History of Vicks VapoRub

Lunsford Richardson sold his drugstore and moved to Greensboro with wife, Mary Lynn and their three children in 1891.

He then purchased the Porter Drug Store at 121 South Elm Street.  It served as a popular spot to socialize as well as shop. In 1905 at age fifty, he left the wholesale business and with $8,000 capital launched the wholly owned Vick Family Remedies Companies.

Lunsford mostly found his passion in developing home remedy, creating his own formulas to help customers relive headaches, coughs, and other common ailments.

He experimented with a new remedy to ease his children’s croup symptoms in 1894, blending an ointment of menthol, eucalyptus and other natural ingredients.

Richardson blended menthol into petroleum jelly and produces Richardson’s Coup and Pneumonia Cure Salve.

When rubbed on the chest the stuff did produce the sensation of heat, and as the menthol evaporated it did clear the nasal passages.

The products name was too long, however, so Richardson christened his line Vick Family Remedies, borrowing the name from his brother–in-law, Dr. Joshua Vick. The name Vicks was short, catchy and easy to remember.

In 1917 the company began a widespread distribution of samples on a house to house basis in many areas of the Northeast. Vick was probably the first drug company to hire a doctor to review the medical accuracy of all its advertising copy.

Sales increased each year and by 1929, Vicks products could be purchased in sixty foreign countries.

In 1938 the Richardson acquired the William S. Merrel Company. From this small town operation, Richardson Merrell grew into multi-national $500 million enterprise.

In 1956 Bendectin was introduced to the market, it was a product of Richardson Merrell, whose parent was Vicks.

In October 1985, the board approved the friendly sale to Procter & Gamble, securing a more favorable stock price and outcome for employees.
History of Vicks VapoRub

Vioxx by Merck

Vioxx (Rofecoxib) a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) was introduced to the market in 1999.  In 1994, Merck’s R&D program discovered Vioxx, one of a group COX-2 inhibitors, COX-2 inhibitors include over the counter medications such as Advil (ibuprofen) and Aleve (naproxen) that serve to reduce both pain and inflammation.

From 1994 through 1999, Merck navigated the Food and Drug Administration approval process, one that has incremental steps for approval. In May 1999 approved Vioxx for the relief of osteoarthritis symptoms and management of acute pain.

Merck made billions on profits from Vioxx. Vioxx was one of the major sources of revenue for Merck while on the market: It was marketed in more than eighty countries with worldwide sales totaling $2.5 billion in 2003.

In September 2004, Merck was forced to take Vioxx off the market after a three-year study demonstrated that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes in patients taking it for at least eighteen months. According to an epidemiologist study done by Graham, an FDA scientist, Vioxx has been associated with more than 27,000 heart attacks or deaths.

A May 2006 study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated that Vioxx may raise the risk of heart attacks for patients who took the RX for less than two weeks.
Vioxx by Merck 

History of morphine

Morphine is one of the principle ingredients of opium. It is one of the most powerful natural pain relievers known and has become the standard against which other opiates, natural and synthetic are judged. Morphine and opium belong to a larger family of drugs named the opiates, which are known for producing a wide range of effects from sedation to constipation.

Opium was used sparingly in Europe during the middle ages, but its popularity increased during the Renaissance. By the dawn of the 19th century, opium addiction was a major problem.

The most of the earlier references to the poppy plant and opium from Sumerian, Greece, Roman, and Arab texts indicate that people were keenly aware of the therapeutic benefits of this drug early in history.

The Sumerian used the words hul, meaning ‘joy’ and gil meaning ‘plant’, when referring to the poppy plant.

In early 1850s, Alexander Wood, a Scottish physician, reasoned that the best way to relieve painful extremity injuries would be to inject morphine directly into the nerves that supplied the painful area.

In 1804, Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner (1783-1841) isolated morphine from raw opium and his classic paper published in 1817. He chose the name morphine for Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.

