Mythological healers and important doctors from the world

Contents:

Asclepius and Murat Gunel ................................................................3

Angitia and Florence Nightingale........................................................6

Brigid and Ignaz Semmelweiss..........................................................9

Kayra Han and Gazi Yasargil..............................................................12

Dhanvanthari and Safiye Ali..............................................................15

Famous health workers: Murat Gunel and Hande Ozdinler........18

Apollo and Jean Martin Charcot........................................................21

References ........................................................................................24

This book was created by the Past and Present mixed team of students, within the "Heroes of our times" eTwinning project.
As the common topic of our monthly magazine had been ''health workers", our mixed team of students made a research on mythological healers, health deities and important doctors in history.

What you can read here, is the result of their work, as follows:

Hacer, from Besiktas Sakip Sabanci Anatolian High School
Gulsesu, from Ertugrul Kurdoglu Anatolian High School
Szilveszter S., from UNIO-Traian Vuia Technological Highschool
Eylul, from Ertugrul Kurdoglu Anatolian High School
Narim Irem, from Gazi Sahin Anatolian High School
Necla Su, from Sehit Hasan Huseyin Aksoy Anatolian High School
Asude, from Hasanoglan Ataturk Science High School

ASCLEPIUS

Asclepius is one of the Greek gods in mythology and the child of Apollo and Koronis. He is believed to symbolize medicine and health and has so many miniatures portrayed with the snake wand which we see always in institutions related to health and medicine. His mother was killed by his own father and Asclepius took education on medicine from Kheiron who had a wide knowledge about it. In this way, he became knowledgeable and experienced in surgery, etc. However, he could not content himself with curing alive people but also wanted to treat the dead. When Athena killed a monster named Gorgo and gave the flowing blood to Asclepius, he found out that despite the fact that the right side of the blood was poisonous, the left side was efficacious. By using the left side of the blood, he was able to bring the dead to life again. Unfortunately, his gorgeous success drew Zeus’s attention and made him angry for causing an imbalance in nature. For this reason, he got killed by Zeus. Nevertheless, his children and the things he has done continued contributing to the world of medicine. Nowadays especially in Bergama, there are a lot of temples named Asclepion which were used as clinics and health centers.

MURAT GUNEL

Bahçeşehir University Board of Trustees Member and Yale University Neurosurgery Department Head and Brain Genetics Program Director Prof. Dr. Murat Günel was born in 1976 in Turkey. After finishing university in his country, he went to the USA to have postgraduate education.

He got into Iowa State University and did his doctor's degree. For years he has been doing scientific projects internationally on mostly medicine and has written a lot of books and published articles. Moreover, he is the discoverer of the gene that distinguishes humans from other species and shapes the human brain and prepares the ground for the formation of intelligence. Besides, he has been shown as one of the owners of the ten biggest discoveries in 2010. Owing to his achievements, he has a nickname as “Dahi Türk (Genius Turk)”.

Angitia and Florence Nightingale

Angitia was a goddess among the Marsi, Paeligni, and other Oscan-Umbrian peoples of central Italy. The myths of Angitia vary. According to Gnaeus Gellius (late 2nd century BC), Angitia was one of three daughters of Aeëtes, along with two of the most famous sorcerers of Greek myth, Medea and Circe. Circe, as is commonly known from the Odyssey, cast transforming spells.

Angitia lived around Lake Fucine and specialized in healing snake bites. Since in ancient times snakes were often associated with the healing arts (Asclepius' stick), Angitia is believed to be primarily a thaumaturgy goddess. She possessed powers of witchcraft, magic, and medicine, considered complementary in the ancient world, and was adept at the art of miraculous and herbal healing, especially in snake bites. She also had a wide range of powers over snakes, including the power to kill snakes with one touch.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), known as “The Lady With the Lamp,” was a British nurse, social reformer, and statistician best known as the founder of modern nursing. Her experiences as a nurse during the Crimean War were foundational in her views about sanitation. She established St. Thomas Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 1860. Her efforts to reform healthcare greatly influenced the quality of care in the 19 and 20 centuries.

Florence Nightingale and Nursing; In the early 1850s, Nightingale returned to London, where she took a nursing job in a Middlesex hospital for ailing governesses. Her performance there so impressed her employer that Nightingale was promoted to the superintendent within just a year of being hired. The position proved challenging as Nightingale grappled with a cholera outbreak and unsanitary conditions conducive to the rapid spread of the disease. Nightingale made it her mission to improve hygiene practices, significantly lowering the death rate at the hospital in the process. The hard work took a toll on her health. She had just barely recovered when the biggest challenge of her nursing career presented itself.

Brigid

Brigid was the flame-haired Irish goddess of fertility, poetry and the dawn but she is also known as the Goddess of the Wells. She has many similarities with the Catholic St. Brigid of Kildare, the patron saint of Ireland.
She often appeared as a fiery-haired goddess, wearing a clock of sunbeam.

She is frequently associated with fertility, the spring season and healing. According to some historians, in pre-Christian Ireland she was a patroness of medicine, and in her modern retelling of Irish myths, Augusta Gregory refers to her as a "woman of healing".

On the eve of January 31st, in Ireland it is traditional to leave a piece of cloth outside the house. It is believed that St. Brigid's spirit travels across the land and leaves her curative powers in the brat Bride, that is Brigid's mantle. That piece of cloth was then used throughout the year as a healing from sickness and protection from harm.

Ignaz Semmelweiss

Ignaz Semmelweiss (Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis) was born in 1818 in Buda, Hungary, and died in 1865 in Vienna, Austria. He was the physician who discovered the cause of childbed fever and introduced antisepsis into medical practice.

The patients who gave birth is his clinic had lower mortality rates compared to the usual mortality rates from the beginning of the 19th century.

Semmelweiss observed that death rate from childbed fever was not equal in the divisions of his clinics. The only difference was that in the first division students were taught, and in the second midwives.

He thought that perhaps the students carried something to the patients they examined during labour. A friend of his died from a wound infection, that he contacted during the examination of a woman who died of puerpural infection.

The similarity of the findings in the two cases confirmed his thesis. His conclusion was that students who came directly from the dissecting room to the maternity ward carried the infection from mothers who had died of the disease to healthy mothers. He ordered the students to wash their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime before each examination.

The simple fact of cleaning hands after autopsies and before intervening on women in labor, devised by Semmelweis, was incredibly innovative, as at that time the pathogenic effects of bacteria were unknown.