The earliest medical technology may have been the stick used to try to beat out the devils that people thought were causing some guy’s rash. Over time, with improvements in technology and our understanding of the body, medical technology has grown much more advanced.
Over 4600 years ago, ancient Egyptians were performing simple surgeries. Circumcision is believed to have been practiced, as is the use of artificial cosmetic prosthetics.
A thousand years ago, Abulcasis wrote a medical text that described surgical instruments, plaster casts, and inhaled anesthetics. Medical tech became advanced enough to allow limited eye surgeries. Between eight and six hundred years ago, convex and concave lens spectacles were used to correct vision.
In the past two hundred years, medical technology has allowed us to view or take measurements of the body’s interior. The stethoscope was invented in 1816. In the 1850s, the inventions of the ophthalmoscope and laryngoscope allowed physicians to peer inside the eyes and throat. A few decades later, x-rays were used in medical imaging.
In the first decades of the 20th Century, electrocardiography and electroencephalography were discovered. The 1940s saw the introduction of the dialysis machine and intraocular lens. The 1960s brought powered prosthetics, cochlear implants, and balloon catheters. By the 1970s, medical technology allowed for laser eye surgery and liposuction, and capsule endoscopy came in the 1980s. Recent advances in medical tech include the artificial liver and telesurgery.
Medical technology has advanced and evolved from very simple instruments to lasers and the bionic eye. We’re still waiting for the dermal regenerator from Star Trek, but given where medical tech is now, even that can’t be far off.
