Medicaltreat.com :- Medicine


	Meantime, research was bearing fruit in other areas. The use of hormones in medicine, first by employing thyroid extract, in 1891, for treatment of myxedema, followed by the discovery of epinephrine, first made available by Parke-Davis, which marketed its Adrenalin brand in 1900, led to examination of other glandular functions. From one phase of this study came the theory that in 1921 led Banting and Best to the discovery of insulin, which prolonged and saved lives of millions of diabetics. From hormone research there also developed study of the complex chemistry of steroids, opening another new source of compounds useful to medicine.
The study of vitamin deficiencies got under way with the work of many men in many countries, encouraged by the findings of Eijkman and his associates in the Far East, of Casimir Funk, in 1911, and of Joseph Goldberger in 1914, in the United Stated. These scientific studies led not only to better understanding of causes and treatment of vitamin deficiencies, but to improved nutritional practices. New food products, and new methods of preparing and preserving natural vitamin content of foods, as well as fortification of foods with additives, have gone a long way in prevention of deficiency diseases that once plagued a large sector of the population. Pellagra, beriberi, and rickets have largely disappeared in world areas where preventive nutritional measures are understood and practiced.. Need for improved sulfa drugs stimulated chemists to make thousands of experiments with synthetic compounds, many of which led them to previously unexplored bypaths. Form these experiments came compounds that opened several new areas of endeavor. Promin (sodium glucosulfone), the first synthetic drug to prove truly effective in arresting leprosy, resulted from the new intense interest in synthetic compounds. Out of research studies of sulfa derivatives have come a group of oral diuretic compounds; and of oral antidiabetic drugs that supplement and sometimes replace injections of insulin. Other areas of chemotherapeutic development include the psychic energizers; the tranquilizers; the antihistamines; the anticoagulants; and a group of compounds that hold promise of leading to control of certain types of tumors. Paralleling development of synthetic medicinal compounds has been that of improved insecticides. While new medicines can cure many insect-borne diseases, far more progress toward elimination of these problems, especially of malaria and of yellow fever, has been made through preventive measures. Spraying of swamplands, of huts and homes, and of individuals with DDT or compounds that developed from this field of research, has resulted in great savings economically in many world areas, as well as prevention of human misery and incapacitation. Research into use of recently discovered compounds in animal feeds has added to production and to improvement of meat and poultry food products. Improved agricultural fertilizers have increased yields and quality of food crops. All of these auxiliary results of scientific research have made indirect but important contributions to human health.

	Developments no less spectacular and important to the patients whom medical men serve have come from other fields. Great improvements have been made in anesthetics, both injectable and inhalant types. Understanding of important of electrolyte balance in body fluids has made possible advances in surgery and has improved patients' likehood of rapid recovery. Physicomedical developments, such as the artificial lung, the artificial kidney, and the artificial heart, have greatly extended the surgeon's field of operation. Tissue banks, making possible such procedures as corneal transplants, replacement of arteries, of bones, and other parts of the body, have enabled medical men to restore to useful lives patients who otherwise would have been cripples. Recognition of importance of fractions of the blood, and of how to utilize these substances, extended lives of still another group of patients.
Bold explorations into brain surgery, better diagnosis of mental diseases, advances in psychiatry, and employment of tranquilizers and psychic energizers, all have contributed greatly to restoring afflicted persons to normalcy, and to reduction of population of mental care institutions. Heart surgery - going far beyond procedures thought possible a decade or two ago - has corrected many lesions, congenital or chronic, and given chance of useful life to persons otherwise doomed to death or crippling. Mechanical developments, such as artificial heart valves, and electronic equipment that will stimulate or regulate performance of abnormal hearts, also have contributed tremendously to welfare and comfort of many people. Application of new knowledge of radiation, and especially adaptation to medical use of products of the atomic age, have further extended lives of persons suffering from lesions beyond reach of surgery. These developments of the twentieth century not only have revolutionized the therapeutic practice of the medical profession; they have had an impact upon the lives of every person in the civilized world: Approximately a quarter century has been added to the life expectancy of persons born in the 1960's as compared with those born in the 1900's. Millions of people are living today who would have died from infectious diseases under conditions existing during the first quarter of this century. The death rate of mothers during childbirth has declined ninety per cent, and infant mortality has been greatly reduced during this century.