Richmond VA Acupuncturist Acupuncture for pain, stress, allergies, fertility, anxiety and inner peace.

A Short History of Western Medical Practices

Handwashing: Still controversial in 1879. The practice is only about 100 years old. In 1910, Josephine Baker, M.D. started a program to teach hygiene to child care providers in New York. Thirty physicians sent a petition to the Mayor protesting that "it was ruining medical practice by...keeping babies well."

Modern Pharmaceuticals:

Antibiotics: Commercial Production Dates to the late 1940s and early 1950s.

1929 Sir Alexander Fleming named a mold that he noticed had anti-biotic properites, "Penicillium", and the chemical produced by the mold was named penicillin, which is the first substance recognized as an antibiotic."
Resistance to antibiotics was noticed as early as 1953.

Acetylsalicylic acid : Active ingredient isolated in 1838, and began being marketed in 1899 as "Aspirin" by the Bayer company.

Surgery is almost as ancient as humanity, but anesthesia wasn't even a word until Oliver Wendell Holmes coined it in 1846, when ether and chloroform began to be used in surgical applications. In Roman times, opiates and mandrake were used to dull the mind and the perception of pain.
Chiropractic traces its roots to the organization of the field of osteopathy in 1895.

Acupuncture has been in usage for over five thousand years, with the major principles used by modern practitioners recorded in texts from as early as 200 BC (although in use well before this time). Modern Western medicine is around a century old in most of its major aspects.