The Most Important Discoveries in Medicine

Medicine is by far the most significant and important discovery the world has ever seen. With the introduction of medicine, almost all life forms have a better quality of life along with an extended life expectancy. Although sickness has not been cured, there have been many breakthroughs in the medical field which have made life-ending illnesses curable and manageable. With sicknesses that are not curable or difficult to cure, medicine has made it possible to manage these sicknesses giving patients the ability to enjoy a better quality of life while receiving treatment in the hope of being cured.

Certain medicinal breakthroughs stand out more than others such as vaccines, anaesthesia, the germ theory, medical imaging (x-rays), penicillin, anti-viral drugs, stem-cell therapy and immunotherapy. Without these breakthroughs in medicine, the world would be a very different place with illnesses being a much greater threat to humans than it currently is.

Between twelve thousand and six thousand five hundred years ago, the average life expectancy throughout the world was from twenty years old to thirty-three years of age (Ellis, 2017). In 1900 the world average was thirty-one and fifty years later, in 1950, the world average shot up to forty-eight. The change in the average from 1900 to 1950 was possibly due to the end of both world wars and more importantly, the discovery of penicillin which took place in 1928 (Ellis, 2017).

Penicillins are a group of antibacterial medications that attack a broad range of microorganisms (Sanjai Sinha, 2018). They were the first medications of this type that doctors used. The manufacture and discovery of penicillins happened to change the face of the medical world, as these medications have saved countless amounts of lives. Penicillin fungus is the source of penicillin, which people can consume via injection or orally. People throughout the world now widely use this medication to treat illness (Newman, 2019).

Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming along with Norman Heatley, Ernst Chain and Howard Florey who did the majority of the work as they had a better understanding of chemistry and access to larger more equipped laboratories which enabled them to do more in-depth and focused studies on the drug (Newman, 2019). The medication in the penicillin class work by indirectly bursting bacterial cell walls. This is achieved by acting directly on peptidoglycans, which have an essential structural role in bacterial cells.“Peptidoglycans create a mesh-like structure around the plasma membrane of bacterial cells, which” prevents external fluids and particles from entering the cell while also heightening the strength of the cell walls.

When bacteria multiply, small holes open up in its cell walls as the cells divide.“Newly-produced peptidoglycans then fill these holes to reconstruct the walls.” The protein struts that link the peptidoglycans together are blocked by penicillins. This stops the bacterium from closing the holes in its cell walls. As the water concentration inside the bacterium is lower than the surrounding fluid, water rushes through the holes into the cell and the bacterium bursts (Newman, 2019). The discovery of penicillin had a major impact in helping doctors fight against bacteria in the human body (Sanjai Sinha, 2018).

Apart from antibiotics such as penicillin fighting harmful illnesses in human bodies, vaccines have also had an important role in doing so. “A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease” (Pappas, 2010). A vaccine usually contains an agent that is closely similar to a microorganism that causes disease and is often made from killed or weakened forms of the paticular microbe, one or many of its surface proteins or toxins. “The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and 'remember' it so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters” (Pappas, 2010). By doing so, the body’s immune system is can more easily manage and effectively destroy harmful pathogens before they become a serious concern (Pappas, 2010).

Both vaccines and penicillin have had a profound impact in curing or helping prevent many illnesses, but when it comes to operating, anaesthesia has made this once dreadful procedure significantly more tolerable and safe. Anaesthesia is the practice of administering medication by either inhalation (breathing it in) or by injection that blocks the feeling or sensation of pain along with almost all other sensations, or that produce a deep state of unconsciousness that also will eliminate all sensations. This allows surgical and medical procedures to be undertaken without causing undue discomfort or distress (Newman, 2018). “The word anaesthesia is coined from two Greek words: 'an' meaning 'without' and 'aesthesis' meaning 'sensation' ” (Sharp, 2003). There are multiple variations of anaesthesia. Throughout an average person’s life, majority of people will undergo a type of anaesthetic either for a type of surgical procedure or during labour, which could range from a relatively short, simple procedure on a day-stay basis through to a major surgery procedure requiring complex, rapid decisions to keep the patient safe. Most of today's procedures are possible and safe due to developments in the medical field of anaesthesia and training of specialist anaesthetists (Sharp, 2003).

Patients being administered anaesthetics will need to have an anaesthetist (a doctor who has specialised training in anaesthesia) with them all the way from the assessment prior to the operation, to closely monitoring their health and wellbeing by studying any changes in the patients vitals throughout their procedure to ensure nothing fatal occurs as a result (News24, 2018). The relief of suffering and pain is quite central to the practice of anaesthesia. “Despite an increase in the complexity of surgical operations, modern anaesthesia is relatively safe due to high standards of training that emphasise quality and safety” (Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, 2018). Furthermore, there have been numerous advances in medicinal equipment and the medication used (Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, 2018).

