The report calls for sexual education to prevent HIV infection. Most European countries have started testing donated blood for HIV.
1987 - The WHO Global AIDS Program was established. The World Health Assembly has adopted a global strategy to fight AIDS. AIDS was the first disease that was discussed at the session of the UN General Assembly.
1989 - December 1 is declared World AIDS Day.
And in the next decade, hope for victory over the disease was found – in 1995, the era of antiretroviral therapy began.

”Doctor for the Dead" was what Sidney Farber's colleagues called him when he, working as a pathologist and being a fan of his work, opened the bodies of children for 20 years, studied the causes of death and identified pathologies in the body of children. Thanks to these studies, he created substances that inhibit the development of cancer diseases.
He was a real fan of his work, he spent 12 out of 24 hours a day at work, opening corpses, detecting pathologies and identifying the causes of death of children.
Colleagues behind his back called him "Doctor for the Dead” because he spent more time with dead people than ordinary doctors - with the living. But all efforts were not in vain: the result of many years of research was a large-scale work on the classification of childhood tumors and the textbook "Autopsy", printed in 1937.
For the next 10 years, an outstanding pathologist carefully studied the diseases of children and SIMS (sudden infant mortality syndrome). During the same period, he wrote a large report on the topic “On the Transposition of the Great Vessels”, which had a significant impact on the development of cardiac surgery in pediatrics. In 1947, Sidney Farber took over the position of chief pathologist at the hospital in place of Wolbach, who left this post.
The doctor was not interested in the new duties: he studied the corpses of children for 20 years to help those who were already doomed… He focused on leukemia, a disease that gave no hope of life. The 40s of the last century were marked by many discoveries in medicine, but medicine was powerless in the treatment of cancer.
If doctors diagnosed a person with leukemia, then in most cases he had to live a painful 2-3 weeks. At that time, there was only cortisone therapy, but, unfortunately, the result remained unchanged… Studying leukemia in detail, Farber came across studies of the 30s, which indicated that the occurrence of megaloblastic anemia in the body can be affected by a shortage of vitamin B12 and folic acid. Farber concluded that perhaps folates, which are involved in restoring normal hematopoiesis in people with anemia, can also influence the growth of cancer cells in the body.
It was necessary to confirm this guess in practice: the doctor selected a group of children suffering from leukemia and prescribed injections with folate content. But the experiment failed: folic acid worsened the condition of patients. After the introduction of folates, the bone marrow began to work faster, and the number of cancer cells increased significantly! From the negative experience, the doctor concluded: if folates accelerated the development of cancer, then a substance that blocks the reproduction of leukocytes can prevent its development!
Who could have synthesized this substance? Farber realized that this could be entrusted to the biochemist Yellapragad Subbarao: he was well versed in this matter and at that time was already known for the discovery of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Concurrently, Yellapragadu was also his friend. This is how antifolates were created – the first of the chemotherapeutic drugs created for the treatment of cancer.

