Discoveries are not born suddenly. Each development, before the media found out about it, is preceded by a long and painstaking work. And before tests and pills appear in the pharmacy, and in laboratories - new diagnostic methods, time must pass. Over the past 30 years, the number of medical research has increased almost 4 times, and they are included in medical practice.
Biochemical blood test at home
Soon, a biochemical blood test, like a pregnancy test, will take a couple of minutes. MIPT nanobiotechnologists fit a high-precision blood test into an ordinary test strip.
The biosensor system based on the use of magnetic nanoparticles makes it possible to accurately measure the concentration of protein molecules (markers indicating the development of various diseases) and to simplify the procedure of biochemical analysis as much as possible.
“Traditionally, tests that can be carried out not only in the laboratory, but also in the field, are based on the use of fluorescent or colored labels, and the results are determined “by eye” or using a video camera. We use magnetic particles, which have the advantage of: with their help, it is possible to carry out analysis even by dipping a test strip into a completely opaque liquid, for example, to determine substances directly in whole blood,” explains Alexei Orlov, researcher at the GPI RAS and lead author of the study.
If the usual pregnancy test reports either "yes" or "no", then this development allows you to accurately determine the concentration of the protein (that is, at what stage of development it is).
"Numerical measurement is performed only electronically using a portable device. Situations "either yes or no" are excluded," says Alexei Orlov. According to a study published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, the system has successfully proven itself in the diagnosis of prostate cancer, and in some respects even surpassed the "gold standard" for determining PSA - enzyme immunoassay.
When the test appears in pharmacies, the developers are still silent. It is planned that the biosensor, among other things, will be able to carry out environmental monitoring, analysis of products and medicines, and all this right on the spot, without unnecessary instruments and costs.
Trainable bionic limbs
Today's bionic hands are not much different from real ones in terms of functionality - they can move their fingers and take objects, but still it is still far from the "original". To "synchronize" a person with a machine, scientists implant electrodes in the brain, remove electrical signals from muscles and nerves, but the process is laborious and takes several months.
The GalvaniBionix team, consisting of MIPT students and graduate students, has found a way to make learning easier and make it so that not a person adapts to a robot, but a limb adapts to a person. A program written by scientists using special algorithms recognizes the "muscle commands" of each patient.
"Most of my classmates, who have very cool knowledge, go into solving financial problems - they go to work in corporations, create mobile applications. This is not bad and not good, it's just different. I personally wanted to do something global, in the end so that the children have something to tell about. And at Phystech, I found like-minded people: they are all from different fields - physiologists, mathematicians, programmers, engineers - and we found such a task for ourselves, "Alexey Tsyganov, a member of the GalvaniBionix team, shared his personal motive.
DNA Cancer Diagnosis
An ultra-precise test system for the early diagnosis of cancer has been developed in Novosibirsk. According to Vitaly Kuznetsov, a researcher at the Vector Center for Virology and Biotechnology, his team managed to create a certain oncomarker - an enzyme that can detect cancer at an early stage using DNA isolated from saliva (blood or urine).
Now a similar test is carried out by analyzing the specific proteins that form the tumor. The Novosibirsk approach proposes to look at the modified DNA of a cancer cell, which appear long before proteins. Accordingly, the diagnosis allows you to detect the disease in the initial stage.
A similar system is already used abroad, but in Russia it is not certified. Scientists managed to "cheapen" the existing technology (1.5 rubles against 150 euros - 12 million rubles). Employees of "Vector" expect that soon their analysis will be included in the mandatory list for clinical examination.
electronic nose
An "electronic nose" has been created at the Siberian Institute of Physics and Technology. The gas analyzer evaluates the quality of food, cosmetic and medical products, and is also able to diagnose a number of diseases by exhaled air.
"We examined apples: we put the control part in the refrigerator, and left the rest indoors at room temperature," says Timur Muksunov, a research engineer at the Safety Methods, Systems, and Technologies Laboratory of the Siberian Institute of Physics and Technology.
"After 12 hours, using the installation, it was possible to reveal that the second part emits gases more intensively than the control one. Now, at vegetable bases, products are received according to organoleptic indicators, and with the help of the device being created, it will be possible to more accurately determine the shelf life of products, which will affect its quality" , - he said. Muksunov is pinning his hopes on the start-up support program - the "nose" is completely ready for serial production and is waiting for funding.
pill for depression
Scientists from together with colleagues from them. N.N. Vorozhtsova have developed a new drug for the treatment of depression. The tablet increases the concentration of serotonin in the blood, thereby helping to cope with the blues.
Now the antidepressant under the working name TC-2153 is undergoing preclinical trials. The researchers hope that "it will successfully pass all the rest and help achieve progress in the treatment of a number of serious psychopathologies," Interfax writes.
Innovations are born in scientific laboratories
For a number of years, employees of the laboratory of epigenetics of development of the Federal Research Center "Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences" have been working on the creation of a Biobank of cell models of human diseases, which will then be used to create drugs for the treatment of hereditary neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases.
Nanoparticles: invisible and influential
A device designed at the Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion. V.V. Voivodeship SB RAS, helps to detect nanoparticles in a few minutes. - There are works by Russian, Ukrainian, English and American researchers who show that in cities with a high content of nanoparticles there is an increased incidence of heart, oncological and pulmonary diseases, - emphasizes a senior researcher at the IHKG SB RAS Candidate of Chemical Sciences Sergey Nikolaevich Dubtsov.
Novosibirsk scientists have developed a compound that will help in the fight against tumors
Researchers at the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences are creating constructor compounds based on the albumin protein that can effectively reach the tumors of cancer patients - in the future, these substances may become the basis for drugs.
Siberian scientists have developed a valve prosthesis for children's hearts
Employees of the National Medical Research Center named after academician E. N. Meshalkin have created a new type of valve bioprosthesis for pediatric cardiac surgery. It is less prone to calcification than others, which will reduce the number of repeated surgical interventions.
Siberian inhibitors of anti-cancer drugs are undergoing preclinical trials
Scientists of the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry. N. N. Vorozhtsov Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have found effective protein targets for the development of drugs against cancer of the rectum, lungs and intestines.
Institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences will help SIBUR LLC develop biodegradable plastics
At the VI International Technological Development Forum and the Technoprom-2018 exhibition, cooperation agreements were signed between the petrochemical company SIBUR LLC and two Novosibirsk research organizations: the Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry.
HISTORY OF MEDICINE:
MILESTONES AND GREAT DISCOVERIES
According to Discovery Channel
("Discovery Channel")
Medical discoveries have changed the world. They changed the course of history, saving countless lives, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge to the frontiers on which we stand today, ready for new great discoveries.
human anatomy
In ancient Greece, the treatment of disease was based more on philosophy than on a true understanding of human anatomy. Surgical intervention was rare, and the dissection of corpses was not yet practiced. As a result, doctors had practically no information about the internal structure of a person. It was not until the Renaissance that anatomy emerged as a science.
