The history of otolaryngology from ancient to modern times

Abstract

The history of medicine is the history of man himself. Prehistoric man was prone to regard disease as an evil spirit or the work of such a spirit. It is impossible to know how the man of the Neolithic period (10,000 to 4000 BC) faced different diseases. However by studying discovered bones, it was found that he knew how to immobilize fractured bones. In all primitive societies priest, magician, and physician were one and the same, and the medicine was practiced in a way we call today folk medicine.’ Scientific medicine developed from this folk and magic medicine. Medicine as a scientific system began as a Mediterranean phenomenon, whereas the development of a rational, scientific concept of disease not as a demon or something inside the body, but as altered physiology, is essentially modern. This turn of mind is believed to date from the middle of the 16th century with Claude Bernard. Otolaryngology followed closely the path of medicine. The oldest traces of information regarding ear, nose, and throat diseases are to be found in folk medicine, which is probably the oldest form of medical practice and was perpetuated by speech rather than by writing.’ The history of otolaryngology can be classified into the following periods: (1) what has come down to us through the ages by way of legends and folk medicine; (2) information from the prehistoric age (before 4000 BC); (3) the Egyptian, Minoan, and Chinese periods; (4) the Greek and Hindu periods; (51 the Roman, Byzantine, and Arabic periods; (6) the Middle Ages and the Renaissance periods;