A History of Medicine (1)

I was recently invited by the Rio de Janeiro Otolaryngological Society to give a conference entitled: Otology – Past, Present and Future.

I will start my blog with the beginning of the conference.

In the old days everything was simple...

Medicine was born in Greece. Asclepius, who was god, learned it from a centaur. And the “treatment” of the diseases consisted in spending a night in on of the Asclepius temples. During the night the God would enter into the patient’s dreams and cured him.

But the Greeks had a precise notion that Medicine should not cure all patients. Hades, the god of Hell, complained to Zeus that no more dead spirits were coming to the underworld, for Asklepius did not allow them to die.

Zeus, then, fulminated Asclepius with a thunderbolt.

This is what Governments and Insurance Companies are attempting to do with present day Medicine.

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