Belgian physician Andreas Vesalius shocked many when he decided to study anatomy by dissecting cadavers. Material for research had to be mined under the cover of night. Scientists like Vesalius had to resort to not entirely legal 
methods. When Vesalius became a professor at Padua, he struck up a friendship with an executioner. Vesalius decided to pass on the experience gained over years of skillful dissection by writing a book on human anatomy. So the book "On the structure of the human body" appeared. Published in 1538, the book is considered one of the greatest works in the field of medicine, as well as one of the greatest discoveries, as it gives the first correct description of the structure of the human body. This was the first serious challenge to the authority of ancient Greek doctors. The book sold out in huge numbers. It was bought by educated people, even far from medicine. The entire text is very meticulously illustrated. So information about human anatomy has become much more accessible. Thanks to Vesalius, the study of human anatomy through dissection became an integral part of the training of physicians. And that brings us to the next great discovery.
Circulation
The human heart is a muscle the size of a fist. It beats more than a hundred thousand times a day, over seventy years - that's more than two billion heartbeats. The heart pumps 23 liters of blood per minute. Blood 
flows through the body, passing through a complex system of arteries and veins. If all the blood vessels in the human body are stretched in one line, then you get 96 thousand kilometers, which is more than twice the circumference of the Earth. Until the beginning of the 17th century, the process of blood circulation was incorrectly represented. The prevailing theory was that blood flowed to the heart through pores in the soft tissues of the body. Among the adherents of this theory was the English physician William Harvey. The work of the heart fascinated him, but the more he observed the heartbeat in animals, the more he realized that the generally accepted theory of blood circulation is simply wrong. He unequivocally writes: "... I thought, can't the blood move, as if in a circle?" And the very first phrase in the next paragraph: “Later I found out that this is the way it is ...”. Through autopsies, Harvey discovered that the heart has unidirectional valves that allow blood to flow in only one direction. Some valves let in blood, others let it out. And it was a great discovery. Harvey realized that the heart pumps blood into the arteries, then it passes through the veins and, closing the circle, returns to the heart, then to begin the cycle again. Today it seems like a common truth, but for the 17th century, the discovery of William Harvey was revolutionary. It was a devastating blow to established medical concepts. At the end of his treatise, Harvey writes: "In thinking of the incalculable consequences this will have for medicine, I see a field of almost limitless possibilities."
Harvey's discovery seriously advanced anatomy and surgery, and simply saved many lives. All over the world, surgical clamps are used in operating rooms to block the flow of blood and keep the patient's circulatory system intact. And each of them is a reminder of the great discovery of William Harvey.
Blood types
Another great blood-related discovery was made in Vienna in 1900. Enthusiasm for blood transfusions filled Europe. First there were claims that the healing effect was amazing, and then, after a few months, 
reports of the dead. Why is sometimes the transfusion successful and sometimes not? Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner was determined to find the answer. He mixed blood samples from different donors and studied the results.
In some cases, the blood mixed successfully, but in others it coagulated and became viscous. Upon closer inspection, Landsteiner discovered that blood clots when specific proteins in the recipient's blood, called antibodies, react with other proteins in the donor's red blood cells, known as antigens. For Landsteiner, this was a turning point. He realized that not all human blood is the same. It turned out that blood can be clearly divided into 4 groups, which he gave the designations: A, B, AB and zero. It turned out that a blood transfusion is successful only if a person is transfused with blood of the same group. Landsteiner's discovery was immediately reflected in medical practice. A few years later, blood transfusions were already being practiced all over the world, saving many lives. Thanks to the exact determination of the blood group, by the 50s, organ transplants became possible. Today, in the United States alone, a blood transfusion is performed every 3 seconds. Without it, about 4.5 million Americans would die every year.
Anesthesia
Although the first great discoveries in the field of anatomy allowed doctors to save many lives, they could not alleviate the pain. Without anesthesia, the surgeries were a nightmare. Patients were held or tied to a table, surgeons tried to work as quickly as possible. In 1811, a woman wrote: “When the terrible steel plunged into me, cutting through the veins, arteries, flesh, nerves, I no longer needed to be asked not to interfere. I screamed and screamed until it was all over. 
The pain was so unbearable." Surgery was the last resort, many preferred to die than go under the surgeon's knife. For centuries, improvised remedies have been used to relieve pain during operations, some of them, such as opium or mandrake extract, were drugs. By the 40s of the 19th century, several people were looking for a more effective anesthetic at once: two Boston dentists, William Morton and Horost Wells, 
acquaintances, and a doctor named Crawford Long from Georgia.
They experimented with two substances believed to relieve pain - with nitrous oxide, which is also laughing gas, and also with a liquid mixture of alcohol and sulfuric acid. The question of who exactly discovered anesthesia remains controversial, all three claimed it. One of the first public demonstrations of anesthesia took place on October 16, 1846. W. Morton experimented with ether for months, trying to find a dosage that would allow the patient to undergo surgery without pain. To the general public, which consisted of Boston surgeons and medical students, he presented the device of his invention.
A patient who was to have a tumor removed from his neck was given ether. Morton waited while the surgeon made the first incision. Amazingly, the patient did not cry. After the operation, the patient reported that all this time he did not feel anything. The news of the discovery spread throughout the world. You can operate without pain, now there is anesthesia. But, despite the discovery, many refused to use anesthesia. According to some creeds, pain should be endured, not relieved, especially labor pains. But here Queen Victoria had her say. In 1853 she gave birth to Prince Leopold. At her request, she was given chloroform. It turned out to ease the pain of childbirth. After that, the women began to say: “I will also take chloroform, because if the queen does not disdain them, then I am not ashamed.”
X-rays
It is impossible to imagine life without the next great discovery. Imagine that we do not know where to operate on the patient, or what kind of bone is broken, where the bullet is lodged, and what the pathology might be. The ability to look inside a person without cutting them open was a turning point in the history of medicine. At the end of the 19th century, people used electricity without really understanding what it was. In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen experimented with a cathode ray tube, a glass cylinder with highly rarefied air inside. 
Roentgen was interested in the glow created by the rays emanating from the tube. For one of the experiments, Roentgen surrounded the tube with black cardboard and darkened the room. Then he turned on the phone. And then, one thing struck him - the photographic plate in his laboratory glowed. Roentgen realized that something very unusual was happening. And that the beam emanating from the tube is not a cathode ray at all; he also found that it did not respond to a magnet. And it couldn't be deflected by a magnet like cathode rays. This was a completely unknown phenomenon, and Roentgen called it "X-rays." Quite by accident, Roentgen discovered radiation unknown to science, which we call X-ray. For several weeks he acted very mysterious, and then called his wife into the office and said: "Berta, let me show you what I do here, because no one will believe it." He put her hand under the beam and took a picture. 
The wife is said to have said, "I saw my death." Indeed, in those days it was impossible to see the skeleton of a person if he had not died. The very idea of capturing the internal structure of a living person simply did not fit in my head. It was as if a secret door had opened, and the whole universe opened up behind it. X-ray discovered a new, powerful technology that revolutionized the field of diagnostics. The discovery of X-rays is the only discovery in the history of science that was made unintentionally, completely by accident. As soon as it was done, the world immediately adopted it without any debate. In a week or two, our world has changed. Many of the most advanced and powerful technologies are based on the discovery of X-rays, from computed tomography to the X-ray telescope, which captures X-rays from the depths of space. And all this is due to a discovery made by accident.
