HISTORY OF MEDICINE

The Avicenna (980-1037)

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His name Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sina was born into a Persian family in the village of Afshana, near Bukhara in the year 980.

Ibn Sina, commonly known as Avicenna , was an Islamic philosopher and physician.

The Persian Avicenna was a child prodigy. By the age of 10 he could recite the Qur’an by heart. That Avicenna has mastered the Qur’an by memorizing it at such an early age is evidence of his amazing memory.

By age 18, he was an expert in Islamic law and in medicine.

His first appointment was that of physician to the emir, who owed him his recovery from a dangerous illness. Avicenna’s chief reward for this service was access to the royal library of the Samanids, well known patrons of scholarships and scholars.

He practiced medicine in Baghdad and published the Canon, codification of Greek and Arabic medicine. Translation of this work were appearing until the 17th century the last edition being printed in 1663.

Apart from his medical texts, he is best known for his attempts to synthesis Islamic theology and Greek philosophy.

He authored some 450 books on a wide range of subjects many of which concentrated on philosophy and medicine.

The Avicenna (980-1037)

History of Thalassemia

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The thalassemia syndromes are characterized by decrease production of globin (alpha or beta) chains. Patients with thalassemia major develop severe anemia that requires transfusion from the first year of life.

In 1925, Thomas B Cooley a Detroit pediatrician, gave the first description of severe thalassemia in the Transaction of the American Pediatric Society.

He describe children with anemia splenomegaly, hepatomegaly, discoloration of skin and of the sclera, and no bile in the urine.

In 1932, when George Whipple suggested the term ‘thalassemia’, Thomas Cooley noticed that the disease he had clinically defined showed a clear familial incidence.

The name thalassemia derived from the Greek words for sea – thalassa, referring it to its high frequency among the Mediterranean populations and for blood – aima.

Later, Heinrich Lehndorf proposed that Cooley’s anemia was an inherited disease due to a genetic mutation. Thalassemia is most common in people of Mediterranean ancestry (especially Italian and Greek) but also occurs in blacks and people from southern China, Southeast Asia and India.

From 1949-1960 thalassemia was established as a genetic disorder of hemoglobin synthesis.

In 1991, bone fragments dating back to prehistoric times with pathological signs of thalassemia, were discovered near Haifa, Israel, making it one of the world’s oldest known diseases.

History of Thalassemia

Discovery of cholesterol

2012-05-12T07:55:00.008-07:00

The name of cholesterol is from Greek ‘chole’ for bile and ‘steros’ for solid.

The discovery do cholesterol dates back to the 18th century when Vallisueri in 1733 obtained crystals from an alcoholic solution of gallstone. It was the first time cholesterol was described.

French physician-chemist Francois Poulletier was the first to obtain pure cholesterol from gallstone.

Chevreul in 1815 showed that these crystals were not altered by saponification as other alcohol-soluble/water insoluble biological materials were. He named the substance as ‘cholesterine’.

In 1838 Lecanu showed that it was present in human blood, and in 1843 Vogel showed that it was present in atherosclerotic plaques.

The exact empirical formula of cholesterol was accurately established in 1888 by Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer, who worked at the Imperial Institute for Plant Physiology at the German University in Prague.

Systematic study of the chemistry of cholesterol and inertest in metabolism of cholesterol began the end of the nineteenth century.

The mechanism of creating and breaking down cholesterol in the body was discovered only in 1985 by Brown and Goldstein, who won the Nobel Prize in medicine for that.

Discovery of cholesterol

History of schizophrenia

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Written description of schizophrenia have been traced back to Egypt during the year 200 BC.

Ancient Greek and Roman literature indicated that the general population had an awareness of schizophrenia.

Hippocrates differentiated schizophrenia from physically caused disorders such as alcoholism, epilepsy and acute febrile reactions.

Early Egyptians theorized that the illness was caused by the gas in the ventricles of the brain. In medieval times, schizophrenia was believed to be caused by demonic possession.