After he tested the extract on dogs, Sertürner used himself as a guinea pig, and almost died in the process.

The drug quickly became a legal analgesic that most were able to use safely. It was only after the later introduction of the hypodermic needle, which made intravenous injections possible, that morphine became commonly associated with abuse and addiction.
History of morphine

Physician of Andalusia in history

Research institutions and libraries were plentiful and men in quest of higher knowledge came from afar to learn in the universities of al-Andalus.

As a result, many great intellectual giants in the form of scientists, physicians, and philosophers emerged.

The first great medical school in Europe was founded under Muslim rule in Cordoba, so despite its geographic location it should properly be considered one of the fruits of Arab medicine. The hospital was founded in 1366-67 by Prince Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Nasr. The hospital operate until the fall of Granada.

Leading physicians from al-Andalus include Ibn Juljul, born in Cordoba in the year 943, he began his studies at the age of 14 and within a decade became a highly respected and leading physician. Among his achievements were writing commentaries compiling a list of medicines locally available, and writing a history of Spanish Muslim physician of al-Andalus.

Among the Arabian physicians, there is no one who entitled to the merit of so much originality or of correct observation as Abdel-Malek-Abu Marwan Ibn Zuhr, or known under the name of Avenzoar (1094-1162) . 

Avenzoar would seem to have first described the inflammation of the mediastinum and of the pericardium as well as dropsy and empyema of the latter.

Toward the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century lived in Granada a surgeon by the name Muhammad as-Safra. A short book of surgery is attributed to him. His work tells us the status of surgery in Granada toward the end of the Islamic period.

It was through Cordoba that Arab medical knowledge flowed into Europe. The first translation of the Arab and Greek texts into Latin, which made them available to the rest of Europe, took place here.
Physician of Andalusia in history

Pecquet John (1622-1674)

Pecquet John, a celebrated anatomist, was born at Dieppe in 1622.

He received a medical education at Montpellier, from which university he obtained the degree of MD.

He afterwards went to Pairs, where he became associated with Mentel and other anatomist in their scientific pursuits.

In 1647 he discovered the thoracic duct while working on animal dissection. He was an anatomist of Paris at that time.

Pecquet reported in his findings in ‘Experiment nova anatomica’ in 1651.

Pecquet actually rediscovered the thoracic duct traced to the lacteal vessels, and demonstrated the passage of the cycle through the duct onto the subelavian vein.

This discovery soon gave his name a celebrity throughout Europe and added important confirmation of the Harveian account of the circulation.

Pecquet also wrote some papers on anatomical subjects, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, in which society he was admitted a member in 1666 and in the Journal des Savans.
Pecquet John (1622-1674)

History of Vitamin B

The Englishman Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins is given credit for approaching the discovery of the vitamin concept, when in 1906, he determined that food contains essential ingredients beyond carbohydrates, minerals fats, proteins and water.

The term vitamin was first used for water soluble substance which was necessary for the nutrition of infants and which was separated from wheat germ, yeasts and milk.

In fact this term was used after the first discovery of anti-beriberi factor by Casimir Funk in 1912. The first vitamin B discovered was vitamin B1 by Funk that was extracted from police rice husk.

It was then isolated in pure and crystalline form by B.C.P Jansen in 1925.

Casimir coined the term ‘vital amine’ to describe the class of chemicals that he and other researchers were studying, and the word was simplified to ‘vitamin’ by 1920.

Three years after this discovery, Elmer Vernon McCollum and Marguerite Davis labeled it ‘water soluble B’ which British biochemist Jack Cecil changed to vitamin B in 1920.

Casimir Funk (1884-1967), a Polish born American biochemist, collected all published literature in the issue of deficiency diseases. He was the first to isolate niacin, latter called vitamin B3. He was working at the Lister Institute in London.

In the 1930s, of the factors thus identified, revealed their actual structures. Vitamin B turned out to be a complex blend of several vitamins.