Dominic Larrey was born on July 8, 1766. He received his medical education at the Toulouse Medical School. In 1786, he participated as a surgeon in the expedition of the French fleet to North America. From 1789 he worked in Paris, first as a surgeon, then as a professor at the Higher Military Medical School "Val de Grace". Larrey's authority among his colleagues was indisputable. He is one of the founders of field surgery, Doctor of Medicine (1803), member of the National Academy of Medicine (1820) and the Paris Academy of Sciences (1829), Baron of the Empire.
Dominique Larrey was the first to describe Egyptian eye inflammation. On the issue of wound treatment, he was a supporter of the use of simple clean water; he opposed the complete rejection of skull trepanation. Larrey's main merit lies in the construction of flying field hospitals. In 1793 he created for the first time mobile medical formations "Flying ambulance".
Dominic Larrey has done more for military medicine than anyone else. He carried out a complete reorganization of the evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield and their treatment system. For this activity, he received the name of the father of "ambulance". The idea of a field infirmary first appeared in the Spanish Queen Isabella during the wars with the Moors in the 1480s. The tents in which frontline doctors worked were called "ambulancias", that is, "ambulances", but the wounded had to get there themselves. Larrey was the first to come up with the idea of delivering them to the operating table in an organized manner. He came up with this idea at a time when in 1792 he served as a surgeon in the Army of the Rhine. There he was indelibly impressed by a strategic novelty - "flying artillery", and he decided to create a "flying medical aid" by analogy.
The plan was as follows: light two-wheeled carriages, drawn by horses, follow the advancing troops, and specially trained paramedic staff lifts and puts the wounded into these wagons in order to immediately deliver them to the field hospital. This system was first tested at the Battle of Limburg and proved to be excellent. Healthy soldiers no longer had to carry wounded comrades, distracting themselves from the fighting. the biggest obstacle (for the development of surgery) on the way to healing from wounds, including gunshot wounds, was sepsis. In the pre-bacterial period, the fight against blood poisoning was complicated by the fact that doctors did not know the causes of blood poisoning. How helpless medicine was at that time can be seen by the example of the death of an outstanding figure of the Patriotic War of 1812, General Bagration, who was wounded in the thigh during the Battle of Borodino and died of hospital gangrene.
To save the life of the wounded, the gain in time was crucial in those days. The fact is that then blood poisoning, sepsis, was prevented by rapid amputation, but it had to be carried out immediately. Larrey, in order to save the lives of the wounded, was forced to resort to the only means - early amputation of the affected limb. And here the flying transportation was most welcome. On the day of the Battle of Borodino, Larrey personally performed 200 amputations in one day. Napoleon's soldiers turned into crowds of wandering armless and especially legless cripples. Larrey didn't believe there were other ways to treat gunshot fractures. Larrey's early amputation, which was widely practiced with limb injuries, was subsequently replaced by the so-called sparing method of N.I. Pirogov — a starch bandage, and then a plaster.

He was born on February 17, 1781 in Kemper. In 1799 he joined the Republican army as an assistant surgeon. In 1801 he worked in one of the Parisian clinics under the direction of J.Corvisard, Napoleon's personal physician, and M. Bichat. In 1802, his first scientific work on peritonitis was published, with an accurate description of their symptoms, followed by articles on the anatomy of the membranes of the brain and on cirrhosis of the liver. In 1804 Laennek defended his dissertation The Hippocratic Doctrine and Practical Medicine. Engaged in private practice, published numerous articles on the results of observation of patients. In 1814 he became the editor-in-chief of the Journal de Médecine. During the First World War he worked at the Salpetriere Hospital. In 1816, Laenneck obtained a position as a doctor at the Necker Hospital. In the same year he invented a stethoscope and developed a new method of listening to patients. With the help of his instrument, he discovered the symptoms of diseases of the thoracic cavity, gave an accurate description of them, compared clinical data with the pathoanatomic picture. Laennec presented the results of his research in February 1818 at a meeting of the Medical Society, and in April of the following year he handed over to the publisher his work A Treatise on indirect auscultation and diseases of the lungs and heart (Traité de l'auscultation médiate, et des maladies des poumons et du coeur). A stethoscope was attached to each copy of the book. Among the numerous descriptions of signs of various diseases, a special place in the book is occupied by the chapter on pulmonary tuberculosis. For the first time, Laennek gave a clear description of the clinic of this disease and presented its anatomical picture. He pointed out the possibility of curing tuberculosis and gave anatomical and clinical examples of scarring of cavities.
He was elected a professor at the Collège de France and a member of the Medical Academy, received a chair in Charite. Laennek died in Kerluanek on August 13, 1826.