The first comprehensive description of schizophrenia dates to the beginning of the 18th century.

Schizophrenia was defined as an early dementia in the 19th century. A french psychiatrist Benedict Augustine Morel, observed the ‘early deterioration of the mind’ in a patient and used the phrase demence precoce to describe what he observed.

The modern concept of schizophrenia was first formalized by the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin in 1896. He proposed that paranoid psychosis, hebephrenia and catatonia were forms of the same disease.

History of schizophrenia

Ancient history of migraines

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The history of migraines is probably as old as the history of mankind.

The first description of headache are thought to date back in a Sumerian poem written in approximately 3000 BC and through the centuries the descriptions of migraine have been similar with historical writings referring to the severe pain, nauseam visual symptoms, and physical prostration brought on by a migraine.

During ancient times appropriate treatment by the priest physicians of the day was aimed at appeasing the responsible spirit by offering prayers to it or applying valued items to the head.

Early Greek and Roman medical authors who recognized migraines and the accompanying nauseam vomiting and visual disturbances include Hippocrates, Aretaeus, Celsus and Galen.

Hippocrates was one of the first to describe the visual auras accompanying headache as early as 300 BC. He was probably the frost to describe the role of triggers in precipitating migraine attacks.

Hippocrates thought that headache came from ‘humors’ - fluid or vapors circulating in the body and rising from liver to the head.

Aretaeus of Cappodocia is credited with first describing the syndrome of migraine calling the headache ‘heterocrania’.

Ancient history of migraines

History of Marburg virus

2012-04-18T03:12:00.005-07:00

Marburg virus was first identified in 1967 during simultaneously outbreaks in Germany and Yugoslavia among laboratory workers handling African green monkeys and/or tissues from contaminated monkeys imported from Uganda.

The causative agent was cultivated from the blood of sick humans and as customary for arboviruses and other zoonotic viruses was named Marburg virus after the site where the viral samples were obtained.

Although the total number of cases was small, the epidemic created alarm because the mortality rate was high over 25% and treatments such as antibiotics were powerless against the disease.

At the initial outbreak in 1967 thirty one persons came down with an acute illness and fever and seven of them died before the virus was identified.

The disease next appeared in 1975. A young Australian man who had been hitchhiking through central and central Africa died shortly after admission to a Johannesburg hospital.

His female traveling companion and a nurse who looked for him also contacted the disease and both survive.

In December 1998 a protracted epidemic of Marburg hemorrhagic fever virus, broke out in an isolated area of north-east Congo causing upward of 83% mortality among gold miners who have been working in bat infested caves.

Marburg viral RNA and antiviral IgG antibody were detected in a common species of fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus, trapped in caves in Gabon in 2005 and 2006.

The first case of Marburg hemorrhagic fever in the United States was detected in a traveler returning to Colorado from a trip to Uganda in January 2008.

He had visited the bat-infested ‘python cave in Queen Elizabeth Park. He recovered however, another visitor from Netherlands acquired a fatal case in July that year.

History of Marburg virus

History of Ebola

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In 1976, a double epidemic in Africa of unknown, highly fatal viral hemorrhagic fever led to the discovery of a new virus. The outbreaks resulted in 430 deaths with more than 550 cases.

Together with the Marburg virus it was subsequently defined as the prototype of new virus family, Filoviridae, characterized by genetic material carried by only one thread of RNA with negative polarity.

In the next 20 years, an additional 18 outbreaks of Ebola virus infections in humans have been recognized.

Ebola virus is named after a rover in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where is was first discovered.

The source of these outbreaks was never determined. These outbreaks were followed by several smaller outbreaks in the late 1970s.

In 2008, tissue samples from pigs that died of unknown causes in the Philippines were analyzed and found to contain Ebola-Reston virus. This was the first time that the virus was found in a mammalian species other than primates.

