Medical Equipment

There is plenty of medical equipment out there with long complicated names, but I want to highlight a few of them and explain how they first appeared and what miracles they do each and every day in the hospitals around the world.

First of all I want to start with ECG machines. ECG is stands for Electrocardiography and what they do is monitor the heart by using electrodes on the skin and creates a representation of the electrical activity of the heart over a certain period. The ECG machine amplifies the micro electrical changes on the skin that are caused during each beat. It can also determine if certain parts of the heart is damaged and can reliably measure the heart’s pumping ability, which can be used in ultrasound tests. ECG machines where invented in 1872 at ST Bartholomew’s Hospital by Alexander Muirhead. He attached a rope to the wrists of patients to achieve a record of the patient’s heart beating while he was studying for his Doctor of Science. The machines themselves don’t cure or fix but help in a patient diagnosis.

Centrifuges were first invented by an English military engineer Benjamin Robins and were later developed in 1864 by Antonin Prandtl. Antonin used a centrifuge like apparatus to separate cream from milk. It wasn’t until 1879 that Gustaf de Laval made it a commercial application. What a centrifuge does is rotates what ever is put into it at a fixed axis. Its rotated so fast that dense substances separate from the lighter substance. They are used in chemistry, biochemistry and biology when testing on samples and play it part in helping create cures and a better understanding of how our body works. There are many other non-medical uses for it also.

The final piece of medical equipment I’m going to mention is the medical freezer. Process of freezing or chilling items was first invented in the 11th century by a Persian physicist and was developed into an artificial low temperature unit in 1748. It was mainly used to keep ice frozen for many years until about the 1920?s when it turned into a huge commercial venture for home and work. The use of a freezer as a piece of medical equipment is put to use when sample and vaccines need to kept chilled. Also body parts need to be kept frozen so they can still be used. Hearts are transported in freezer boxes as well as severed limbs.

New Definition of Alternative Medicine

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defined healthcare as the prevention, treatment and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions. If we follow this definition of medical care, then alternative medicine would be seen as the use of other means, either as a complement or in place of conventional orthodox medical care. This nomenclature and definition have relegated natural medicine to a second class status and unfortunately, this has been accepted by almost everybody involved.

Most of the prejudice about natural medicine (or alternative medicine, if you want), is grounded on the premise that the procedures and substances employed are not scientifically proved, as far as modern science is concerned. But the fact remains that, if we look deep enough, there is countless research and evidence to prove the efficacy of most natural cures. Talking about scientific proof, you and I can name a couple of orthodox drugs that were certified safe and good for consumption by all agencies involved and later recognized to be damaging to health, after countless innocent people had lost their lives or suffered debilitating disabilities as a result of these drugs.

Natural medicine, for the great part, is concerned with maintaining health and preventing illness instead of managing diseases. Nature is replete with substances, herbs, just name it, that when effectively used, can guarantee that you will hardly fall sick. Besides herbs and other natural substances, natural medicine can boast several procedures that have been shown to be very effective. Let’s talk acupuncture for example. This simple procedure has been in practice for over two thousand years and has remained as effective as ever. Long before modern medicine, acupuncture practitioners realized that there are several energy pathways in the body and by interrupting or stimulating energy flow across these pathways, the body is stimulated to enhance self healing, improve body function and provide an overall boost to the body system.

Look at massaging or yoga that have even been accepted by most medical practitioners as a complement to orthodox medicine. These procedures have been proved to be effective both in improving mental and physical health as well as emotional health. There are also innumerable nutritional supplements made with natural substances that are known to promote health and prevent several disease conditions. Although modern science would want us to believe that these procedures and substances are not medically or scientifically proved to be safe for consumption, one reasonable question to ask is whether the medically or scientifically proven orthodox drugs have been really safe.

So far, one can conveniently conclude that orthodox and natural medicines are both man’s attempt to ensure better health, making use of the intelligence and materials that nature has provided him; thus, one approach might not be placed above the other, both should be seen as different approaches to the same problem.