There is no doubt: the basic needs of the first human beings in the planet were limited to two: food and survival. The first one was attended by Nature (fruits) and animals (basically milk) and intake of meat; the second one: if the wounds were not enough when they defended themselves against predators – if not death – they were injured in their daily rough tasks resulting in infections, progressing to various diseases, or even death after a period of severe pain and suffering. The life expectancy was similar to the present one: very low.

Cleaning wounds with water, at natural or heated temperature, with application of ointments and herbal potions, or animal fats on the wounds, may have been, through several millennia, the only physical alternatives of treatment, evolving into sacrifices and prayers to the "Gods of Heaven"...

Historians estimate that between the earliest sign of fire and a simple skillful match, there is History of at least 350,000 years. Since always rays and volcanoes have given prehistoric man the fear of the beginning, but soon the providential use of fire, generating light and heat, defense against animals and, after a long time, used as cauterization of injuries, saving some victims ...

After a fantastic leap in time, we have historical records that cauterization had already been officially performed since the time of the so-called "father of medicine": Hippocrates (460 BC - 377 BC), a legendary descendant of Asclepius - the Greek god of medicine.

The contribution of Hippocrates - A scholar of human anatomy, considered the greatest physician of Antiquity, Hippocrates left several works in his doctrine that approached medicine as a natural and experimental science, separating it from philosophy, removing it from the path of abstract speculation to place it in the path of rational study, using reason in the evaluation of the data extracted from the multiple experiences that he performed.

At the time of Hippocrates the cauterization was applied by the doctors to stop the blood loss and to avoid infections, after the most diverse surgical procedures, like amputations and removals of tumors, for example. It turns out that - although it stopped the bleeding, contrary to what the ancients thought, and the modern medicine discovered - cauterizations actually increase the risks of infections in patients – an ancestral predator, lethal almost always...

In the second century AD, we find Claudius Galenus (131-201), prominent Greek physician, probably the most talented investigative physician of the Roman period; precursor to the practice of dissecting animals, his experiments led to important discoveries in anatomy, particularly the nervous and cardiac systems. The highest point of classical Greek medicine, however, his physiology and pathology, dealing with the causes of disease, have long delayed the scientific evolution of medicine. But somehow, his theories dominated and influenced medical science for about a thousand years.

Before that, with the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in the year 476, among many people, disbelief spread regarding medicine, incapable of overcoming several catastrophic epidemics.

The methods used in the Middle Ages - The fear of death, with the quest for salvation in the supernatural, threw medicine into the hand of astrologers and alchemists, vulnerable to charlatans and deceivers.

In the Middle Ages (the period of the history of Europe between the fifth and fifteenth centuries) there were doctors who examined the patient's urine and horoscope, giving him general bleeding and purging. Their methods were the decadence of medicine.

In the fourteenth century Humanity experienced the devastating pandemic called "Black Plague" (or "Black Death" or still "Bubonic Plague") that reduced the world population to frightening proportions: it is estimated that the bacterium of the disease resulted in the death of 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia (supercontinent formed by Europe and Asia, separated by the Ural Mountains); on the European continent, it is estimated that it has killed at least a third of the population in general.

More than the "Black Plague," smallpox (also known as "variola"), a scourge since ancient times, would have killed about three hundred million people over the centuries. When in 1517 the expedition of Cortez landed in Mexico, with one of the members with smallpox, the disease spread and about three million and half of the native population died.

During the Spanish occupation of America, almost half the native population was exterminated by smallpox; in Brazil, in 1563, only a quarter of the population was left alive: in the Brazilian northeast wilderness it was called "pest".(Translator’s note: meaning a kind of a curse).

Jenner and the Cow’s Smallpox - The Vaccine: the most important discovery! Cows ... humble animals, most helpful to man, played an important role in medicine, when Edward Jenner (1749-1823), an English rural physician, heard the story of the "cow pox" and decided to study it. Attending a case and testing the immunization capacity of the method, i.e., when smallpox presented itself in the udders of the cow in small eruptions, it was transmitted to the milking men. The same wounds appeared in their hands and these people resisted epidemics! Lymph extracted from the wound from the hand of one of those infected men was injected into a healthy person, who ten days later suffered from armpit pains, chills, and was feeling quite bad, but the next day he recovered. From there on the methods were improved. And this is how the vaccine, a word originated from the original Latin word vaccinus, of vacca (cow) appeared.

An important step in medicine was given when Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), in 1879, discovered the principle of the preventive vaccine by inoculating attenuated virulent microbes. The highlight of his life was when he was able to get a vaccine that might be applied to man after being bitten by a rabid animal. The opportunity to test it came in 1885 when a 9-year-old boy was brought by his father to Pasteur's laboratory. He had been bitten by a rabid dog three days before and now had his life by a thread. As a result, Pasteur did not hesitate to apply his vaccine. The success was absolute: the boy was not infected by the disease!

The advances of medicine – I could mention other important advances of medicine, thanks to the blessed researchers, among them Hans Janssen and his son Zacharias, and to the microscope (1590). Hahnemann and homeopathy (1789); Theodor Schwann, who launched in 1839 the foundations of the cell theory, which evolved into the current stem cell research; Thomas Green Morton and anesthesia (1846); Roentgen and the X-ray (1895); Mendel and heredity (1900), Hevesy and nuclear medicine (1923); Flemming and penicillin (1928); Crick and the DNA (1953); Louise Brown, the first human being fruit of an in vitro reproduction (1978); the USA and the "Genome Project" (1990-1995).

I highlight only two recent and fantastic achievements of Medicine:

- the first, recent biogenetics[1]: in August / 2017, researchers from the University of Oregon in the United States accomplished the historical job of eliminating in embryos the genetic mutation that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a hereditary disease that affects one in every five hundred people. The technique, in a few decades, could be applied in the definitive fight against more than 10,000 diseases by inherited mutations, among them diseases like Huntington, Alzheimer's and cystic fibrosis.

The issue is questionable from a legal point of view: there are fifteen European countries that forbid any attempt to change the human germinal line...

- the second, a revolution: a remedy for acute lymphoid leukemia (the most common type in children and teenagers), with genetically reprogramming the cells of each patient with cancer; in the future, experts hope that this cell therapy can be applied to other tumors.

The new therapy was approved by the rigorous US FDA (Food and Drug Administration, meaning "Food and Drug Administration")[2].

There are so many benefactors, known and anonymous, that I can only pray to God, the Supreme Creator, to bless them all. May they receive the gratitude of all mankind, for it will scarcely be found someone who has not benefited sometime from the dedicated years of devotion and research of all of them.

In Brazil, for example, now in 2017, life expectancy is 75.5 years, according to data from the IBGE, dated December 1, 2016. And it is being increased...

So many benefits in favor of Humanity did not come to Earth at random. Obviously, this has occurred, occurs and will always occur, thanks to Master Jesus, certainly by Divine delegation.

(The second part of this article will be published next week.)