The germ theory of disease
Some discoveries, for example, X-rays, are made by accident, others are worked on for a long time and hard by various scientists. So it was in 1846. Vein. The epitome of beauty and culture, but the ghost of death hovers in the Vienna City Hospital. Many of the mothers who were here were dying. The cause is puerperal fever, an infection of the uterus. When Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis started working in this hospital, he was alarmed by the scale of the disaster and puzzled by the strange inconsistency: there were two departments. 
In one, births were attended by doctors, and in the other, births to mothers were attended by midwives. Semmelweis found that in the department where the doctors took delivery, 7% of women in childbirth died from the so-called puerperal fever. And in the department where midwives worked, only 2% died of puerperal fever. This surprised him, because doctors have much better training. Semmelweis decided to find out what was the reason. He noticed that one of the main differences in the work of doctors and midwives was that doctors performed autopsies on dead women in childbirth. Then they went to deliver babies or see mothers without even washing their hands. Semmelweis wondered if doctors were carrying some invisible particles on their hands, which were then transferred to patients and caused death. To find out, he conducted an experiment. He decided to make sure that all medical students were required to wash their hands in bleach solution. And the number of deaths immediately fell to 1%, lower than that of midwives. Through this experiment, Semmelweis realized that infectious diseases, in this case, puerperal fever, have only one cause, and if it is excluded, the disease will not arise. But in 1846, no one saw a connection between bacteria and infection. Semmelweis' ideas were not taken seriously. 
Another 10 years passed before another scientist paid attention to microorganisms. His name was Louis Pasteur. Three of Pasteur's five children died of typhoid fever, which partly explains why he searched so hard for the cause of infectious diseases. Pasteur was on the right track with his work for the wine and brewing industries. Pasteur tried to find out why only a small part of the wine produced in his country spoiled. He discovered that in sour wine there are special microorganisms, microbes, and it is they who make the wine sour. But by simply heating, as Pasteur showed, the microbes can be killed and the wine saved. Thus pasteurization was born. So when it came to finding the cause of infectious diseases, Pasteur knew where to look. It is microbes, he said, that cause certain diseases, and he proved this by conducting a series of experiments from which a great discovery was born - the theory of microbial development of organisms. Its essence lies in the fact that certain microorganisms cause a certain disease in anyone.
Vaccination
The next great discovery was made in the 18th century, when about 40 million people died of smallpox worldwide. Doctors could not find either the cause of the disease or the remedy for it. But in one English village, rumors that some of the locals were not susceptible to smallpox caught the attention of a local doctor named Edward Jenner.
Dairy workers were rumored not to get smallpox because they had already had cowpox, a related but milder disease that affected livestock. In cowpox patients, the temperature rose and sores appeared on the hands. Jenner studied this phenomenon and wondered if the pus from these sores somehow protected the body from smallpox? On May 14, 1796, during an outbreak of smallpox, he decided to test his theory. Jenner took liquid from a sore on the hand of a milkmaid with cowpox. Then, he visited another family; there he injected a healthy eight-year-old boy with the vaccinia virus. In the days that followed, the boy had a slight fever and several smallpox blisters appeared. Then he got better. Jenner returned six weeks later. This time, he inoculated the boy with smallpox and began to wait for the experiment to turn out - victory or failure. A few days later, Jenner received an answer - the boy was completely healthy and immune to smallpox.
The invention of smallpox vaccination revolutionized medicine. This was the first attempt to intervene in the course of the disease, preventing it in advance. For the first time, man-made products were actively used to prevent 
illness before its onset.
Fifty years after Jenner's discovery, Louis Pasteur developed the idea of vaccination, developing a vaccine for rabies in humans and anthrax in sheep. And in the 20th century, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin independently developed the polio vaccine.
vitamins
The next discovery was the work of scientists who for many years independently struggled with the same problem.
Throughout history, scurvy has been a severe disease that has caused skin lesions and bleeding in sailors. Finally, in 1747, the Scottish ship's surgeon James Lind found a cure for it. He discovered that scurvy could be prevented by including citrus fruits in the diet of sailors.
Another common illness among sailors was beriberi, a disease that affected the nerves, heart, and digestive tract. In the late 19th century, the Dutch physician Christian Eijkman determined that the disease was caused by eating white polished rice instead of brown, unpolished rice. 
Although both of these discoveries pointed to the connection of diseases with nutrition and its deficiencies, what this connection was, only the English biochemist Frederick Hopkins could figure out. He suggested that the body needs substances that are found only in certain foods. To prove his hypothesis, Hopkins conducted a series of experiments. He gave mice artificial nutrition, consisting exclusively of pure proteins, fats, 
carbohydrates and salts. The mice became weak and stopped growing. But after a small amount of milk, the mice got better again. Hopkins discovered what he called the "essential nutritional factor" that was later called vitamins.
It turned out that beriberi is associated with a lack of thiamine, vitamin B1, which is not found in polished rice, but is abundant in natural. And citrus fruits prevent scurvy because they contain ascorbic acid, vitamin C.
Hopkins' discovery was a defining step in understanding the importance of proper nutrition. Many bodily functions depend on vitamins, from fighting infections to regulating metabolism. Without them it is difficult to imagine life, as well as without the next great discovery.
Penicillin
After the First World War, which claimed over 10 million lives, the search for safe methods of repelling bacterial aggression intensified. After all, many died not on the battlefield, but from infected wounds. The Scottish doctor Alexander Fleming also participated in the research. While studying staphylococcus bacteria, Fleming noticed that something unusual was growing in the center of the laboratory bowl - mold. He saw that the bacteria had died around the mold. This led him to assume that she secretes a substance that is harmful to bacteria. He named this substance penicillin. For the next few years, Fleming tried to isolate penicillin and use it in the treatment of infections, but failed, and eventually gave up. However, the results of his labors were invaluable.
In 1935, Oxford University staffers Howard Flory and Ernst Chain came across a report of Fleming's curious but unfinished experiments and decided to try their luck. These scientists managed to isolate penicillin in its pure form. And in 1940 they tested it. Eight mice were injected with a lethal dose of streptococcus bacteria. Then, four of them were injected with penicillin. Within a few hours, the results were in. 
All four mice that did not receive penicillin died, but three of the four that received it survived.
So, thanks to Fleming, Flory and Chain, the world received the first antibiotic. This medicine has been a real miracle. It cured from so many ailments that caused a lot of pain and suffering: acute pharyngitis, rheumatism, scarlet fever, syphilis and gonorrhea ... Today we have completely forgotten that you can die from these diseases.
Sulfide preparations
The next great discovery arrived in time during the Second World War. It cured American soldiers fighting in the Pacific from dysentery. And then led to a revolution in 
chemotherapeutic treatment of bacterial infections.
