Medicine is one of the most important science in the world, in fact since a thousand years ago humans use it to stay healthy. For the last century, hospital function has not changed nevertheless, technological and scientific progress has made possible treatment approaches that everyone taught it was impossible in the last century. Improved surgical techniques, safer use of anesthesia, and safer childbirth procedures are some great examples of that evolution in medicine from now to the past century.
Today, almost everyone take anesthesia for granted and they also think that without local or complete analgesia a surgery cannot perform. Anesthetics are useful because it take away the pain; even minor surgery is done with these drugs. With evolution, they have become less dangerous, and the control over their usage is applied effectively. Based in history of medicine that is the result of the invention of the re-breathing process, which facilitated the application of artificial ventilation during surgery.
Another achievement of modern hospitals is the supervision over pregnancy. Today, with evolution it is easy for a woman who is pregnant to presume that her and the child will have an healthy process during the pregnancy. That is the result of the new and progressive ways of monitoring the relation of a mother and her fetus. For instance, nowadays, doctors can survey a baby’s heartbeats by using an internal device positioned directly on the fetus’s head which measures the electrical current produced by the heart.
The cesarean section rate today is approximately 30% in the United States and some birth procedures that were used in the past century have been revealed as ineffective and have ceased. With the adoption of childbirth technology doctors make sure that there is any risk that might lead to loss of life or disability like a century ago. These positive changes can be attributed to some scientific innovations which is made in medicine, economic development and better administration policies.
Modern hospitals are exceptionally scientific and complex they also have introduced complex diagnostic and therapeutic technologies. Nowadays, many hospitals have also widened their services and have transformed into institutions offering health education, research, training and disease surveillance. Anyway, this does not mean that modern hospitals do not face challenges. For instance, modern’s hospitals, especially those in rich countries, continue to be plagued with shortages of hospital beds and other utilities.
On the other hand, a hundred years ago, medicine had faced difficulties due to the imperfection of treatment methods and drugs. Using anesthesia during surgery a century ago was unsafe, sometimes even dangerous than the surgical procedure itself. The most popular anesthetics were chloroform and ether; they used to be administered over the patient’s mouth. This led them to fall into a condition of coma and many patients lost their lives as a result of overdose Giving birth to a child a hundred years ago was a challenge as difficult as today, but the situation was definitely more complicated due to the absence of modern anesthesia and technologies.
A lot of women went through childbirth with difficulties because of the absence of technologies and also many babies had died during this process. Back then, the status of the fetus could be surveyed and monitored only by a specially designed fetal stethoscope. Thus, it was difficult to predict how the fetus would develop, as well as prevent possible dangers for both mother and child. Many women preferred to give birth at home with the help of their family or another woman who had some experience in this process, sometimes they just had no access to hospitals where they could have been taken care of.
Although cesarean sections were used early in the twentieth century, the rate of recurrence was really low. Finally, it is important to remember that a hundred years ago, hospitals were far worse equipped and in consequence to that lack of equipment the presence of many diseases and the reasons that caused them, their origins were unknown to medicine. Illnesses that are now successfully cured with injections or an appropriate drug could kill a person living a hundred years ago.
For instance cholera some kind of cancer and even fever. In addition, sanitary conditions in cities and villages sometimes were awful and the prevention method and how they treated epidemics were less effective than today. We should insist on the fact that there has been a radical transformation in the way hospitals operate today compared to last century ago. Improvement in anesthetics administration has made surgery safer nowadays, new birth techniques employed by moderns hospitals have facilitated the child delivery procedure.
Most of this can be attributed to the scientific innovations that have been made in medicine. Anyway, modern hospitals are not yet in the clear, they have a lot of challenges like new diseases and a lack of adequate facilities which made modern medicine difficult. When compared to hospitals that existed in the last century, modern hospitals have made a lot of progress in their services and also their results.