According to history the Great Plaque of Athens struck Greece between 430 and 425 BC. Some historians believe it killed one-third to one half of Greece’s population – up to three hundred thousand people. Experts believe that the plaque of Athens was an epidemic of Ebola virus.

The researchers said that Ebola symptoms and the plaque symptoms reported by Thucydides in his books The History of the Peloponnesian War were very similar.

History of Ebola

History of Tetanus

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The seventeenth century BC Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus has descriptions of patient with wounds who have symptoms of neck stiffness and thought ligaments, likely the first known description of tetanus.

It was described by Hippocrates the symptoms of a sailor affected by a syndrome characterized by hypercontraction of the skeletal muscles. He termed such a spastic paralysis ‘tetanus’ from the Greek word, tension.

Military physicians of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Rome and India knew to leave certain wounds unsutured or open for several days before bandaging, a procedure that was likely to result in fewer tetanus infections.

An isolated island off the coast of Scotland, St. Kilda had a major outbreak of neonatal tetanus during the 1800s. Between 1855 and 1876, 41 infants out of 56 total births died of the ‘sickness of eight days,’ which was neonatal tetanus.

The nature of tetanus as an infection disease was discovered in 1884 by several researchers. Antonio Carle and Giorgio Rattone first discovered evidence that tetanus was an infectious disease in that year.

The serum of tetanus antitoxin was originally prepared by the bacteriologists Emil von Behring and Kitasato Shibasaburo in 1890 -92 and their results of this first large scale trial amply confirmed its efficacy.

The causative agent of tetanus, Tetanus bacillus had earlier been reported by Kitasato in 1889.

It was not until the 1930s, that an efficient vaccine of toxoid as it is known in the cases of tetanus was produced against tetanus.

There was no means of preventing tetanus infection until the introduction of immunization in World War I, and it is likely that the rates of tetanus infection in ancient armies were equivalent to those found in armies of the modern era before World War I.

History of Tetanus

Early history of dementia

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The disease that can produce dementia are as old as mankind. Around the year 2000 BC ancient Egyptians, even though they held that the heart and diaphragm were the seats of mental life, were aware that age could be accompanied by a major memory disorder.

The word ‘dementia’ has been around for quite some time and comes from the Latin demens which literally means ‘without mind’.

Many Greco Roman authors including Plato and then Horatius seem to have thought that old age per se was often synonymous with dementia.

Cicero, the Roman philosopher of the second century BC, may be the first writer of the time to argue that dementia was not an inevitable consequence of old age and was preventable via ‘intellectual activity which gives buoyancy to the mind’, concept furthered by Galen in the second century AD.

Solon in 6th century the father of modern legal thinking, wrote that judgment can be impaired by ‘physical pain, violence, drugs , old age or the persuasion of a woman’.

By the eighteenth century it was becoming medically recognized as ‘abolition of the reasoning faculty’, according to a French scientific encyclopedia of 1765.

The syndrome of senile dementia first came to light in the medical literature in Germany in the mid 1800s. In 1892, microscopic senile plaques, now called amyloid plaques, were first described and in 1907, were correlated with dementia in older adults.

Early history of dementia

Discovery of viruses

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Understanding of the viruses evolved in the late 1800 from their results of experiments done by a number of scientists.

In 1892, Iwanowski at St Petersburg discovered a new phenomenon by transmitting the tobacco mosaic disease to health plants by rubbing them with bacteria-free extracts of disease leaves.

Six years later Martinus Beljerinck (1898), a Dutch microbiologist, made the same observation and proposed that tobacco mosaic disease was caused by an entity different from bacteria and called it contagium vivum fluidum – a living infectious fluid that would multiply only in living plant cells, but could survive for long periods in a dried state.

Danish scientists Vilhelm Ellerman and Oluf Bang reported the cell free transmission of chicken leukemia in 1908, and in 1911 Peyton Rous discovered that solid tumors of chicken could be transmitted by cell free filtrates. These were the first indications that some viruses can cause cancer.