It all happened thanks to a pathologist named Gerhard Domagk. In 1932, he studied the possibilities of using some new chemical dyes in medicine. Working with a newly synthesized dye called prontosil, Domagk injected it into several lab mice infected with streptococcus bacteria. As Domagk expected, the dye coated the bacteria, but the bacteria survived. The dye didn't seem to be toxic enough. Then something amazing happened: although the dye did not kill the bacteria, it stopped their growth, the infection stopped, and the mice recovered. When Domagk first tested prontosil in humans is unknown. However, the new drug gained fame after it saved the life of a boy seriously ill with staphylococcus aureus. The patient was Franklin Roosevelt Jr., son of the President of the United States. Domagk's discovery became an instant sensation. Because Prontosil contained a sulfamide molecular structure, it was called a sulfamide drug. It became the first in this group of synthetic chemicals capable of treating and preventing bacterial infections. Domagk opened a new revolutionary direction in the treatment of diseases, the use of chemotherapy drugs. It will save tens of thousands of human lives.
Insulin
The next great discovery helped save the lives of millions of people with diabetes around the world. Diabetes is a disease that interferes with the body's ability to absorb sugar, which can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, and even death. For centuries, physicians have studied diabetes, unsuccessfully looking for a cure for it. Finally, at the end of the 19th century, there was a breakthrough. It has been found that diabetic patients have a common feature - a group of cells in the pancreas is invariably affected - these cells secrete a hormone that controls blood sugar. The hormone was named insulin. And in 1920 - a new breakthrough. Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting and student Charles Best studied pancreatic insulin secretion in dogs. On a hunch, Banting injected an extract from the insulin-producing cells of a healthy dog into a diabetic dog. The results were stunning. After a few hours, the blood sugar level of the sick animal dropped significantly. Now the attention of Banting and his assistants turned to the search for an animal whose insulin would be similar to human. They found a close match in insulin taken from fetal cows, purified it for the safety of the experiment, and conducted the first clinical trial in January 1922. Banting administered insulin to a 14-year-old boy who was dying of diabetes. And he quickly went on the mend. How important is Banting's discovery? Ask the 15 million Americans who take daily insulin on which their lives depend.
The genetic nature of cancer
Cancer is the second most lethal disease in America. Intensive research on its origin and development led to remarkable scientific achievements, but perhaps the most important of them was the following discovery. Nobel laureates cancer researchers Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus joined forces in cancer research in the 1970s. At that time, several theories about the cause of this disease dominated. A malignant cell is very complex. She is able not only to share, but also to invade. This is a cell with highly developed capabilities. One theory was the Rous sarcoma virus, which causes cancer in chickens. When a virus attacks a chicken cell, it injects its genetic material into the host's DNA. According to the hypothesis, the DNA of the virus subsequently becomes the agent that causes the disease. According to another theory, when a virus introduces its genetic material into a host cell, the cancer-causing genes are not activated, but wait until they are triggered by external influences, such as harmful chemicals, radiation, or a common viral infection. These cancer-causing genes, the so-called oncogenes, became the object of research by Varmus and Bishop. 
The main question is: does the human genome contain genes that are or can become oncogenes like those contained in the virus that causes tumors? Do chickens, other birds, mammals, humans have such a gene? Bishop and Varmus took a labeled radioactive molecule and used it as a probe to see if the Rous sarcoma virus oncogene resembled any normal gene in chicken chromosomes. The answer is yes. It was a real revelation. Varmus and Bishop found that the cancer-causing gene is already in the DNA of healthy chicken cells, and more importantly, they found it in human DNA as well, proving that a cancer germ can appear in any of us at the cellular level and wait for activation.
How can our own gene, with which we have lived all our lives, cause cancer? During cell division, errors occur and they are more common if the cell is oppressed by cosmic radiation, tobacco smoke. It is also important to remember that when a cell divides, it needs to copy 3 billion complementary DNA pairs. Anyone who has ever tried to print knows how difficult it is. We have mechanisms to notice and correct errors, and yet, with large volumes, fingers miss.
What is the importance of discovery? People used to think of cancer in terms of the differences between a virus genome and a cell genome, but now we know that a very small change in certain genes in our cells can turn a healthy cell that normally grows, divides, etc., into a malignant one. And this was the first clear illustration of the true state of affairs.
The search for this gene is a defining moment in modern diagnostics and prediction of the further behavior of a cancerous tumor. The discovery gave clear goals to specific types of therapy that simply did not exist before.
The population of Chicago is about 3 million people.
HIV
The same number die every year from AIDS, one of the worst epidemics in modern history. The first signs of this disease appeared in the early 80s of the last century. In America, the number of patients dying from rare infections and cancer began to rise. A blood test from the victims revealed extremely low levels of white blood cells, white blood cells vital to the human immune system. In 1982, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the disease the name AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Two researchers, Luc Montagnier from the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Robert Gallo from the National Institute of Oncology in Washington, took up the case. 
Both of them managed to make the most important discovery, which revealed the causative agent of AIDS - HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. How is the human immunodeficiency virus different from other viruses, such as the flu? Firstly, this virus does not give out the presence of the disease for years, on average, 7 years. The second problem is very unique: for example, AIDS finally manifested itself, people realize that they are sick and go to the clinic, and they have a myriad of other infections, what exactly caused the disease. How to define it? In most cases, a virus exists for the sole purpose of entering an acceptor cell and reproducing. Usually, it attaches itself to a cell and releases its genetic information into it. This allows the virus to subjugate the functions of the cell, redirecting them to the production of new virus species. Then these individuals attack other cells. But HIV is not an ordinary virus. It belongs to the category of viruses that scientists call retroviruses. What is unusual about them? Like those classes of viruses that include polio or influenza, retroviruses are special categories. They are unique in that their genetic information in the form of ribonucleic acid is converted into deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and it is precisely what happens to DNA that is our problem: DNA is integrated into our genes, virus DNA becomes part of us, and then the cells, designed to protect us, begin to reproduce the DNA of the virus. There are cells that contain the virus, sometimes they reproduce it, sometimes they don't. They are silent. They hide... But only in order to reproduce the virus again later. Those. once an infection becomes apparent, it is likely to take root for life. This is the main problem. A cure for AIDS has not yet been found. But the opening 
that HIV is a retrovirus and that it is the causative agent of AIDS has led to significant advances in the fight against this disease. What has changed in medicine since the discovery of retroviruses, especially HIV? For example, with AIDS, we have seen that drug therapy is possible. Previously, it was believed that since the virus usurps our cells for reproduction, it is almost impossible to act on it without severe poisoning of the patient himself. Nobody has invested in anti-virus programs. AIDS has opened the door to antiviral research at pharmaceutical companies and universities around the world. In addition, AIDS has had a positive social effect. Ironically, this terrible disease brings people together.
And so day after day, century after century, in tiny steps or grandiose breakthroughs, great and small discoveries in medicine were made. They give hope that humanity will defeat cancer and AIDS, autoimmune and genetic diseases, achieve excellence in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, alleviate the suffering of sick people and prevent the progression of diseases.
