Based on skeleton examination, cave-paintings and mummies the study of prehistoric medicine tells that the surgical experience dated with skull trepanning, male circumcision and warfare wound healing. In prehistoric tribes, medicine was a mixture of magic, herbal remedy, and superstitious beliefs practiced by witch doctors. The practice of surgery was first recorded in clay tablets discovered in ancient rests of Mesopotamia, translation of which has nowadays been published in Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine. Some simple surgical procedures were performed like puncture and drainage, scraping and wound treatment. The liability of physicians who performed surgery was noted in a collection of legal decisions made by Hammurabi about the principles of relationship between doctors and patients. Other ancient cultures had also had surgical knowledge including India, China and countries in the Middle East. The part of ancient Indian ayurvedic system of medicine devoted to surgery Sushruta Samhita is a systematized experience of ancient surgical practice, recorded by Sushruta in 500 B.C.E. Ancient Indian surgeons were highly skilled and familiar with a lot of surgical procedures and had pioneered plastic surgery. In the ancient Egyptian Empire medicine and surgery developed mostly in temples: priests were also doctors or surgeons, well specialized and educated. The Edwin Smith Papyrus, the world’s oldest surviving surgical text, was written in the 17th century B.C.E., probably based on material from a thousand years earlier. This papyrus is actually a textbook on trauma surgery, and describes anatomical observation and examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of numerous injuries in detail. Excavated mummies reveal some of the surgical procedures performed in the ancient Egypt: excision of the tumors, puncture and drainage pus abscesses, dentistry, amputation and even skull trepanation, always followed by magic and spiritual procedures. Various types of instruments were innovated, in the beginning made of stone and bronze, later of iron. Under the Egyptian influence, surgery was developed in ancient Greece and in Roman Empire. Prosperity of surgery was mostly due to practice in treating numerous battlefield injuries. Records from the pre-Hippocrates period are poor, but after him, according to many writings, medicine and surgery became a science, medical schools were formed all over the Mediterranean, and surgeons were well-trained professionals. Ancient surgery closed a chapter when Roman Empire declined, standing-by up to the 18th century when restoration of the whole medicine began
Plastic surgery is a medical specialty dealing with corrections of defects, improvements in appearance and restoration of lost function. Ancient times. The first recorded account of reconstructive plastic surgery was found in ancient Indian Sanskrit texts, which described reconstructive surgeries of the nose and ears. In ancient Greece and Rome, many medicine men performed simple plastic cosmetic surgeries to repair damaged parts of the body caused by war mutilation, punishment or humiliation. In the Middle Ages, the development of all medical braches, including plastic surgery was hindered. New age. The interest in surgical reconstruction of mutilated body parts was renewed in the XVIII century by a great number of enthusiastic and charismatic surgeons, who mastered surgical disciplines and became true artists that created new forms. Modern era. In the XX century, plastic surgery developed as a modern branch in medicine including many types of reconstructive surgery, hand, head and neck surgery, microsurgery and replantation, treatment of burns and their sequelae, and esthetic surgery. Contemporary and future plastic surgery will continue to evolve and improve with regenerative medicine and tissue engineering resulting in a lot of benefits to be gained by patients in reconstruction after body trauma, oncology amputation, and for congenital disfigurement and dysfunction.
Following the shift in therapy of tuberculosis in the mid-19th century, by the beginning of the 20th century numerous tuberculosis sanatoria were established in Western Europe. Being an institutional novelty in the medical practice, sanatoria spread within the first 20 years of the 20th century to Central and Eastern Europe, including the southern region of the Panonian plain, the present-day Province of Vojvodina in Serbia north of the rivers Sava and Danube. The health policy and regulations of the newly built state - the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians/Yugoslavia, provided a rather liberal framework for introducing the concept of sanatorium. Soon after the World War I there were 14 sanatoria in this region, and the period of their expansion was between 1920 and 1939 when at least 27 sanatoria were founded, more than half of the total number of 46 sanatoria in the whole state in that period. However, only two of these were for pulmonary diseases. One of them was privately owned the open public sanatorium the English-Yugoslav Hospital for Paediatric Osteo-Articular Tuberculosis in Sremska Kamenica, and the other was state-run (at Iriški venac, on the Fruška Gora mountain, as a unit of the Department for Lung Disease of the Main Regional Hospital). All the others were actually small private specialized hospitals in 6 towns (Novi Sad, Subotica, Sombor, Vrbas, Vršac, Pančevo,) providing medical treatment of well-off, mostly gynaecological and surgical patients. The majority of sanatoria founded in the period 1920-1939 were in or close to the city of Novi Sad, the administrative headquarters of the province (the Danube Banovina at that time) with a growing population. A total of 10 sanatoria were open in the city of Novi Sad, with cumulative bed capacity varying from 60 to 130. None of these worked in newly built buildings, but in private houses adapted for medical purpose in accordance with legal requirements. The decline of sanatoria in Vojvodina began with the very outbreak of the World War II and they never regained their social role. Soon after the Hungarian fascist occupation the majority of owners/ founders were terrorized and forced to close their sanatoria, some of them to leave country and some were even killed or deported to concentration camps
The house in Gajeva Street is now used as the municipality office. However, this house with its story recommends itself to become a house for a special social function, such as a museum of medical history of Novi Sad. A small investment could make it possible to collect, preserve and display the valuable records of our past, which is something we do owe to the generations to come.
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