Gаvril Abramovich Ilizarov was born on June 15, 1921 in the city of Kusary, on the border of Azerbaijan with Dagestan. The future scientist's childhood years were spent here. I went to school only at the age of 11, but after passing the exams for elementary grades, I was enrolled immediately in the 4th grade. He graduated from the seven-year course with excellent marks, and continued his studies at the labor faculty in the city of Buinaksk. In 1939, as an excellent student, he was sent to study at the Crimean Medical Institute. With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and together with the Institute, Gavriil Abramovich is evacuated to Khazakhstan. In 1944, the young specialist was assigned to the Kurgan region to work in a rural hospital, and in 1955 he became the head of the surgical department of the Kurgan regional hospital.
In 1951, G.A. Ilizarov proposed a fundamentally new method of bone fusion in fractures. Thanks to this method, it is possible to restore the missing parts of the limbs, including the foot, fingers of the hand, as well as lengthen the limb. For the first time, methods of bloodless elimination of deformities and elongation of limbs, regulation of bone growth and their thickening began to be used. A very difficult problem of eliminating large bone defects was solved by operative and conservative methods without the use of transplants. The art of doctors turned out to be subject to the correction of false joints as a result of improperly fused fractures, the treatment of injuries complicated by osteomyelitis.
In 1966, Ilizarov was appointed head of the problem laboratory (at the Sverdlovsk Research Institute) to substantiate and introduce the proposed method into clinical practice. In 1968 he defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences. In 1969, the laboratory was transformed into a branch of the Leningrad RITO, and in December 1971 into the Kurgan Research Institute of Experimental and Clinical Orthopedics and Traumatology (KRIECOT). In 1987, the Institute became All-Union, and in 1993 the Russian Scientific Center "Restorative Traumatology and Orthopedics" was named after Academician G.A. Ilizarov. The scientists of the Center study the processes of regeneration and growth of bone and other tissues, conduct fundamental and applied biomedical and medical engineering research, develop and implement new technical means and methods of treatment and rehabilitation of orthopedic and traumatological patients.
Ilizarov is the author of more than 600 scientific papers, including 3 monographs, 194 inventions, 13 foreign patents. Laureate of the Lenin Prize, Hero of Socialist Labor. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, medals, as well as orders and medals of foreign countries. He was awarded honorary titles: "Honored Doctor of the RSFSR" (1965), "Honored Inventor of the RSFSR" (1975), "Honored Inventor of the USSR" (1985), "Honored Scientist of the RSFSR" (1991). Winner of the Lenin Prize (1978). Honorary citizen of the Kurgan region (2003, posthumously).
G.A. Ilizarov died on July 24, 1992. He was buried in the city of Kurgan. In 1993, the Russian Scientific Center "Restorative Traumatology and Orthopedics" was named after Academician G.A. Ilizarov. Since 2005, the official name of the Center has been the Federal State Institution of Science "Russian Scientific Center "Restorative Traumatology and Orthopedics" named after Academician G.A. Ilizarov of the Federal Agency for Health and Social Development."

Until the second half of the 19th century, all kinds of surgical operations, including amputation of limbs, were carried out without anesthesia. It is not uncommon for an intervention to lead to painful shock. An end to this was put by the American physician William Morton, who in 1846 publicly performed the procedure for the removal of a jaw tumor on a sleeping patient. The audience appreciated the manipulation as a miracle. In fact, diethyl ether played the role of a miracle, which became the first step in the development of anesthesiology.

Unsanitary conditions are the mortal enemy of the Middle Ages, killing thousands of people. Tragic events happen not only in everyday life, but also in medicine. For many patients, surgeons operated only with devices and did not even wash their hands. As a result, patients died from blood poisoning, and not from pathology. The first attempt to change the situation was made in the 19th century by the Hungarian surgeon Ignaz Semmelweis. He categorically insisted on the need to wash hands in a disinfectant solution of bleach before interacting with the patient. His approach reduced the mortality rate among women in childbirth by almost 10 times. However, his colleagues did not appreciate his idea and placed Semmelweis in a psychiatric clinic, where he spent the rest of his days. Later, the English physician Joseph Lister rehabilitated the reputation of his colleague and proved the need to sterilize surgical instruments and clean the wound. These discoveries saved millions of lives, after which everyone believed in their validity.

The invention of the antibiotic was a decisive step against bacteria. It happened in 1928. Scottish physician Alexander Fleming was a brilliant scientist, but he did not like to put things in order. This trait helped him make a great discovery: he forgot that a container with staphylococcus remained in his laboratory. After a while, he discovered that molds had settled in the cup, which destroyed the pathogenic bacteria. Happy coincidence, which in the long run will save the lives of many people. For this scientific achievement he later received the Nobel Prize, as an open antibiotic, he began to be actively used in the treatment of pneumonia, tuberculosis, malaria and many other diseases, previously considered a sentence.

What anyone can access in a village hospital today looked like magic in the 19th century. Often, doctors were forced to re-break the patient's incorrectly fused bones as a result of a fracture. After all, no one saw what was happening inside, it was possible to navigate only by touch. Interestingly, the physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered radiation quite by accident. He conducted experiments in a dark office and suddenly discovered that rays can penetrate through various objects, including through the human body. This discovery gave a powerful impetus to various fields of medicine, such as pulmonology, traumatology, and oncology.