Great scientific discoveries in medicine that changed the world In the 21st century, it is difficult to keep up with scientific progress. In recent years, we have learned how to grow organs in laboratories, artificially control the activity of nerves, and invented surgical robots that can perform complex operations.
body anatomy
In 1538, the Italian naturalist, the "father" of modern anatomy, Vesalius presented the world with a scientific description of the structure of the body and the definition of all human organs. He had to dig up corpses for anatomical studies in the cemetery, since the Church forbade such medical experiments. Vesalius was the first to describe the structure of the human body. Now the great scientist is considered the founder of scientific anatomy, craters on the moon are named after him, stamps are printed with his image in ...0 0
In the twentieth century, medicine began to take big steps forward. For example, diabetes ceased to be a fatal disease only in 1922, when insulin was discovered by two Canadian scientists. They managed to get this hormone from the pancreas of animals.
And in 1928, the lives of millions of patients were saved thanks to the carelessness of the British scientist Alexander Fleming. He simply did not wash the test tubes with pathogenic microbes. Upon returning home, he found mold (penicillin) in a test tube. But another 12 years passed before pure penicillin was obtained. Thanks to this discovery, such dangerous diseases as gangrene and pneumonia have ceased to be fatal, and now we have a great variety of antibiotics.
Now every student knows what DNA is. But the structure of DNA was only discovered a little over 50 years ago, in 1953. Since then, such a science as genetics has been intensively developing. The structure of DNA was discovered by two scientists: James Watson and Francis Crick. From cardboard and...
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For 15 years since the beginning of the new millennium, people did not even notice that they were in a different world: we live in a different solar system, we know how to repair genes and control prostheses with the power of thought. None of this happened in the 20th century. Source
GENETICS
In recent years, a revolutionary method has been developed to manipulate DNA using the so-called CRISP mechanism. This...
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Incredible Facts
Human health is directly related to each of us.
The media is rife with stories about our health and bodies, from the discovery of new drugs to the discovery of unique surgical techniques that bring hope to the disabled.
Below we will talk about the latest achievements of modern medicine.
Recent advances in medicine
10 Scientists Have Identified A New Body Part
As early as 1879, a French surgeon named Paul Segond described in one of his studies a "pearl, resistant fibrous tissue" running along the ligaments in a person's knee.
This study was safely forgotten until 2013, when scientists discovered the anterolateral ligament, a knee ligament that is often damaged by injuries and other problems.
Considering how often the human knee is scanned, the discovery was made very late. It is described in the journal "Anatomy" and...
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The twentieth century has transformed people's lives. Of course, the development of mankind has never stopped, and in every century there have been important scientific inventions, but truly revolutionary changes, and even on a serious scale, occurred not so long ago. What were the most significant discoveries of the twentieth century?
Aviation
Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright entered the history of mankind as the first pilots. Last but not least, the great discoveries of the 20th century are new modes of transport. Orville Wright managed to make a controlled flight in 1903. The plane, developed by him together with his brother, lasted only 12 seconds in the air, but it was a real breakthrough for the aviation of those times. The date of the flight is considered the birthday of this type of transport. The Wright brothers were the first to design a system that would twist the wing panels with cables, allowing you to control the machine. In 1901, a wind tunnel was also created. They also invented the propeller. Already by 1904, a new model of the aircraft saw the light, more ...
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The most significant discoveries in the history of medicine
The most important discoveries in the history of medicine
1. Human Anatomy (1538)
Andreas Vesalius
Andreas Vesalius analyzes human bodies based on autopsies, lays out detailed information about human anatomy and refutes various interpretations on this topic. Vesalius believes that an understanding of anatomy is critical to performing operations, so he analyzes human cadavers (which is unusual for the time).
His anatomical diagrams of the circulatory and nervous systems, written as a reference to help his students, are copied so often that he is forced to publish them to protect their authenticity. In 1543 he published De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which marked the birth of the science of anatomy.
2. Circulation (1628)
William Harvey
William Harvey discovers that blood circulates throughout the body and names the heart as the organ responsible for circulation...
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The role of medicine in the life of every person is not easy to overestimate. There is even a joke that people do not fall from the round Earth because they are attached to clinics.
Undoubtedly, only thanks to the development of medicine, the average life expectancy of a person exceeds eighty years, and youth can continue even after reaching the age of forty. For comparison, just a few centuries ago, the flu often led to death, and people who turned fifty years old were considered very old.
Medicine, like other sciences, never stands still and is constantly evolving. Let's remember what discoveries in medicine have become the most significant and what modern medical science can boast of.
Great discoveries in medicine
If we turn to the generally accepted top 10 brilliant discoveries in medicine, then in the first place we will see the work of the Belgian scientist Andreas Vesalius De Humani Corporis Fabrica, in which he described the anatomical structure ...
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Thanks to the human discoveries of the last centuries, we have the ability to instantly access any information from all over the world. Advances in medicine have helped humanity overcome dangerous diseases. Technical, scientific, inventions in shipbuilding and mechanical engineering give us the opportunity to reach any point on the globe in a few hours and even fly into space.
Inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries have changed humanity, turned its world upside down. Of course, development took place incessantly and every century gave us some of the greatest discoveries, but the global revolutionary inventions occurred precisely in this period. Let's talk about those very significant ones that changed the usual outlook on life and made a breakthrough in civilization.
X-rays
In 1885, the German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen, in the course of his scientific experiments, discovered that the cathode tube emits certain rays, which he called x-rays. The scientist continued to investigate them and found out that this radiation penetrates ...
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The 19th century laid the foundations for the development of 20th century science and set the stage for many future inventions and technological innovations that we enjoy today. Scientific discoveries of the 19th century were made in many areas and had a great influence on further development. Technological progress progressed uncontrollably. To whom are we grateful for the comfortable conditions in which modern humanity now lives?
Scientific discoveries of the 19th century: Physics and electrical engineering
A key feature in the development of science of this period of time is the widespread use of electricity in all branches of production. And people could no longer refuse to use electricity, feeling its significant benefits. Many scientific discoveries of the 19th century were made in this area of physics. At that time, scientists began to closely study electromagnetic waves and their effect on various materials. The introduction of electricity into medicine began.
In the 19th century, electrical engineering...
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Over the past few centuries, we have made countless discoveries that have greatly improved the quality of our daily lives and understanding how the world around us works. Assessing the full importance of these discoveries is very difficult, if not almost impossible. But one thing is certain, some of them have literally changed our lives once and for all. From penicillin and the screw pump to X-rays and electricity, here is a list of the 25 greatest discoveries and inventions of mankind.
25. Penicillin
If the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming had not discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, we would still be dying from diseases such as stomach ulcers, abscesses, streptococcal infections, scarlet fever, leptospirosis, Lyme disease and many others.
24. Mechanical watch
There are conflicting theories about what the first mechanical watch actually looked like, but more often than not...
