History of Medicine Exclusive

Dr. Erika Dyck
PhD (McMaster), MA (USask), BA (Dalhousie)
Associate Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine 

Studying the history of medicine is vital to modern society. Even so, most people are not familiar with its involvement, implications, and importance on everyday life. Dr. Dyck, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, recently took the time to write the following article to introduce history of medicine to our readers.

History of Medicine

History of Medicine is a thematic study that crosses borders and time periods and organizes itself through common threads associated with healing, medicine, health and disease.  While historians of medicine cover a broad range of topics, two dominant perspectives continue to shape this field, which are exemplified in the works of two prominent historians of medicine. 

Physician-surgeon and historian William Osler (1849-1919), at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, felt that the history of medicine was best suited for medical students and doctors seeking motivation for their own careers as physicians.  Osler felt that by learning about famous doctors and significant discoveries future physicians would find a host of inspirational role models out of the pages of history. 

Another influential figure in the history of medicine held a very different view.  Henry E. Sigerist (1891-1957) was also a clinician and professor in Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and he argued that all students should examine the history of medicine not for its great figures and triumphs, but to better understand how health and disease influence our societies. For Sigerist, studying history of medicine meant exploring the effects of major plagues on populations or their health care systems, or on how the development of the hospital affected the organization of the medical and nursing professions.  Both of these kinds of perspectives still exist in the way that historians study medicine today and provide useful insights into how health and illness shape our societies.

If you approach the history of medicine as Osler recommended, looking for its heroes and pioneers, you can find a whole host of interesting characters or significant discoveries.  Organized medicine has a long history, arguably stretching back to famous Greek figures such as Hippocrates who established the Hippocratic Oath, Galen who developed some of the earliest anatomical texts (though they were based on animal dissections, since human dissection was considered illegal and immoral), or the Greek God of Healing, Asclepius, whose fabled serpent-coiled staff continues to symbolize medicine.   

During the nineteenth century there was a dramatic increase in the number of recorded discoveries and inventions related to medicine. In addition to the invention of the stethoscope by René Laennec (1816) this century witnessed the introduction of the X-ray machine, antisepsis, anesthetic medicine, the Petri dish, electricity, alongside advancements in inoculation, sterilization (cleaning instruments, hand-washing and disinfecting wounds) and classification of physical and mental diseases. 

But, if you look beyond the great names and individual discoveries, you can also study the history of medicine by examining how diseases have shaped the way we live. Considering the effects of epidemics and plagues might similarly influence our interpretation of world history.  The Plague of Athens was in fact a key factor in explaining how the Romans conquered the Greeks.  Likewise the spread of smallpox in Central America is critical for understanding how the Europeans conquered Native populations in the Americas.  Or you might consider how a discovery actually affected our health history.  Penicillin (1928) is a significant discovery, but its effects could not be appreciated until people had access to it. In Canada, the federal program, now known commonly as Medicare, came into existence in 1968.  Before that time patients had to pay for their hospital visits, medications, and any other medical procedures. Once Medicare was in place, patients could receive penicillin (and other drugs) without paying directly.

History of health and medicine encourages you to think across traditional borders and instead sometimes causes us to rethink our interpretation of historical events.

How did I become interested in the history of medicine?

I became interested in the History of Medicine as a university student. At first I took a variety of courses in history, unsure as to exactly what I wanted to study.  Taking classes in European, Russian, American and mostly Canadian history piqued my interests, but eventually I stumbled into a course on the history of science that encouraged me to think across traditional geographical themes and to organize my sense of historical developments differently.  Learning about the history of astronomy and Galileo’s personal struggles to reconcile what he saw with what he believed introduced me to a way of thinking about history quite separate from the way I had studied it before.  Gradually I took enough classes to enroll in graduate studies and several years later I undertook a research project (now a book) where I explored a set of medical experiments with the hallucinogenic drug, LSD, which took place in Saskatchewan in the 1950s.  

When I began the project I knew very little about the drug, psychiatry, or the kinds of experiments that scientists might have conducted.  I knew that the drug was illegal, and I had heard that it could cause a person to have flashbacks, and read somewhere that the CIA had used the drug to interrogate people they suspected were spies.  After combing through thousands of documents about the experiments done in Saskatchewan I learned that there was a lot more to LSD’s history.  The word ‘psychedelic’ had been coined in Saskatchewan (1957).  The drug had been tested on psychiatrists and other medical professionals before giving it to patients.  LSD was used, legally, to treat alcoholism; many people claimed that it was critical to their recovery.  No one had reported symptoms of flashbacks until the drug was being taken irresponsibly as a recreational drug, rather than as medicine. 

This kind of information intrigued me, and motivated me to dig deeper into the drug’s history.  In the end I resolved that most things are inevitably more complicated than they first appear, which was definitely true for LSD.  The drug was initially developed to treat migraine headaches, though it didn’t quite work.  The company that developed it then made it freely available to registered researchers interested in exploring its dramatic effects (which included hallucinations, disorientation of time and space, perceptual disturbances, etc.).  Thousands of researchers around the world seized this opportunity and experimented with LSD in a variety of ways.  They gave LSD to animals: birds, rats, elephants and even Siamese fighting fish.  Some researchers gave it to people:  scientists, professors, priests, artists, authors, students, patients, prisoners, and alcoholics.  Some people were trying to find out if LSD would function as a ‘miracle drug’ that could cure major illnesses, while others took it themselves to try to better appreciate what having a disordered mind was like.

Gradually LSD gained notoriety from a different community, namely university students in the 1960s.  As the drug appealed to people in a more recreational context, its medicinal value seemed to be in question.  Despite protests from some members of the medical community, by the end of the 1960s governments in Canada, the United States, and most European nations declared the drug illegal and indeed dangerous.  Medical experiments and treatments ended.

The drug itself had not changed, but attitudes towards its medicinal value altered dramatically over the course of 20 years.  The history of LSD, then, became an examination of cultural attitudes towards mental health, alcoholism and drug regulation.