A major breakthrough came in 1935 when Stanley , an organic chemist succeeded in purifying TMV. This tobacco mosaic virus multiplies in the laves of tobacco plants and the cells become saturated with it.

The first pictures of viruses were seen using powerful electron microscope was only in the 1930s. It is only in the last 60 years that the most of the different kinds of virus have been discovered.

Discovery of viruses

History of malaria

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The term malaria, from the Italian mala and aria meaning ‘bad air’, reveals the old belief that the disease was a product of miasma, or noxious vapor generated by putrescent organic matter.

Over millennia, its victim have included Neolithic dwellers, early Chinese and Greeks, princess and paupers.

The earliest records of the disease are from ancient Chinese medical writings, dating back to 2700 BC. They describe swampy areas where people suffered from fevers, pain and sometimes death.

The ancient Egyptians also had trouble with malaria, Egyptians mummies have been found that have enlarged spleens one of the characteristic signs of the disease.

By the beginning of the Christian era, malaria was wide spread around the shores of the Mediterranean, central and south east Asia, China, Korea, Japan.

Malaria’s probable arrival in Rome in the first century AD was a turning point in European story.

From the African rain forest, the disease most likely traveled down the Nile to the Mediterranean, then spread east to the Fertile Crescent and north to Greece.

It was Patrick Manson, a Brutish medical officer who had served in the Imperial Chinese Customs Service who pointed to the possible link between mosquitoes and human disease in his research on elephantiasis in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

In the late 1880 Charles Laveran, a French military doctor working in Algeria, identified a parasite as the cause of malaria.

From mid 19th century onward malaria disappeared from Europe mainly due to cheap and widespread availability of quinine although at the beginning of the 20th century large area of Europe and Northern America were still affected.

In the 20th century alone, malaria claimed between 150 million and 300 million lives, accounting for 2 to 5 percent of all death.

History of malaria

Early history of botulism

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The term ‘botulism’ derives from the Latin word botulus or sausage. For about 150 year botulism has been thought to be caused exclusively by food that was contaminated with preformed toxins.

This point of view changed in the 1970s, when botulism was found in babies who had ingested spores of Clostridium botulism; the spores germinated in the intestine and produced the toxin.

The earliest record of botulism go back probably to scripts in the Middle Ages and from the Roman Empire.

Outbreaks of poisoning related to sausages and other prepared foods first occurred in Europe in the 19th century.

Botulism was first observed by Julius Kerner, a district health officer in southern Germany, who reported symptoms of skeletal; and gut muscle paralysis, myadriasis, and maintenance of consciousness after the ingestion of improper preserved foods in 1820.

In 1895, Professor Emile Pierre Van Ermengem, of Belgium Professor of microbiology, first isolated the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.

He examined the food and the victims of food poisoning in village of Ellezelles and isolated the bacteria. Later he experimental on several animals, which provoked the typical symptoms of botulism.

In 1946 Dr, Edward J Schantz succeeded in purifying botulinum toxin type A in crystalline form-cultured Clostridium botulinum and isolated the toxin. Wound botulism was described in 1973 and infant botulism in 1976.

Early history of botulism

Urinary tract infection in history

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Infections of the urinary tract have been known since antiquity. The ancient Egyptians mentioned urinary tract infections in the EBers Papyrus, and they dealt with them using herbs.

The papyrus of Kahun, dated 1900 BC contains a hieroglyphic suggested that hematuria was due to ‘worms in the belly’.

Ancient Egyptians were aware of the importance of bloody urine in the diagnosis of bladder disorders that were later identified as cancer caused by the parasitic Schistosoma haematobium. The relationship of schistosomiasis to bladder cancer was established by Ferguson in 1911.

The Arabs introduced ‘uroscopy’ and the Romans introduced surgery for kidney stones.