The mixture is referred to today as the ‘vitamin B complex’ in accordance with the original nomenclature.

Vitamin B1 was designated as the one that cured beriberi and that had been discovered in 1896 by the Dutch physician Christiaan Eijkman though work carried out in Java.

The last vitamin to be discovered was vitamin B12 which was isolated in crystalline form from liver in 1948.
History of Vitamin B

Plants in Medicine

Plants in Medicine
Since the beginning of life, plants have played a major role in influencing man and his thought.

Similarly, man has influenced the forms and characteristics of plants in helping them adapt to man’s progress.

This is evidence from the changes in vegetation and environment, as agriculture and technology, central to human civilization, continue to progress.

If go back in time a few thousand years and we can find that plants were widely used as food and medicine.

Agriculture is believed to have flourished nearly 10,000 years ago, and there were records on medicinal plants even in ancient times.

In 490 BC, Hippocrates, the ’Father of Medicine’, established the Temple of Aesculapius, a college in medicinal studies.

Hippocrates learnt about medicinal herbs from the Egyptians and after his death, this knowledge was passed on to Aristotle.

Aristotle was a naturalist and tutor to Alexander the Great. With Alexander the Great’s army expeditions, he traveled far and wide.

He collected various herbs and learned about them from captive doctors.

One of his pupils, Theophrastus (372-278 BC) developed his works and produced two books called The History of Plants and Reasons for Plants.

He studied over five hundred plants from the Mediterranean Valley and categorized them scientifically. He also discussed medicinal value of these plants.


When the Romans took over the power from the Greeks the focus in medicinal study naturally shifted to the west.

Consequently, the Arab scientists began to learn, preserve and develop the field of medicine and botany. The Muslims especially were highly interested in agriculture and medicine.

Muhammad Ibnu Zakariyya al-Razi and Abu Ali Ibnu Sina were two great experts then.
Plants in Medicine

Egyptian Doctors in 1300 BC

Egyptian Doctors in 1300 BC
Egyptian doctors were well aware of their limitations, however and were told not to inflict unnecessary suffering on their patients, so there were many cases where they had to say – at least to themselves –‘An aliment not to be treated’.

They were recommended to take note of the treatments and medicine they used and of their effects, so that they had a record for similar cases in the future.

There were medicine to be taken internally, others to be applied to the outside of the body, and others still to be inhaled. Egyptians ingredients that can be identified today appear to be sound herbal remedies.

However some medicines had ingredients such as mice, beetles and dung which aimed o drive out the demons causing the illness.

The Egyptians had a remarkable knowledge of the way the body worked, and knew about its internal arrangement through mummifying the dead.

To them the heart was the most important organ; they knew that it pumped blood round the body and that the pulse ‘spoke the messages of the heart’. They also knew that injuries to one side of the brain affected the opposite side of the body.

Doctors sometime used surgery as well as medicine to treat patients and opened injured skulls to relieve pressure in the brain.

Before an operation the surgeon gave his patient a drink, presumably a painkiller, ‘to render it agreeable’. In the New Kingdom the painkiller might have been opium, imported from Cyprus.

Because of the importance the Egyptians attached to ritual purity the surgeon and his assistants washed themselves and purified the instruments in fire before the operation. Both of these would cut down the risk of infection.

The Egyptians were a deeply religious people and prayers would always be used as well as medicines, even for the simplest ailments.

In difficult cases, magic might be employed. It was also possible to visit the temple of a deity associated with medicine, such as Imhotep, which had priests trained as doctors.

At some temples the sick could spend a night close to the god’s sanctuary. During such a stay, called ‘incubation’, the patient might be cured by the deity, or dream of the god and receive instructions for treatment.

Even if no help was forthcoming, the sufferer was spirituality comforted.
Egyptian Doctors in 1300 BC

Dr Michael DeBakey

Dr Michael DeBakey
He was heart surgeon, who served as an advisor to US presidents for more than 40 years. He died on July 11, 2008 at the age of 99.