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Almost everyone who is interested in the history of the development of science, engineering and technology has at least once in his life thought about how the development of mankind could go without knowledge of mathematics or, for example, if we didn’t have such a necessary item as a wheel, which became almost basis for human development. However, only key discoveries are often considered and paid attention to, while less known and widespread discoveries are sometimes simply not mentioned, which, however, does not make them insignificant, because each new knowledge gives humanity the opportunity to climb a step higher in its development.
The 20th century and its scientific discoveries have turned into a real Rubicon, crossing which progress has accelerated its pace several times, identifying itself with a sports car that is impossible to keep up with. In order to stay on the crest of the scientific and technological wave now, not hefty skills are needed. Of course, you can read scientific journals, various ...
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The 20th century was rich in all kinds of discoveries and inventions, which in some ways improved, and in some ways complicated our life. However, if you think about it, there were not so many inventions that truly changed this world. We have collected some of the most-very inventions, after which life will never be the same again.
20th century inventions that changed the world
Aircraft
The first flights on devices lighter than air (aeronautics) were made by people back in the 18th century, it was then that the first balloons filled with hot air appeared, with the help of which it was possible to fulfill the old dream of mankind - to rise into the air and soar in it. However, due to the impossibility of controlling the direction of flight, dependence on the weather and low speed, the balloon did not suit mankind in many ways as a transport.
The first controlled flights on vehicles heavier than air occurred at the very beginning of the 20th century, when, independently of each other, the Wright brothers and Alberto Santos-Dumont experimented with ...
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Medicine in the 20th century
Decisive steps to transform art into science were taken by medicine at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. influenced by the achievements of the natural sciences and technological progress.The discovery of x-rays (V.K. Roentgen, 1895-1897) marked the beginning of x-ray diagnostics, without which it is now impossible to imagine an in-depth examination of the patient. The discovery of natural radioactivity and subsequent research in the field of nuclear physics led to the development of radiobiology, which studies the effect of ionizing radiation on living organisms, led to the emergence of radiation hygiene, the use of radioactive isotopes, which, in turn, made it possible to develop a research method using the so-called labeled atoms; radium and radioactive preparations began to be successfully used not only for diagnostic, but also for therapeutic purposes.
Another research method that fundamentally enriched the possibilities of recognizing heart arrhythmias, myocardial infarction and a number of others ...
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For 15 years since the beginning of the new millennium, people did not even notice that they were in a different world: we live in a different solar system, we know how to repair genes and control prostheses with the power of thought. None of this happened in the 20th century.
GENETICS
The human genome has been completely sequenced
Robot sorts human DNA in Petri dishes for The Human Genome project
The Human Genome Project began in 1990, a working draft of the genome structure was released in 2000, and the complete genome in 2003. However, even today additional analysis of some areas has not yet been completed. It was mainly performed at universities and research centers in the US, Canada and the UK. Genome sequencing is critical to drug development and understanding how the human body works.
Genetic engineering has reached a new level
In recent years, a revolutionary method has been developed to manipulate DNA using so...
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The beginning of the 21st century was marked by many discoveries in the field of medicine, which were written about in science fiction novels 10-20 years ago, and patients themselves could only dream of. And although many of these discoveries are waiting for a long road of introduction into clinical practice, they no longer belong to the category of conceptual developments, but are actually working devices, albeit not yet widely used in medical practice.
1. Artificial heart AbioCor
In July 2001, a group of surgeons from Louisville, Kentucky managed to implant a new generation artificial heart into a patient. The device, dubbed the AbioCor, was implanted in a man who was suffering from heart failure. The artificial heart was developed by Abiomed, Inc. Although similar devices have been used before, the AbioCor is the most advanced of its kind.
In previous versions, the patient had to be connected to a huge console through tubes and wires that...
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In the 21st century, it is difficult to keep up with scientific progress. In recent years, we have learned how to grow organs in laboratories, artificially control the activity of nerves, and invented surgical robots that can perform complex operations.
As you know, in order to see into the future, it is necessary to remember the past. We present seven great scientific discoveries in medicine, thanks to which it was possible to save millions of human lives.
body anatomy
In 1538, the Italian naturalist, the "father" of modern anatomy, Vesalius presented the world with a scientific description of the structure of the body and the definition of all human organs. He had to dig up corpses for anatomical studies in the cemetery, since the Church forbade such medical experiments.
Vesalius was the first to describe the structure of the human body. Now the great scientist is considered the founder of scientific anatomy, craters on the moon are named after him, stamps are printed with his image in Hungary, Belgium, and during his lifetime for the results ...
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The most important discoveries in medicine of the 20th century
In the 20th century medicine has undergone significant changes. First, the focus of physicians was no longer infectious, but chronic and degenerative diseases. Secondly, scientific research has become much more important, especially fundamental research, which allows a deeper understanding of how the body functions and what leads to disease.
The large scale of laboratory and clinical research has also influenced the nature of the activities of doctors. Thanks to long-term grants, many of them devoted themselves entirely to scientific work. The curricula of medical education have also changed: the study of chemistry, physics, electronics, nuclear physics and genetics has been introduced, and this is not surprising, since, for example, radioactive substances have become widely used in physiological research.
The development of communications has accelerated the exchange of the latest scientific data. This progress was greatly facilitated by pharmaceutical companies, many of which have grown into large ...
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The achievements of medicine as a science have always been in the first place in development. In recent years, a huge number of different pharmaceutical preparations have been developed. The use of antibiotics to treat infectious diseases has been known since World War II.
After the war, many new antibacterial substances were discovered and systematically improved.
Oral contraceptives for women began to be widely distributed in 1960, contributing to a sharp decline in fertility rates in industrialized countries.
In the early 1950s, the first systematic trials were made of adding fluoride to drinking water in order to prevent tooth decay. Many countries around the world have begun adding fluoride to their drinking water, which has led to huge improvements in dental health.
Surgical operations have been regularly performed since the middle of the last century. For example, in 1960, an arm completely separated from the shoulder was successfully sewn to the body. Operations like this...
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It’s worth a little distraction, and nanorobots are already treating cancer, and cyborg insects are no longer science fiction. Let's marvel together at the latest scientific discoveries before they turn into a banal thing like TV.
Cancer treatment
The main anti-hero of our time - cancer - seems to have nevertheless fallen into the network of scientists. Israeli specialists from Bar-Ilan University spoke about their scientific discovery: they have created nanorobots capable of killing cancer cells. Killers are made up of DNA, a natural biocompatible and biodegradable material, and can carry bioactive molecules and drugs. Robots are able to move with the blood stream and recognize malignant cells, immediately destroying them. This mechanism is similar to the work of our immunity, but more accurate.
Scientists have already carried out 2 stages of the experiment.
First, they planted nanorobots in a test tube with healthy and cancerous cells. Already after 3 days, half of the malignant ones were destroyed, and not a single healthy one ...
