Short answers, pulled from the story.
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for patients, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, and palliation of their injury or disease while promoting health. It applies biomedical sciences, genetics, and medical technology, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies such as psychotherapy, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation.
The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates is called the father of modern medicine for laying the foundation of a rational approach. He introduced the Hippocratic Oath still in use today and was the first to categorize illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic, and epidemic. The Persian polymath Avicenna, who wrote The Canon of Medicine, has also been called a father of medicine, alongside Imhotep.
The earliest known medical texts in the world were found in the ancient Syrian city of Ebla and date back to 2500 BCE. Egyptian works include the Edwin Smith Papyrus from 1600 BCE, an early text on surgery, and the Ebers Papyrus from 1500 BCE, which reads like a textbook on medicine.
Primary care is the first contact for a patient and can handle about 90% of medical visits, covering minor, acute, and chronic illness, preventive care, and health education. Secondary care comes by referral to specialists at offices or community hospitals, while tertiary care provides specialist teams in larger hospitals for complex conditions such as organ transplants, trauma, and radiation oncology.
The six values commonly discussed in medical ethics are autonomy, beneficence, justice, non-maleficence, respect for persons, and truthfulness and honesty. Non-maleficence is the duty to first, do no harm, and the importance of informed consent grew after events such as the Doctors' Trial of the Nuremberg trials and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
The first antibiotic was arsphenamine, also called Salvarsan, discovered by Paul Ehrlich in 1908 after he observed that bacteria took up toxic dyes that human cells did not. The first major class of antibiotics was the sulfa drugs, derived by German chemists from azo dyes.