Almost all operations are performed under anaesthesia. Apart from anaesthesia being so important in operations, medical imaging, or x-rays are another vital procedure that patients must undergo in order to provide surgeons with the most possible information which will give them more information making it easier to plan a successful operation. X-rays are forms of electromagnetic radiation which is most well-known for the ability it possess to see through a person's skin and reveal images of the bones beneath it. Many advances in technology have led to more focused and more powerful X-rays as well as superior applications of this sort of radiance waves, from imaging structural components of materials like cement and microscopic organic cells to killing cancer cells. X-rays are classified into hard X-rays and soft X-rays.

Hard X-rays have wavelengths of about 100 Pico meters (a Pico meter is a trillionth of a meter). These electromagnetic waves occupy the same region of the EM spectrum as gamma-rays. Soft X-rays have relatively short wavelengths of about 10 nano metres (a nano metre is a billionth of a meter), and so they fall in the range of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum between gamma rays and UV light. Gamma-rays are produced by atomic nuclei in one of four nuclear reactions and X-rays are produced by accelerating electrons (Lucas, 2018).

X-rays were discovered in 1895 by a professor at Würzburg University in Germany, Wilhelm Conrad Röentgen. “Conrad Röentgen noticed crystals near a high-voltage cathode-ray tube exhibiting a fluorescent glow, even when he shielded them with dark paper. Some form of energy was being produced by the tube that was penetrating the paper and causing the crystals to glow. Conrad Röentgen called the unknown energy 'X-radiation.' Experiments showed that this radiation could penetrate soft tissues but not bone, and would produce shadow images on photographic plates” (Lucas, 2018). The exact technology is used to conduct radiation therapy. Radiation therapy makes uses high-energy light waves and particles to kill cancerous cells by destroying their deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Since the treatment poses a threat to normal cells, multiple cancer institutions recommend that the treatment must be carefully administered to minimize any dangerous or threatening side effects.

According to the “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency”, ionizing radiation from X-rays strikes a focused area with a sufficient force to completely strip electrons from the atoms and molecules, thus changing their properties. In sufficient doses, this can damage or destroy cells. While this cell causes cancer, it is also used to fight cancer. (Lucas, 2018).

About sixteen percent of cancers are caused by viruses or bacteria (Greenwood, 2012). An effective manner doctors use to help kill a virus is by prescribing anti-viral drugs. Almost all viral diseases, with the exception of those caused by HIV, are self-limited sicknesses that don’t require specific treatments (Razonable, 2011). Currently, the available drugs target three main groups of viruses: hepatitis, influenza viruses, and herpes. All antiherpes drugs inhibit viral replication by serving as competitive substrates for viral deoxyribonucleic acid polymerase (Canadian Cancer Society, 2016). Medication used to treat influenza inhibits the ion channel M2 protein. Combination therapy with ribavirin and Interferon-α remains the strength of character treatment for hepatitis C. With the addition of the serine protease, inhibitors improve the treatment outcome of patients who have been infected with the hepatitis C virus. Hepatitis B can be treated with a combination of nucleoside analogues or interferon. Almost all the nucleoside analogues for treatment of hepatitis B possesses anti HIV properties and they inhibit a replication of hepatitis B virus by serving as competitive substrates for its deoxyribonucleic acid polymerase (Razonable, 2011).

Some antiviral medications possess multiple potential clinical applications, such as ribavirin for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus, chronic hepatitis C and cidofovir for the treatment of cytomegalovirus and other deoxyribonucleic acid viruses. Drug resistance is an upcoming risk to the clinical utility of antiviral drugs. “The major mechanisms for drug resistance are mutations in the viral DNA polymerase gene or in genes that encode for the viral kinases required for the activation of certain drugs such as acyclovir and ganciclovir “(Razonable, 2011). “Widespread antiviral resistance has limited the clinical utility of M2 inhibitors for the prevention and treatment of influenza infections. This article provides an overview of clinically available antiviral drugs for the primary care physician, with a special focus on pharmacology, clinical uses, and adverse effects” (Razonable, 2011).

Without the discovery and invention of these amazing breakthroughs in the medical field, our world we know today would be a very different place. We are quite possibly in a period of time where we have the highest quality of life in terms of our health care and the medical facilities available to us, it is also more importantly due to these life-changing medical breakthroughs. The medical field is always changing and advancing looking for new ways to cure illness in a cost-effective manner so that the public will ultimately benefit.