From the times of Hippocrates into the nineteenth century, the examination of urine was thought to be important diagnostic procedure.

Hippocrates in 387 BC first documented an association between urinary tract infections, urinary stones and groin abscesses.

In 1856, Wilhelm Duschan Lambl, a Czech physician, published remarkable paper on the use of the microscope for the examination of the urinary sedimentation.

Urinary tract infection in history

Discovery of Vitamins B

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Beriberi, was endemic for centuries and finally proved to be deficiency disease. In 1890 Eijkman developed a polyneuritis by feeding polished rice to hens. This was cured by feeding rice polishing by Dr. Casimir Funk in 1911.

Casimir Funk born in 1884, had grown up in a Poland that was then under a Russian government.

His father, a physician, was able to send Casimir at the age of sixteen to continue his studies in Switzerland, first in Geneva then moving to Berne to specialize in organic chemistry and obtain a doctoral degree at the early age of twenty.

He began his career in Warsaw before moved in 1904 to Pasteur Institute in Paris; then in 1906 to Berlin to work on amino acids and again in 1901 to the Lister Institute in London.

In London, he managed to extract from yeast a compound that was very effective against beriberi, which he called vitamin because its amine content,

He made a great advances in 1912 when he hypothesized that certain diseases such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra and rickets are caused by deficiency of nutrients.

Casimir Funk coined the word “vitamine”. He describe an organic compound ‘thyamin’ as a ‘vital amine’ and it became known as vitamin B.

He believed that all these substance were ‘vital amines’, however, it was soon shown that most of the vitamins are unrelated chemically and that only a few of them are amines.

Later, as each vitamin was isolated in pure form and its chemical structure was determined, it was given a chemical name.
Discovery of Vitamins B

High blood pressure in history

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In 2600 BC the Chinese ‘Yellow Emperor’ Huang Ti Nei Ching associated salt with a ‘hardened pulse’. The Nei Ching written down long after his death, ‘ If too much salt is used for food, the pulse hardens.’

Another ancient text from Sumeria 2000 BC mentions that potassium should be included in the diet.

In 1706, the structure of heart was first describe by French anatomist Raymond de Viessens.

In 1733 the Reverend Stephen Hales was the first person to measure blood pressure in vivo in unaesthetic horses by direct cannulation of the carotid and femoral arteries.

In 1896, the Italian physician Scipione Riva-Rocci invented a simple device for measuring blood pressure – a rubber bag that went around the arm, which was then filled with air in order to block the circulation in the brachial artery and determine at what pressure the blood was passing through.

Later in 1902, ECG of electrocardiogram was invented by the Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven.

In 1903, Codman and Cushing introduced the concept of routine intra-operative blood pressure measurement, which at the time was a revolutionary concept. In 1924 Canadian Physician W. L. T Addison had reported that giving calcium reduced the blood pressure in many of his hypertensive patients.

In the 1950s and 1960s, American doctors began to realize that too much salt in the diet can contribute to high blood pressure.

High blood pressure in history

History of psychotic depression

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One of the earliest about depression can be found in Homer’s Iliad in the 9th century BC. Zilboorg points out ‘the Homeric tradition was theurgic: man becomes mentally ill because the gods take his mind away.’

Hippocrates, in the fourth century BC, included melancholia in his classification of psychiatric disorders.

Description of psychotic depression can be found in ancient texts including the Bible. In the book of Job, Job depressed and feels that he has fallen from high status and has lost prestige.

He has delusions of poverty and the nihilistic delusion that his children are dead and he believes that he is giving off unpleasant smell.

In nineteenth century psychopathology, disorders of thought were identified in patients classified as manic depressive insanity, involuntional and melancholic depression, dementia praecox, and dementia paralytica.

They recognized melancholia as circular insanity, as manic depressive illness and in the past few decades as endogenous, endogenomorphic, autonomous or psychotic depression.

