In the doctor’s office, hospital, or clinic, patients rarely consider the medical team around them. The medical team is an integral part of diagnosis, monitoring and therapy. Even the simplest physical exam can often require a variety of high-tech medical equipment.

In fifteenth-century Europe, during and after the horrors of the bubonic plague, autopsies began to be performed in universities and a primitive form of “scientific method” began to take hold in the minds of the educated. Practical studies of surgery and anatomy begin. These curious medieval Europeans laid the foundation for modern science. They also laid the groundwork for the well-known process of identifying a problem, creating a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis through observation and experimentation, most importantly; interpret the data and draw a conclusion.

Medical equipment before and even during the scientific revolution was based on classical Greek and Roman theories about science, which were not based on science at all, but on philosophy and superstition. Human health was seen as a balance of 4 internal ‘humours’ in the body. The 4 humours: blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm, were analogous to the 4 elements of the universe for the classical thinker, fire, air, water and earth. Food, both physical and mental, was caused by an imbalance of humors. The ideal mind and body balanced the 4 humors gracefully. To heal, doctors prescribed foods or procedures that balanced the body’s fluids. Some of the recipes seem to make sense: fevers were treated with cold and dry temperature to combat hot and wet overstimulation in the body. But when that failed, the next step was often to draw blood. Unnecessary purges and enemas were also common cures, which may have helped some people, but also caused more problems than they solved. George Washington’s death has recently been attributed, not to the strep throat he probably suffered from when he died, but to the bloodletting and mercury enema he was given to cure it. This day.

Since the fifteenth century, Western science has focused on examining and observing the body and has created tools to make it easier. Today’s X-ray imaging and MRI devices are simply extensions of early autopsies and anatomical studies, which strove to understand how the human body actually works. Diagnostic instruments such as ophthalmoscopes, blood pressure monitors, and stethoscopes are also extensions of medieval examination. Exam tables, gloves, and other medical accessories are simply the newest versions of tools that have been used for centuries. Medical technology and medical knowledge feed off each other. Take for example hypertension. Although blood pressure devices have been around for more than 100 years, it is only in the last 20 years that the connections of blood pressure to disease, genetics, and lifestyle have been fully explored. As the importance of measuring blood pressure increased, new technologies were explored to maintain accurate measurements and records. It was not until the prevalence of automatic blood pressure monitors that a correlation could be made between readings taken by a human and readings taken in a controlled, isolated environment. Medical equipment and medical knowledge form a Gordian knot that is constantly turning, one side tightening and the other loosening, back and forth.

What does the future hold for this push and pull of technology and scientific research? Recent developments in nanotechnology and genetics, coupled with ever more powerful supercomputers, could create a situation where what it means to be human actually changes, due to technology. For example, scientists have created simple life forms from previously non-living DNA material. While it doesn’t seem all that dramatic at first glance, it’s an important development. Medical equipment acts as an extension for research into the how and why of the human body, and as science catches up and surpasses research, entirely new types of medical diagnosis, monitoring, and therapy may result. Imagine the ability to grow new organs within the body. Limb regrowth is possible in other organisms, why not in humans? And if possible, would the developments be truly ‘human’? The future is unknown; the only aspect we can understand is that it will be nothing like what we could have previously imagined. In hindsight, we’ll see the signs, as we always do, but this is hindsight, not forward-looking. Currently, technology advances and continues, as a process, to change human life.