DeBakey was the pioneer of bypass surgery and helped develop more than 70 surgical instruments in a career spanning 75 years. He was known as American heart surgeon, innovator, medical educator, and international medical statesman. DeBakey was the chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and director of the Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center. He helped turn Baylor College from a provincial school into one of the nation’s great medical institutions.

DeBakey was born September 7, 1908, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the son of Lebanese immigrants. He got interested in medicine while listening to physicians chat at his father's pharmacy.

He received his bachelor's and medical degrees from Tulane University in New Orleans, where he was elected to Alpha Omega (A.O.A) honorary medical society. He completed his internship and residency in surgery at charity Hospital in New Orleans and his surgical fellowships at the University of Strasburg, France and University of Heidelberg, Germany.

He recalled in 1999 that the time he finished medical school in 1932, "there was virtually nothing you could do for heart disease. If a patient came in with a heart attack, it was up to God."

While still a medical student in 1932 he developed the pump which would be used 20 years later to keep blood moving in the body during open heart surgery.

DeBakey has operated on more than 60 000 patients in Houston alone. His patients include princes and paupers, celebrities and unknowns the world over, all of whom receive the same high standards of excellence in healthcare.

In 1996, aged 87, he flew to Russia to examine President Boris Yeltsin and later oversaw his heart bypass surgery in Moscow and helped save his life. Yeltsin died of heart failure aged 76 last year.

Dr. DeBakey was a member of the most distinguished medical societies, having served as President of many of them. He was a founder and the first Editor of the Journal of Vascular Surgery. He was Editor of the Year Book of General Surgery for fourteen years.
Dr Michael DeBakey

Water

Water
Water is one of the oldest known beverages and one of the first to be medicinally characterized with respect to effect on health. The Chakara-Samhita document is the oldest known Asian medical text (1500 BCE). The text presents a classification of common beverages for physician and addresses their presumed medical properties and attributes:

“Water by nature has six qualities: cold, pure, wholesome, palatability, clean, light. When water falls to earth it depends for its properties on the containing soil. Water in white soil is astringent. Water in pale soil is bitter. Water in brown soil is alkaline. Water in hilly areas is pungent. Water in black soil is sweet. Water derived from rain, hailstone, and snow has unmanifested ‘rasa’ (taste); Fresh rain water of the rainy season is heavy blocks body channels and is sweet; ….Rivers with water polluted with soil, feces, insects, snakes, and rats and carrying rain water aggravates all ‘dosas’.”

The Nei Ching dates to Han dynasty times (207 BCE – 220 CE) in ancient China and demonstrated the wide range in beverage choices that had rapidly become available and how they were closely associated with medicine and the healing process. The ancient Chinese medical system defined five organs (heart, liver, lung, kidney and spleen) and integrated factors of hot cold, wet dry, male-female, set within a complex integration of Yang, Neutrality and Yin. Alcoholic beverages (except beer) and coffee are classified as Yang or hot/heating, whereas fruit juices, milk, tea and unboiled water are classified as Yin or cold/cooling.

Furthermore, Chinese Buddhist monks followed strict dietary codes that limited their eating time to morning hours, and the foods/beverages forbidden to them included: fermented items, milk, cream, fish and meat.
Water

History of Maryland School of Medicine

History of Maryland School of Medicine
The University of Maryland School of Medicine is located on the Baltimore City Campus, and is the fifth oldest medical school in the United States. It was founded in 1807. The first class graduated in 1810. University of Maryland School of Medicine is the first public medical school in the United States.