By late nineteenth century, psychotic had come to indicate conditions in which the patient manifested a disturbance in higher-level mental functions, including language, orientation, perception and thinking.

During the first half of this century, psychiatrist delineated melancholia, and the term ‘psychotic depression’ was applied rather loosely to melancholia associated with hallucinations, delusions or suicidality.

In 1970s, effective doses of tricyclic antidepressants failed to relive psychotic patients, although were very effective in the nonpsychotic depressed.

Simultaneously, hypercortisolemia was shown to be a characteristic finding in melancholia and the dexamethasone suppression test was its effective marker.

History of psychotic depression

Discovery of vitamin K

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Vitamin K was discovered by Danish researcher Henrik Dam. Vitamin K is nutrient that plays a crucial role in blood clotting.

The discovery was a result of investigations into the cause of an excessive bleeding disorder in chickens fed on a fat free diet. The study was carried out on the possible essentiality of cholesterol in the diet of the chicken during the years of 1928-1930 in the Biochemical Institute of the University of Copenhagen.

Henrik Dam noted that the chicks exposed to food that had been extracted with non-polar solvents to remove sterols, developed subdural and muscular hemorrhages and that blood taken from these animal clotted slowly.

He concluded that a non-polar component responsible for hemorrhagic was remove from the diet by the extraction and focused his research on identifying this component.

In 1934, Henrik Dam reported the existence of the new accessory food factor and then went on to show in the following year that this was fat soluble but different from vitamin A, D or E.

He proposed that the anti-hemorrhagic factor was a new vitamin. He named it vitamin K for ‘koagulation’ according to the Scandinavia and German spelling.

The existence of vitamin K was promptly confirmed by Almquist and Stokstad at the University of California, Berkeley.

Beginning in the early 1960s, studies of prothrombin production in humans and experimental animals eventually led to an understanding of the metabolic role of vitamin K.

Discovery of vitamin K

History of Vitamin C

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From 1875 to 1905, there was, growing confusion over the cause of scurvy. It has remained a constant threat to humans, causing death and misery.

In 1747, the British physician, J. Lind, found that two oranges and one lemon a day could relieve the symptoms of scurvy.

Even though Lind had proven the scurvy was due to the missing nutrient, the exact nature of this vital nutrient continued to puzzle scientists for the next two centuries.

Vitamin C was first isolated in 1928, and in 1932 it was proved to be the agent which prevents scurvy. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi identified ‘scorbutic principle’ in 1928 and isolated hexuronic acid as the factor that preventing browning of decaying fruit. He was awarded the Nobel prize for this feat.

The name was changed to vitamin C following structural identification and to ascorbic acid in recognition of it ability to prevent scurvy.

The name for vitamin C that derives from the Latin word ascorbic, which means ‘without scurvy.’

In 1974, Cameron and Pauling suggested that vitamin C might play a role in the supportive care of cancer patients.

History of Vitamin C

The discovery of cholera

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Cholera is a severe diarrheal illness caused by certain types of Vibrio cholerae, which can lead rapidly to dehydration and death.

The term first seen in the works of Hippocrates was believed to have been believed form Greek worlds chole (bile) and rein (to flow), thus meaning flow of bile.

The disease has a homeland in Bengal basin, the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers.

The modern history of cholera began in 1817, when cholera spread out of India in what the literature describe as the first of seven pandemics.

In 1884, Robert Koch summarized his study on the etiology of cholera. He isolated in pure culture and called ‘comma –bacillus’ now known as Vibrio cholera O group 1.

At that time, he was in the German Cholera Commission as a member. He investigated cholera in Egypt during the fifth pandemic.

The seminal work that led to the discovery of cholera toxin was made by SN De in 1959. This done by injecting of living Vibrio cholerae or cell free filtrates into the lumen of a ligated loop of rabbit ileum caused accumulation of large amount of fluid having gross similarity to cholera.

