We call medicine the art of identifying the cause of disease in the body of humans or animals and curing it through medicines and surgery. Even though surgery, which is considered to be the highest technology in the medical field, is now universally performed all over the world, it was only at the end of a continuous struggle of more than 14000 (12000 BCE) years that man was able to achieve this development in surgical medicine. Friends, how many of us know that the father of such a great field of surgery is an Indian..!
Before getting to know the Indian it becomes essential to first know the history of surgery from its inception. Believing that one's mood is affected due to excess pressure in the brain, primitive man used sharp stones to cut round holes in the skull to reduce the pressure. History says that the world's first surgery called trepanning dates back to about 14000 (12000 BCE) years ago. The world's oldest trepanned skull was discovered in 1970 by the Swedish doctor and archaeologist Folke Henschen (Folke Henschen, 1881 – 1977) on the banks of the Dnieper River in Russia. It is noteworthy that deboned skulls have been found not only in Russia but also in archaeological research carried out in France and Greece (Ancient Greece).
The next phase of history of surgery starts from India. People who lived in Mehrgarh (Balochistan District, Pakistan), located in the northeastern border of present-day Punjab, which was a part of the Indus Valley of ancient India, around 9000 years ago (7000 BCE) used cavity teeth as a remedy for toothache. They have been surgically removed by piercing with prepared sharp stones. This fact was revealed to the world when archaeologists led by Professor Andrea Cucina from the United States subjected the skulls found during the excavation of the Graveyard in Meher to various stages of research.
Needless to say, the Egyptians also specialized in surgical medicine from about 5500 (3500 BCE) years ago. Mummification, which remained an unsolvable puzzle for the medical world until almost the nineteenth century AD (1900 AD), is a prime example of this. But it is noteworthy that mummification was carried out only on inanimate bodies. Imhotep (2650BCE – 2600BCE) is known as the first physician in Egyptian history to treat a living human being, who treated more than 30 wounds on the surface of the body. Thankyou for reading.
