History of medicine
Sushruta is reverentially held in Hindu tradition to be a descendant of Dhanvantari, the mythological god of medicine. Sushruta lived 2000 years ago in the ancient city of Varanasi and was a proponent of Ayurveda, one of the oldest medical disciplines. He is the author of Sushrutaa Samhita, one of the most important ancient Indian medical treatises. Sushruta is regarded as the father of surgery. Many techniques in practice today have their roots derived from the practices of ancient Indian scholars like Sushruta. He has classified surgery under various heads and has described various reconstructive procedures for different types of defects. He has devised surgical instruments and described surgical procedures, including anaesthetic studies, some of which are practised even today. The specialities of surgery, orthopaedics, plastic surgery and cosmetology are all covered in his book.
Cholera was a major global scourge in the 19th century, with frequent large-scale epidemics in European cities primarily originating in the Indian subcontinent. John Snow, a British physician, was the personal anaesthetist to Queen Victoria and a founding member of the London Epidemiological Society. John Snow conducted pioneering investigations on the cholera epidemic primarily in the Soho area adjacent to Broad Street, Soho, London between August to September 1854. He investigated the water supply systems in London homes and concluded that the infection rate among people drawing contaminated water far exceeded the rates among those whose water intake was from another section of the river, which was uncontaminated. Snow concluded that access to uncontaminated water prevented them from cholera infection, while users of the Broad Street pump became infected. He persuaded the doubtful civic authorities to remove the handle from the Broad Street pump, and the epidemic disappeared within a few days. This demonstration reinforced the goals of the sanitation movement, which developed sewage drainage systems and water purification systems in cities and towns in the following decades, thereby vastly reducing the threats of cholera, typhoid and many other waterborne diseases. Today, John Snow is considered a founding father of modern epidemiology for his pioneering work.