It was 17 years later the putative enterotoxin was isolated and purified in 1969 by Finkeltein and his co-workers.

Epidemic cholera has appeared relatively recently on the global stage. It spread throughout the word early in the 19th century, causing severe epidemics in the crowded cities of the newly industrializing Europe , and has since recurred in massive multicontinental pandemics.

Cholera struck London in 1832, claiming around 7000 lives and it was believed that the disease were transmitted through air. However it was discovered by Dr. John Snow that cholera is a waterborne disease after having closely observed the cholera epidemics of 1848 to 1849 in Lambeth.

The discovery of cholera

History of SARS

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SARS or severe acute respiratory syndrome ,first reported case of atypical pneumonia, occurred in Guangzhou, China in November 16, 2002.

The disease was characterized by the lack of response to conventional antibiotic therapy and the occurrence of clusters of cases within a family or healthcare setting.

Before the end of February 2003, a total of 11 index cases occurred independently in 9 cities of Guangdong Province, which was the early phase of the SARS epidemic.

In these cities the cases of SARS were reported, which included 3 cooks, 3 officers, 2 farmers, 2 workers, 2 retired people and 1 businessman.

Their age ranged from 18 to 84 years and the majority 77% were between 30-50 years.

In 21 February 2003, a 65 old professor of urologist who visited Hong Kong from Guangzhou, stayed at Hong Kong’s Metropole Hotel was thought as the infections source that leaded to SARS global transmission.

He had treated patients with ‘atypical pneumonia’ in Guangzhou and had been ill himself since 15 February.

Dr. Carlo Urbani, an epidemiologist and expert on communicable disease was the first World Health Organization officer to identify the outbreak of SARS.

History of SARS

History of Cyclospora cayetanensis

2012-01-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

This parasites of this genus were reported in the late 19th century and since have been describe in insectivorous mammals, nonhuman primates and snakes.

One of the oldest documentation published in 1979, describing a parasite with microscopic characteristics of immature Cyclospora oocysts. It was reported the first known human cases.

Although the organism has been known since 1979, it was first isolated from patients in Peru in 1985.

Cyclospora has been demonstrated as a cause of diarrhoea in travelers returning from Nepal and Pakistan.

In addition, it has also been identified form patients with protracted diarrhoea in various places, including Bangladesh.

Cyclospora has been associated with ingestion of imported raspberries from Guatemala in the spring of 4 consecutive years 1995-1998.

The first outbreak of cyclosporiasis involved contaminated water in the United States was recorded in 1990 in Chicago, Illinois.
History of Cyclospora cayetanensis

West Nile Virus

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Scientists learned of the West Nile virus in 1937 when they were studying an entirely different disease. The disease was African trypanosomiasis, commonly known as sleeping sickness.

They discovered the new virus and named it West Nile virus since it was first isolated from a 37 year old woman from Omogo, West Nile district, Northern Province of Uganda. The woman displaying febrile illness.

Since its discovery, West Nile virus has been recognized as the causative agent of infrequent disease outbreaks in humans.

The ecology was characterized in Egypt in the 1950s. The virus became reconsider as a cause of severe human meningoencephalitis in elderly patients during an outbreak in Israel in 1957.

The first report of antibodies against West Nile virus in humans came from Bombay in 1952. In 1980 and 1981, West Nile virus was isolated from three children in the Karnataka state, all of whom suffered fatal encephalitis.

The largest known human epidemic before the US outbreaks in 2002 and 2003 occurred in 1974 in Cape Province, South Africa. The 1974 outbreak had approximately 3000 human cases.

In 1999, the virus appeared in North America for the first time, and the following year the virus was reported in 12 states along the East coast.

The outbreaks in 2003 was the largest in history when more than 10000 people in North America developed symptoms after being infected with West Nile virus.

The source of the initial introduction is unknown. Genetic studies point to origins in the Mediterranean or Middle East.