Diabetes mellitus still occupies one of the leading positions in the world in terms of the number of cases and is a global problem. A full life of patients with diabetes mellitus is impossible without insulin. The drug was discovered only at the beginning of the 20th century, when it was found that the cause of the pathology was a lack of the pancreatic hormone, insulin. In 1922, Canadian physiologist Frederick Bunting isolated insulin from animal pancreas, after which the drug began to be used against diabetes in humans. The scientist received the Nobel Prize for this invention, despite the fact that at that time he was only 32 years old. This discovery is a truly powerful breakthrough in endocrinology, as no more effective means of combating diabetes mellitus has yet been invented.

Oncological diseases are still among the mysteries, since no one can unequivocally establish the cause of their occurrence and predict the outcome of treatment. But, in any case, chemotherapy in some cases is effective, whereas previously the disease did not respond to any treatment. It all started when the Polish physician Sidney Farber tried chemotherapy in the treatment of acute leukemia in children. After the formation of positive statistics, the drug was patented. In essence, chemotherapy drugs are poisons that were previously used as a chemical weapon. Their ability to destroy malignant cells was discovered by accident

Village doctor Edward Jenner drew attention to the fact that milkmaids who contract smallpox from animals then successfully avoid human smallpox during epidemics. Then he decided that vaccinations are a chance to escape epidemics. The church did not like the idea very much, and then its influence on the minds was still too high. However, people began to be vaccinated secretly: in the first year after the invention, more than 100 thousand people were vaccinated. Jenner's discovery served as the basis for the creation of vaccines against many diseases. In the 20th century, this technology was used very actively.

Blood transfusion has been used as a method of treatment since antiquity. But, since the characteristics of blood have not been studied deeply enough, manipulations often led to unexpected consequences, including death. On the border of the 19th and 20th centuries, immunologist Karl Landsteiner identified the individual characteristics of erythrocytes. In his writings, he proved that the blood group is a personal characteristic of each person, inherited and distinguished by the properties of erythrocytes. For this discovery, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Thanks to these data, in medicine, donated blood transfusion has begun to be actively used for the treatment of various pathologies and clinical conditions. An important aspect was the discovery that blood must be transfused according to special rules, excluding the possibility of mixing conflicting types of blood.

It is today that everyone who cares about the health of a person follows the maintenance of the level of vitamins in the body. The first conspiracy about vitamins in the 18th century, when the Scottish doctor James Lind offered to treat sailors, patients with scurvy, vitamin C. The medical community embraced his idea. And completely in vain, because today it is already known that scurvy is caused by a severe deficiency of vitamin C and other vitamins. Many scientists have discovered the secret nature of vitamins. This was done by the European doctors Frederick Hopkins and Christian Eikman, who received the Nobel Prize for their work on vitamins. In the 20th century, this knowledge began to be actively disseminated and spread in medicine.

A truly grand discovery of our time. Today, DNA testing is used in medicine to identify the genetic characteristics of an organism and predisposition to various diseases and pathologies. Genetics, as a science, has come a long way from antiquity to the present day: the great discoveries in this area can be enumerated for a very long time. In 1984, geneticist Alec Jeffries established that the DNA of each person is unique and does not change throughout life. By the end of the century, the human genome had already been completely decoded. Initially, genetic testing began to be actively used in forensic science to solve crimes. So, in 1987 in the UK, DNA analysis was first used to prove guilt in murder. A year later, in 1988, DNA tests were also used by criminologists in the USSR. For the first time, the American company Myriad Genetics began to use DNA tests for medical purposes in the early 2000s, which did tests to identify susceptibility to cancer. Today the market for genetic testing is spreading throughout the civilized world. DNA tests are used to compile a family tree, to establish paternity and other family ties, to identify the characteristics of metabolism and assimilation of food in dietetics, to analyze the characteristics of the skin in cosmetology, to study the genetic characteristics of the hormonal system and the selection of adequate hormone therapy in endocrinology and in many other areas of medicine to analyze the predisposition to various diseases. This makes it possible to predict the risk of pathology in advance and avoid or minimize it through prevention and timely treatment.