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scientific publication of Moscow State Technical University. N.E. Bauman
Science and educationPublisher of FGBOU VPO "MSTU named after N.E. Bauman". El No. FS 77 - 48211. ISSN 1994-0408
BREAKTHROUGH IN MEDICINE OF THE XX CENTURYPichugina Olesya Yurievna
school number 651, grade 10
Scientific advisers: Chudinova Elena Yuryevna, teacher of biology, Morgacheva Olga Alexandrovna, teacher of biology
Historical situation at the beginning of the 20th century
Until the 20th century, medicine was at a very low level. A person could die from any even a minor scratch. But already at the beginning of the 20th century, the medical level began to grow very rapidly. The discovery of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes made by Pavlov and the discoveries in the field of the psyche made by Z. Freud and K. Jung expanded our understanding of human capabilities. These and many other discoveries have won Nobel Prizes. But in my work I will tell you in more detail about two global medical discoveries: the discovery of blood groups, the beginning of blood transfusion, and the discovery ...
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Last quarter of the 19th - first half of the 20th century. marked by the rapid development of the natural sciences. Fundamental discoveries were made in all areas of natural science that radically changed the previously established ideas about the essence of processes occurring in living and inanimate nature. On the basis of new categories and concepts, the use of fundamentally new approaches and methods, important studies have been carried out that reveal the essence of individual physical, chemical and biological processes and the mechanisms for their implementation. The results of these studies, which played a decisive role for M., are reflected and will be reflected in the relevant articles of the BME. This essay includes only the largest discoveries and achievements in the field of natural sciences, as well as theoretical, clinical and preventive M. Moreover, the main attention is paid to the development of science abroad, since special essays on the development and state of M. in Russia and the USSR are published below. .
The development of physics...
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The past year has been very fruitful for science. Special progress scientists have achieved in the field of medicine. Humanity has made amazing discoveries, scientific breakthroughs and created many useful medicines that will certainly soon be freely available. We invite you to familiarize yourself with the ten most amazing medical breakthroughs of 2015, which are sure to make a serious contribution to the development of medical services in the very near future.
Discovery of teixobactin
In 2014, the World Health Organization warned everyone that humanity was entering the so-called post-antibiotic era. And she turned out to be right. Since 1987, science and medicine have not produced really new types of antibiotics. However, diseases do not stand still. Every year, new infections appear that are more resistant to existing drugs. It has become a real world problem. Nevertheless, in 2015, scientists made a discovery that, in their opinion, ...
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Numerous discoveries made by scientists during sleep make one think: either great people have brilliant dreams more often than ordinary managers, or they simply have the opportunity to realize them. But we all know that “everything is possible” is the same rule for everyone, just like everyone has dreams from time to time. Another thing is that great scientists do not just look at their subconscious at the moment of deep sleep, they continue to work, and their thoughts in a dream are probably deeper than in reality.
René Descartes (1596-1650), great French scientist, philosopher, mathematician, physicist and physiologist
He assured that prophetic dreams he saw at the age of twenty-three directed him on the path of great discoveries. On November 10, 1619, in a dream, he picked up a book written in Latin, on the very first page of which the secret question was displayed: “Which way should I go?”. In response, according to Descartes, "The Spirit of Truth revealed to me in a dream the interconnection of all sciences." After three centuries in a row, his work had a huge impact on science.
The dream of Niels Bohr brought him the Nobel Prize, while still a student he managed to make a discovery that changed the scientific picture of the world. He dreamed that he was in the Sun - a shining clot of fire-breathing gas - and the planets whistled past him. They revolved around the Sun and were connected with it by thin threads. Suddenly, the gas solidified, the "sun" and "planets" shrank, and Bohr, by his own admission, woke up as if from a shock: he realized that he had discovered the model of the atom that he had been looking for for so long. The "sun" from his dream was nothing but a motionless core, around which the "planets" - electrons revolved!
What really happened in the dream of Dmitry Mendeleev (1834-1907)
Dmitry Mendeleev I saw my table in a dream, and his example is not the only one. Many scientists admitted that they owe their discoveries to their amazing dreams. From their dreams, not only the periodic table came into our lives, but also the atomic bomb.
“There are no such mysterious phenomena that could not be understood,” said Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the great French scientist, philosopher, mathematician, physicist and physiologist. However, at least one inexplicable phenomenon was well known to him from personal experience. The author of many discoveries made during his life in various fields, Descartes did not hide the fact that the impetus for his versatile research was a few prophetic dreams he saw at the age of twenty-three.
The date of one of these dreams is known exactly: November 10, 1619. It was on that night that the main direction of all his future work was revealed to René Descartes. In that dream, he picked up a book written in Latin, on the very first page of which the secret question was displayed: “Which way should I go?”. In response, according to Descartes, "The Spirit of Truth revealed to me in a dream the interconnection of all sciences."
How this happened, now one can only guess, only one thing is known for certain: the research, which was inspired by his dreams, brought fame to Descartes, making him the greatest scientist of his time. For three centuries in a row, his work had a huge impact on science, and a number of his works in physics and mathematics remain relevant to this day.
It turns out that Mendeleev's dream became widely known with the light hand of A.A. Inostrantsev, a contemporary and acquaintance of a scientist who once went into his office and found him in the most gloomy state. As Inostrantsev later recalled, Mendeleev complained to him that “everything came together in my head, but I can’t express it in a table.” And later he explained that he worked for three days in a row without sleep, but all attempts to put his thoughts into a table were unsuccessful.
In the end, the scientist, extremely tired, nevertheless went to bed. It was this dream that later went down in history. According to Mendeleev, everything happened like this: “I see in a dream a table where the elements are arranged as needed. I woke up, immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper - only in one place did it later turn out to be the necessary amendment.
But the most intriguing thing is that at the time when Mendeleev dreamed of the periodic system, the atomic masses of many elements were incorrectly established, and many elements were not studied at all. In other words, starting only from the scientific data known to him, Mendeleev simply could not have made his brilliant discovery! And this means that in a dream he received more than just an insight. The discovery of the periodic system, for which the scientists of that time simply did not have enough knowledge, can be safely compared with the foresight of the future.
All these numerous discoveries made by scientists during sleep make one think: either great people have dreams-revelations more often than mere mortals, or they simply have the opportunity to realize them. Or maybe great minds just think little about what others will say about them, and therefore do not hesitate to seriously listen to the clues of their dreams? The answer to this is the call of Friedrich Kekule, with which he concluded his speech at one of the scientific congresses: “Let's study our dreams, gentlemen, and then we may come to the truth!”
Niels Bohr (1885-1962), great Danish scientist, founder of atomic physics
The great Danish scientist, the founder of atomic physics, Niels Bohr (1885-1962), while still a student, managed to make a discovery that changed the scientific picture of the world.
Once he dreamed that he was in the Sun - a shining clot of fire-breathing gas - and the planets whistled past him. They revolved around the Sun and were connected with it by thin threads. Suddenly, the gas solidified, the "sun" and "planets" shrank, and Bohr, by his own admission, woke up as if from a shock: he realized that he had discovered the model of the atom that he had been looking for for so long. The "sun" from his dream was nothing but a motionless core, around which the "planets" - electrons revolved!
Needless to say, the planetary model of the atom, seen by Niels Bohr in a dream, became the basis of all subsequent works of the scientist? She laid the foundation for atomic physics, bringing Niels Bohr the Nobel Prize and world recognition. The scientist himself, all his life, considered it his duty to fight against the use of the atom for military purposes: the genie, released by his dream, turned out to be not only powerful, but also dangerous ...
