Dr. Adolf Kussmaul is widely credited with pioneering endoscopy during the mid-19th century after being fascinated by a sword-swallower. Today’s doctors use flexible tubes to pass electric lights and tiny cameras down a patient’s esophagus, but Kussmaul had a rigid tube that used mirrors and a gasoline lamp.

BRITANNICA.COM

What Was the Science Behind Medical Bloodletting?

“The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile,” begins a text attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. Regarded as the father of modern medicine, he is often the subject of legend rather than fact; of the near-60 medical writings that bear his name, it is