PriMera Scientific Surgical Research and Practice (ISSN: 2836-0028)

Short Communication

Volume 5 Issue 3

History of Developments in Medicine and Other Branches in the Last 50 Years or So

Jayanta Bhattacharya*

February 28, 2025

DOI : 10.56831/PSSRP-05-172

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Abstract

I begin this article with the description of the birth of the two most influential medical journal of the present – the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). They are now indispensible for expanding our medical knowledge in various fields. Unhesitatingly, I should admit at the outset, this is an overview, NOT comprehensive review, of the milestones of developments in medicine. A number of important fields remain outside my discussion.

Foot Notes

  1. Davis S Jones., et al. “Slavery and the Journal – Reckoning with History and Complicity”. NEJM 389 (2023): 2117-2123.
  2. Thomas Wakley. “Preface”. Lancet 1 (1823): 1-2.
  3. For very good insightful analyses see, Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794-1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967); Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to the Mankind (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1997), and Joan Lane, Social History of Medicine: Health, Healing and Disease in England, 1750-1950 (London: Routledge, 2001).
  4. Marry E Fissel. “The disappearance of the patient’s narrative and the invention of hospital medicine”. British Medicine in an Age of Reform (1991): 92-109.
  5. Owsei Temkin. “The Role of Surgery in the Rise of Modern Medical Thought”. Bull Hist Med 25.3 (1951): 248-259.
  6. Jayanta Bhattacharya. “The genesis of hospital medicine in India: The Calcutta Medical College and the emergence of a new medical epistemology”. Indian Economic and Social History Review 51 (2014): 231-264.
  7. Isaac Kohane, Jeffrey Crazen and Edward Campton. “A Glimpse of the Next 100 Years of Medicine”. NEJM 376.26 (2012): 2538-2539. Also see, Mohammed Bydon, ed., The New Era of Precision Medicine: What It Means for Patients and the Future of the Healthcare (London: Academic Press, 2024).
  8. Kohane, Crazen and Campton. “A Glimpse of the Next 100 Years of Medicine”. 2558.
  9. Angela Desmond and Paul Offit. “On the Shoulders of Giants – From Jenner’s Cowpox to mRNA Covid Vaccines”. NEJM 384.12 (2021): 1081-1083.
  10. Norbert Pardi., et al. “mRNA vaccines – a new era in vaccinology”. Nature 17 (2018): 261-279.
  11. Ibid, 276.
  12. Kaushik Bhattacharya and Neela Bhattacharya. “Robert Liston – “The Surgeon with the Fastest Knife”. Indian Journal of Surgery 84 (2022): 1311-1314.
  13. Atul Gwande. “Two Hundred Years of Surgery”. NEJM 366.18 (2012): 1716-1723.
  14. Ibid, 1722.
  15. Nadine Yousif. “Pig kidney transplant patients leaves hospital”. BBC News (2024). Though the patient has died two months after surgery.
  16. David Schneider. “The Invention of Surgery – A History of Modern Medicine: From the Renaissance to the Implant Revolution”. (London: Coronet, 2020).
  17. Ibid, 327.
  18. Michael Stillman and Monalisa Tailor. “Dead Man Walking”. NEJM 369.20 (2013): 1880-1881.
  19. Ibid, 1881.
  20. Michael Green. “Two Hundred Years of Progress in the Practice of Midwifery”. NEJM 367.18 (2012): 1732-1740.
  21. Ibid, 1739.
  22. Robert D Truog. “Patients and Doctors – The Evolution of a Relationship”. NEJM 366.7 (2012): 581-585.
  23. Julia Kulkova., et al. “Medicine of the future: How and who is going to treat us?”. Futures 146 (2023) : 103097.
  24. WHO. “The Right to Health”. Fact Sheet No. 31.