This school owes its origin to Dr. John B. Davidge, who in 1804 commenced a course of lectures in Baltimore on midwifery to a class of six students. In 1807 two eminent physicians, Dr. Cocke of Virginia, and Dr. Shaw of Maryland, united in the school and lectures were given on the different branches of medicine; in the same year a charter was granted, and the school became regularly organized by the style of the “College of Medicine of Maryland.” By the influence and zeal of its distinguished founder, and the labors of other eminent teachers, this institution has been rapidly rising into importance, and at the present time is one of the most respectable institutions in the country.
History of Maryland School of Medicine

The Book of Healing by Ibnu Sina

The Book of Healing by Ibnu Sina
Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina (980 – 1037) was born in the neighborhood of Bukhara, in what is now modern Uzbekistan. By age of 10, Avicenna had already memorized The Quran, the holy book of Islam. By age 21, Avicenna was recognized as a philosopher, physician and legal expert. The breadth of his study which included grammar, law, logic, mathematic, natural philosophy, medicine and theology, is reflected in the list of his work, which includes no fewer than 242 titles.

The Book of Healing is often confused with the Canon of Medicine, because of the medical connotation of its title, which is meant to suggest however, only that philosophy constitutes and antidote against illness of false opinions. The Book of Healing divides into sections on logic, mathematics, physics and metaphysics and ends with an abridgement of itself, The Book of Salvation. The author openly declares his debt to al-Farabi for his understanding of metaphysics, but his exposition of it is a great deal more organized.

The Book of Healing also included detailed descriptions of natural phenomena such as rainbows and geological formations including description of igneous and sedimentary rocks and stalagmites, with references to Avicenna’s own childhood observations of Amu Darya River in Bukhara.

There is one special section on the “science of god’ in Book of Healing. This section was translated into Latin and circulated under the title The Metaphysic of Avicenna, thus guaranteeing it would be known to the masters of western scholasticism and exert an exceptional influence on them.

The Book of Healing, a vast eighteenth volume philosophical and scientific encyclopedia which has been described a “probably the largest work its kind ever written by one man”.
The Book of Healing by Ibnu Sina

1300 BC Egyptians Doctor

1300 BC Egyptians Doctor
Egyptians medicine reached a very high standard, and its reputation spread to neighboring countries. A student doctor learned from an established physician, perhaps his father, but there also seem to have been medical schools attached to the temples, and there was at least one school for midwives.

Many ancient Egyptian doctors were ‘general practitioners’ working in the community, but specialized in one part of the body. Medical texts that have survived give clues to the extent of the Egyptians’ knowledge. There were specialist books about every part of the body, texts specifically on gynaecology, books for surgeons, dentists, and vets, and books giving recipes for medicines.

Doctors were instructed that when making a diagnosis they should, first observe the patient closely, then ask questions, inspect, smell, feel and probe. If they were then confident they could cure the patient they would say ‘An ailment I will treat’: if it was a more difficult case with an uncertain outcome they would say ‘An ailment with which I will contend’.
1300 BC Egyptians Doctor

Biography of Hippocrates

Biography of Hippocrates
Hippocrates is referred to ‘father of medicine’ in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic school of medicine.

Hippocrates was born to Heraclides, a physician and Praxitela, daughter of Phenaretis in year of 460 BC on the Greek island of Cos. He learned medicine from his own father and grandfather.

He also studied other subject with Democritus the Abderite and Gorgias of Leontini. Democritus was famous Greek materialist philosopher while Gorgias was famous philosopher and rhetorician at that time.

Hippocrates also trained at asklepieion (healing temple) of Kos and took lessons from Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. Herodicus was Greek physician famous as the first person use of therapeutic exercise for treatment of disease and maintenance of health. Herodicus was described as gymnastic master.

Hippocrates later became a famous physician and teacher of medicine. He was regarded as the greatest physician of his time. He based his medical practice on observations and on the study of the human body.

He held the belief that illness had a physical and a rational explanation. Hippocrates held a belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts. Hippocrates was the first to give the physician an independent standing, separate from the cosmological speculator, or nature philosopher. Hippocrates confined the medical man to medicine.