West Nile Virus

Discovery of red Blood Cells

2011-11-27T22:00:00.001-08:00

Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680) in Amsterdam first identified red cells with a light microscope and he described them as ‘ruddy globules’.

As early as 1658 he described them in the blood of the frog, but his observations were not published till fifty-seven years after his death by Boerhaave. It was published in Biblia Naturae in 1738.

In 1661, Marcellus Malpighi observed the red blood corpuscles however he failed to recognized their nature mistaking them for fat globules.

In 1674, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek was first recognized red blood corpuscles as the elements responsible for the redness of the blood.

Credit for the discovery of the first cells is given to the English scientist Robert Hooke (1635-1701) who described the microscopic compartments of cork cells in 1665. He was the first person talk about cells.

Throughout the 17th and 18th century naturalist describe a wide variety of cell types, including human cells such as spermatozoa and red blood cells.

Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) in Silesia, Germany and a pathologist, Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) from Pomerania, Germany made great contribution in establishing a method for dry smear preparations of blood cells in peripheral blood and staining methods for these blood cells.

In 1897, the Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner discovered that there were four types of blood. He found that humans have four blood types A, B, AB and O.
Discovery of red Blood Cells

History of Tay-Sachs disease

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The search for the enzymatic defect in Tay-Sachs disease began just over 40 years ago with a simple galactose tolerance test in a patient with Gaucher disease.

Tay-Sachs disease is fatal and currently has no cure. Most victims die before the age of five. Due to one inactive enzymes Hexosaminidase A, the baby’s central nervous system begins to shut down.

It is rare, hereditary disease. The disease leads to a buildup of fats in nerve and brain cells.

This causes the gradual destruction of nerves in the brain and body, leading to the loss of mental and psychical abilities such as speech, movement, sight and ability to learn new skills.

The disease was not describe until the 1880s. Undoubtedly it had existed before but its clinical singularity went undetected in the crowded Jewish community of the European tsarist pale.

In 1881, the Scottish ophthalmologists Warren Tay, practiced medicine in East London was the first described degeneration of the macular region of eye in one year old child.

Tay noted some distinctive changes on the retinas of these infant and published his ophthalmological finding in 1881.

Six years later, the American neurologists Bernard Sachs published the clinical and pathological findings. In studying additional cases, Sachs noted the familial nature of the condition, which he called amaurotic familial idiocy.

Other physicians published case reports and Tay-Sachs’ disease was established as an entity.

Tay-Sachs mostly is found affects Jews of Eastern European ancestry – known as Ashkenazi Jews. About 1 in 30 Ashkenazi Jews carry the Tay-Sachs gene worldwide.

Beginning of the biochemical studies of in the late 1930’s increased amounts of gangliosides were discovered in the brains of patients with this disease.

In 1970, a neuroscientist named Robert O’Brien developed an enzymes serum assay that could be used to detect those who were affected by and those who were carriers of the Tay-Sachs mutation.
History of Tay-Sachs disease

Pecquet John (1622-1674)

2011-11-11T04:09:00.000-08:00

Pecquet John, a celebrated anatomist, was born at Dieppe in 1622.

He received a medical education at Montpellier, from which university he obtained the degree of MD.

He afterwards went to Pairs, where he became associated with Mentel and other anatomist in their scientific pursuits.

In 1647 he discovered the thoracic duct while working on animal dissection. He was an anatomist of Paris at that time.

Pecquet reported in his findings in ‘Experiment nova anatomica’ in 1651.

Pecquet actually rediscovered the thoracic duct traced to the lacteal vessels, and demonstrated the passage of the cycle through the duct onto the subelavian vein.

This discovery soon gave his name a celebrity throughout Europe and added important confirmation of the Harveian account of the circulation.

Pecquet also wrote some papers on anatomical subjects, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, in which society he was admitted a member in 1666 and in the Journal des Savans.
Pecquet John (1622-1674)