Mankind had started to
evolve, from hunter, to gatherer and then to farming, breeding domesticated
animals and also started discovering treatment methods for illness and
disease. At the same time, their eating
habits also were changing according to the era they were in, new illness and
disease were being discovered, could be due to their eating lifestyle. Primitive
mankind believed that illness and disease were caused by supernatural spirits
and demons. They never had the
capability to think that what could have caused the illness could be related to
what they have been consuming and this thought process have never been
researched as far as scientific research has been concerned and hence Tribal
witch doctors or medicine man with ceremonies to drive out the spirits was the
way of life to get rid of these illness and disease. As already mentioned, herbs and plants were
the main ingredients used as medicine.
As record keeping tools were not
discovered in that primitive era, the only way of passing on the information of
treatment of illness and disease was through their offspring or through stone
markings. From the primitive beginnings
of treating a person by the tribal, through various herbs and trials and errors
of the past, health care has been developing and changed throughout
history. During those times, the word
cancer was unknown but if you read books or research on the topic, the medical
fraternity would like to make us believe that at that time too cancer existed
but proof of the same could not be obtained and various reasons were given to
justify.
As mankind started to evolve, the
treatment of illness and disease also developed rapidly. The ancient Egyptians are the earliest people
know to maintain accurate health records as per research, although there might
have been other communities all over the world who may have been keeping
records of their lives but the mankind is so spread over the whole earth that
it would be nearly impossible to get the real facts as to who started maintain the
records of accurate health. Their
priests used to act as physicians and they used medicine to heal disease and
splinted fractures. They also used
bloodletting, draining blood to treat various disorders with the use of
leeches. Whenever disease occurred, they
too had the practice of calling upon God to cure the illness or disease
