Week 2: What We Learned

We started our lectures this week learning about important people in the history of medicine. We covered the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans and began discussing some political and health ideologies that the NAZI party supported during the time of WWII. One of the most interesting parts of the lectures was learning how the emphasis of doctors has changed through time. Some ages focused on the treatment and health of the spirit and others on the body. In ancient Rome, doctors could reference textbook type writings that could help them pair ailments to plant and herbal remedies. Trial and error were the main reason for this knowledge base, although now we have the technology and chemistry to realize why their cures work. There is now a group of researchers or historians who look back through these old records and texts to find new cures and new types of complementary medicine. I am honestly kind of jealous of their jobs. In modern times we are begining to adapt some aspects from both methods of treating a patient by having a holistic view of health and treatments. The medicine which is either non conventional or not always certain to be effective can be termed complimentary medicine. For some patients, this can be herbal remidies, prayer, spa treatments, hydrotherapy or many others. It is fun to be reminded that as both a patient and as a hopeful future veterinary that my options are not limited by the most common methods of treatment. To complement these discussions, we toured the Elde Haus and learned where political and other enemies of the NAZI party in Cologne were kept. We saw their stories written in the walls of their cells. The story that touched me the most was of a mother who was eight months pregnant when she was thrown into her cell. She was taken to a hospital to have her baby, but within a few days the child wad taken from her and given into the care of a convent and the mother was taken back to the prison. On the walls of her cell she wrote letters to her new baby girl saying that her only reason for not giving up was the hope of seeing her daughter again. The story has a bittersweet ending in which the mother does get to raise her baby, but the daughter never learned about her mother's past until she was seventeen because her mother could never talk to anyone about the experience. Tying our lectures with excursions is a awesome way to learn things and going back to classes at home may not be as exciting as this.