However, this story is just one in a long line of many. So, the story of a no less amazing nocturnal insight that advanced world science forward belongs to another Nobel laureate, the Austrian physiologist Otto Levi (1873-1961).
Otto Levi (1873–1961), Austrian physiologist, Nobel laureate for services to medicine and psychology
Nerve impulses in the body are transmitted by an electrical wave - so doctors mistakenly believed until the discovery made by Levi. While still a young scientist, for the first time he disagreed with venerable colleagues, boldly suggesting that chemistry is involved in the transmission of a nerve impulse. But who will listen to yesterday's student who refutes scientific luminaries? Moreover, Levy's theory, for all its logic, had practically no evidence.
It wasn't until seventeen years later that Levi was finally able to perform an experiment that clearly proved him right. The idea of the experiment came to him unexpectedly - in a dream. With the pedantry of a true scholar, Levi recounted in detail the insight that visited him for two nights in a row:
“... On the night before Easter Sunday 1920, I woke up and made some notes on a piece of paper. Then I fell asleep again. In the morning I had the feeling that I wrote down something very important that night, but I could not decipher my scribbles. The next night, at three o'clock, the idea came back to me. This was the design of an experiment that would help determine whether my hypothesis of chemical transmission is valid ... I immediately got up, went to the laboratory and set up an experiment on a frog's heart that I saw in a dream ... Its results became the basis of the theory of chemical transmission of a nerve impulse.
The research to which dreams made a significant contribution brought Otto Levi the Nobel Prize in 1936 for services to medicine and psychology.
Another famous chemist, Friedrich August Kekule, did not hesitate to publicly admit that it was thanks to sleep that he managed to discover the molecular structure of benzene, over which he had unsuccessfully struggled for many years before.
Friedrich August Kekule (1829-1896), famous German organic chemist
By his own admission, Kekule, for many years he tried to find the molecular structure of benzene, but all his knowledge and experience were powerless. The problem so tormented the scientist that sometimes he did not stop thinking about it night or day. Often he dreamed that he had already made a discovery, but all these dreams invariably turned out to be just the usual reflection of his daily thoughts and concerns.
So it was until the cold night of 1865, when Kekule dozed off at home by the fireplace and had an amazing dream, which he later described as follows: “Atoms jumped before my eyes, they merged into larger structures similar to snakes. As if spellbound, I followed their dance, when suddenly one of the "snakes" grabbed her tail and danced teasingly before my eyes. As if pierced by lightning, I woke up: the structure of benzene is a closed ring!
This discovery was a revolution for the chemistry of that time.
The dream impressed Kekule so much that he told it to his fellow chemists at one of the scientific congresses and even urged them to pay more attention to their dreams. Of course, many scientists would subscribe to these words of Kekule, and first of all, his colleague, the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, whose discovery, made in a dream, is widely known to everyone.
Indeed, everyone has heard that Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev "peeped" his periodic table of chemical elements in a dream. However, how exactly did this happen? One of his friends spoke in detail about this in his memoirs.
The most important discoveries in the history of medicine
1. Human Anatomy (1538)
Andreas Vesalius analyzes human bodies based on autopsies, lays out detailed information about human anatomy and refutes various interpretations on this topic. Vesalius believes that an understanding of anatomy is critical to performing operations, so he analyzes human cadavers (which is unusual for the time).
His anatomical diagrams of the circulatory and nervous systems, written as a reference to help his students, are copied so often that he is forced to publish them to protect their authenticity. In 1543 he published De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which marked the birth of the science of anatomy.
2. Circulation (1628)
William Harvey discovers that blood circulates throughout the body and names the heart as the organ responsible for blood circulation. His pioneering work, an anatomical sketch of the workings of the heart and blood circulation in animals, published in 1628, formed the basis for modern physiology.
3. Blood types (1902)
Kaprl Landsteiner
Austrian biologist Karl Landsteiner and his group discover four human blood types and develop a classification system. Knowledge of the different types of blood is critical to performing safe blood transfusion, which is now common practice.
4. Anesthesia (1842-1846)
Some scientists have found that certain chemicals can be used as an anesthetic, allowing surgery to be performed without pain. The first experiments with anesthetics - nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and sulfuric ether - began to be used in the 19th century, mainly by dentists.
5. X-rays (1895)
Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally discovers X-rays while experimenting with cathode ray emission (ejection of electrons). He notices that the rays are able to pass through the opaque black paper wrapped around the cathode ray tube. This leads to the glow of the flowers located on the adjacent table. His discovery was a revolution in physics and medicine, earning him the first ever Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
6. Theory of germs (1800)
The French chemist Louis Pasteur believes that some microbes are disease-causing agents. At the same time, the origin of diseases such as cholera, anthrax and rabies remains a mystery. Pasteur formulates the germ theory, suggesting that these diseases, and many others, are caused by the corresponding bacteria. Pasteur is called the "father of bacteriology" because his work was the precursor to new scientific research.
7. Vitamins (early 1900s)
Frederick Hopkins and others discovered that certain diseases were caused by a lack of certain nutrients, which were later called vitamins. In experiments with nutrition on laboratory animals, Hopkins proves that these "nutrition accessory factors" are essential to health.
Education is one of the foundations of human development. Only thanks to the fact that from generation to generation humanity passed on its empirical knowledge, at the moment we can enjoy the benefits of civilization, live in a certain prosperity and without destroying racial and tribal wars for access to the resources of existence.
Education has also penetrated the sphere of the Internet. One of the educational projects was named Otrok.
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8. Penicillin (1920s-1930s)
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. Howard Flory and Ernst Boris isolated it in its pure form, creating an antibiotic.
Fleming's discovery happened quite by accident, he noticed that the mold killed a certain type of bacteria in a petri dish that was just lying in the sink of the laboratory. Fleming singles out the specimen and names it Penicillium notatum. In the following experiments, Howard Flory and Ernst Boris confirmed penicillin treatment of mice with bacterial infections.
9. Sulfur preparations (1930)
Gerhard Domagk discovers that prontosil, an orange-red dye, is effective in treating infections caused by the common streptococcus bacteria. This discovery paves the way for the synthesis of chemotherapeutic drugs (or "miracle drugs") and the production of sulfanilamide drugs in particular.
10. Vaccination (1796)
Edward Jenner, an English physician, administers the first smallpox vaccination after determining that the cowpox inoculation provides immunity. Jenner formulated his theory after noticing that patients who worked with cattle and came into contact with a cow did not contract smallpox during an epidemic in 1788.
11. Insulin (1920)
Frederick Banting and his colleagues discovered the hormone insulin, which helps balance blood sugar levels in diabetics and allows them to live normal lives. Before the discovery of insulin, it was impossible to save diabetics.
12. Discovery of oncogenes (1975)
13. Discovery of the human retrovirus HIV (1980)
Scientists Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier separately discovered a new retrovirus, later named HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), and classified it as the causative agent of AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).
