Anglický jazyk
10.2.1 Technology and inventions
Here is a short overview of some medical and health-connected inventions, ordered from the oldest to the newest. It is not of course a complete list, just a quick journey to the world of technology and inventions.
Toothbrush, 1498
For millennia people have used a fantastic array of implements to keep their teeth brilliant. Frayed twigs, chewing sticks, birds' feathers and porcupine quills; all have been discovered in the excavated remains of the earliest bathrooms. An unknown Chinese was the first, at the turn of the 15th century, to mount bristles at right angles to a handle – the spines were plucked from hogs and set into bamboo or bone. By the 17th century toothbrushes were widely used in Europe.
Microscope, 1590
When the British polymath Robert Hooke published his 1665 masterpiece, Micrographia, people were blown away by its depictions of the miniature world. Samuel Pepys called it "the most ingenious book that I ever read in my life". Until then, few people knew that fleas had hairy legs or that plants comprised cells (Hooke coined the term "cell"). Zacharias Janssen, a Dutch spectacle maker, had invented the first microscope in 1590, although it was then regarded as a novelty rather than a revolution in science.
Thermometer, 1592
It is difficult to place the thermometer in the history of modern invention; it is one of those devices that would inevitably appear. Galileo Galilei is most commonly credited, but his clumsy air thermometer, in which a column of air trapped in water expanded when warmed, was the culmination of more than 100 years of improvement. The classic mercury-in-glass thermometer, still in use today, was conceived by Daniel Fahrenheit in the 1720s.
Condom, 1640
Egyptians used them on 3,000 years ago and the 16th-century Italian gynaecologist Gabriele Falloppio first advocated their use to prevent the spread of disease. The earliest remains of a condom, which date from 1640, were discovered in Dudley. In modern times, condoms, which until the 1960s were made from animal gut, have allowed generations of couples to avoid unwanted pregnancies and saved an inestimable number of lives by preventing the spread of diseases such as AIDS.
Stethoscope, 1819
You would think in this age of electron microscopes and robot surgeons that a bit of rubber tubing attached to headphones and a diaphragm would have joined the head mirror and the cauterising iron in the graveyard of medical innovation. But so simple and effective is the stethoscope that the sight of one on the shoulders of a white coated doctor remains as familiar as ever. A Frenchman, René Théophile Hyacinthe Laënnec, invented the first device that amplified the sounds of the human body.
Syringe, 1844
Syringe devices have been in use since the 9th century, when an Egyptian surgeon used a glass suction tube to remove cataracts from a patient, but the first hypodermic syringes with needles fine enough to pierce skin did not appear until the 1840s. The Irish physician Francis Rynd used the first syringe to inject a sedative to treat neuralgia, revolutionising medicine with a single push of a plunger.
Aspirin, 1899
Little tablets of acetylsalicylic acid have probably cured more minor ills than any other medicine. Hippocrates was the first to realise the healing power of the substance – his related ancient Greek treatment was a tea made from willow bark, and was effective against fevers and gout. Much later, in turn-of-the-century Germany, chemist Felix Hoffman perfected the remedy on his arthritic father, marketing it under the trade name Aspirin.
The Pill, 1951
The contraceptive pill not only empowered women, but marked a turning point in medicine – it was the first drug used by "healthy" people to prevent something rather than by the sick to treat an ailment. It was developed by a team headed by Carl Djerassi, a chemist, in 1951, but wasn't marketed in the UK until 1962. Since then, more than 300 million women are thought to have used the Pill; in the UK, an estimated three million women use it each year.
Cardiac pacemaker, 1958
It wasn't long ago that if you had a terminally disordered heart you would be sent to hospital and hooked up to a large, static piece of kit. Swedish doctors Rune Elmqvist and Ake Senning designed the first implantable pacemaker. Their device failed within hours and it took the US engineer Wilson Greatbatch to build a reliable model in his garden shed. He tested a prototype on a dog in 1958 and, in 1960, Henry Hannafield, 77, became the first human recipient.
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array
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seznam, skupina
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frayed
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roztřepený
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feather
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brk
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porcupine
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dikobraz
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quills
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ostny
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excavate
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vykopat (archeologie)
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turn of the century
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přelom století
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bristles
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fousky, štětiny
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handle
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držadlo, rukojeť
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spine
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osten, trn
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pluck
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vytrhávat
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hog
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vepř
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polymath
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vzdělanec
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blown away
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šokovaný
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depiction
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zobrazení
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ingenious
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důmyslný
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flea
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blecha
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comprise
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sestávat
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spectacle maker
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výrobce brýlí
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regarded as
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považováno za
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novelty
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novinka
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inevitably
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nevyhnutelně
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clumsy
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nešikovný
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trapped
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uvězněný, zachycený
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advocate
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podporovat
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inestimable
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nesčetný
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diaphragm
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membrána
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cauterising
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vypalovací
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graveyard
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hřbitov
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suction
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sací
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plunger
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píst
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pierce
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propíchnout
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realise
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uvědomit si
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willow
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vrba
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bark
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kůra
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gout
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dna, pakostnice
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contraceptive
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antikoncepční
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turning point
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zvrat
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ailment
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neduh
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terminally
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smrtelně
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kit
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sada, souprava
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recipient
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příjemce
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