He soon developed an Oath of Medical Ethics for physician. He died in 377 BC at the age of 90 years old. Some says at the age of 83 or 106 years He lies buried between Gyrton and Larissa.
Biography of Hippocrates

Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes)

Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes)
He was a Persian physician. He was known as Rhazes in Europe. He also was alchemist, philosopher, and scholar. He was born in Rayy, Iran in the year 865 AD and died in 925 AD.

Al-Razi made contributions to the field of medicine, chemistry and philosophy and have written 184 books and articles in various field. He practiced medicine for over 35 years and his medical commentaries contributed mainly to the fields of ophthalmology, obstetrics and gynecology. He also wrote in other subjects, such as physics, mathematics, astronomy and optics.

He travel intensively and rendered service to several princes and rules, especially in Baghdad, where his laboratory was located. Al-Razi only started studied medicine at the age of thirty. He did chemistry experiment until he got eye disease, obliging him to search for physicians to cure. He took up study in medicine after first visit to Baghdad.

He became Director of Rayy hospital during the reign of Mansur ibn Ishaq, Governor of Rayy. Soon he moved to a similar position in Baghdad and became head of its famous Muqtadari Hospital. A special feature of his medical system was that he encouraged cure through healthy and regulated food. This method was combined with his emphasis on the influence of psychological factors on health. Razi was an expert surgeon, and was the first to use opium as anesthesia.

The most sought after of all his composition was The Comprehensive Book of Medicine. It is a large private note book into which he placed extracts from earlier authors regarding disease and therapy and also recorded clinical cases of his own experience. His Comprehensive Book of Medicine was translated into Latin in 1279 under the title Continens by Faraj ben Salim. Another book ‘Book of Medicine Dedicated to Mansur’ was translated to into Latin by Gerard of Cremona and was known as Liber ad Almansoris. It became one of the most widely read medieval medical manuals in Europe.
Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (Rhazes)

History of Anesthesiology

History of Anesthesiology
Anesthesiology is a knowledge or study how to have a condition of having sensation blocked. Other definition is “reversible lack of awareness”. This will allow patients to undergo surgery and procedures without feel pain.

In ancient Incas, shaman coked up chewed coca leaves and drilled holes in the heads of their patients while splitting into the wounds they’d inflicted.

Dated in 4200 BC, Sumerian people used opium poppies as herbal remedy. Opium then was introduced to China in 330 BC and India in 600 BC.

Assyrian and Egyptian physicians obtained artificial sleep for their patient by quickly compressing the Carotid vessels of their neck. This practice was followed as well by the Greek physicians. Arab translation of the Greek medicine helped to make Islamic physicians supreme in the middle ages.

Abulcasis and Avicenna wrote about anesthesia in their book: Al-Tasrif and The Canon of Medicine. Baghdad at that time became the world’s leading medical and drug center. With the skill of the Arab Alchemists, the art of drug making began to evolve into the science of Pharmacology. Western physicians emerging from the Middle Ages found the Arab pharmacopoeia, in which a list of medicinal plants composed the anesthetic armamentarium.

British Chemist Humphry Davy in 1799 discovered a nitrous oxide or a laughing gas that have anesthetic quality. The discovery was ignored until Connecticut dentist Horace Wells began to experiment using nitrous oxide as an anesthetic during tooth surgery.

In 1846, dentist, William Thomas Green Morton performed the first public demonstration of diethyl ether (then called sulfuric ether) as an anesthetic agent, for a patient undergoing an excision of a vascular tumor from his neck. Chloroform was introduced as a surgical anesthetic by Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson in 1847. Although it can eased pain of labor, chloroform had higher risks than those associated with ether.

The first effective local anesthetic was cocaine. Isolated in 1859, it was first used by Carl Koller, at the suggestion of Sigmund Freud, in ophthalmic surgery in 1884.

Chemical substance that has a morphine-like action, Opioids was first used by Racoviceanu-Piteşti, who reported his work in 1901.
History of Anesthesiology