It’s hard to even put into words how incredible medical breakthroughs are, and thanks to that whole global pandemic thing, we’ve seen what scientists and doctors can do in just a short amount of time. Our hats are off to all of those that work in these fields and we simply can’t imagine what the world would look like today without all of these advances and breakthroughs. (We would probably still be getting diagnosed with ghosts in our blood or whatever). So today we’re going to look at just a few medical advances that have blown our minds.
Vaccinations
You know we had to start with this one because we’ve heard so much about them over the last couple of years. The very first vaccine created was for smallpox in 1796, and just to paint a picture of how many people this affected, 300-500 million people died from this disease throughout the 19th century. And today? Well, smallpox has been practically eradicated thanks to the vaccine. This has saved millions upon millions of lives across the globe.
(image via: istock)
3-D Printed Body Parts
We’ve been hearing more and more about 3D printed objects over the years, but scientists have been working on 3D printed body parts, as well as denture material, and, as if 3D printing wasn’t impressive enough, scientists are also working on bioprinting, which can produce living tissue, bone, blood vessels, and human cartilage.
Anesthesia
(image via: istock)
Here’s a terrible thought: a surgery before anesthesia existed. Well, if you had surgery before 1846, that’s exactly what you would have experienced. But it’s not like you would have actually gone under the knife, the procedure would have been considered impossible. And when you consider how many both minor and major surgeries today require anesthesia, then it’s easy to understand why so many diagnoses were essentially a death sentence.
Cancer Therapies
The dreaded ‘C’ word. While there is still a long way to go when it comes to cancer treatment, science has come such a long way when it comes to research and various treatments depending on what type of cancer you have. More recently scientists have made headway with cancer fingerprinting, which is a way to analyze how certain cancers react to different treatments. Aside from fingerprinting, there have been big advances made in immunotherapy which is a process that fights cancer by boosting the immune system rather than targeting tumors through surgery or chemo.
Insulin
(image via: istock)
Having insulin on hand to inject is a fairly new process having been used for the first time in 1922. Prior to 1922, diabetes just wasn’t able to be treated properly. In fact, kiddos that were diagnosed with Type I Diabetes were expected to live, at best, 1 ½ years after their diagnosis, and in adults, only 1 in 5 adults were expected to live 10 years following their diagnosis.