The entire purpose of this web project was to take people on a kind of journey and provide a brief history of medicine throughout time. I wanted to show everyone that even though it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago, the advancement made by far away cultures are not to be overlooked. Also to show that not only did medicine make fantastic advancements it also had it moments of utter failure and let down. In fact, one of the greatest things I learned during this project was that there was no predicting medicine, there was no tell when medicine would move forward to save lives and advance the standard of living and when medicine would fail, knocking off entire pockets of the population.
   
    First I started with the Egyptians, a fascinating group of people that progressed far beyond pyramids and temples. The Egyptians weren’t simply doing minor research, trying to conquer small medical ailments; they were performing surgery! They were successfully executing both major and minor surgeries, even attempting brain surgery on more than one occasion. Although the Egyptians may have come first that does not mean that what they accomplished was insignificant.
   
    For my second episode I wanted to address that dark side of medicine. I wanted to talk about what happens when medicine fails, when people and society need it most and it is not there. That being said, the Black Plague was my topic of choice. The mid 1300s was a time of rapid population loss and there was no stopping it, no slowing it down and no aiding a suffering society. Of all my three episodes, this one was about when people really needed medicine and all its benefits and medicine failed them.
   
    My third and final episode was centered on one of my favorite historical figures: Leonardo da Vinci. As I mentioned in the episode, da Vinci is obviously much more remembered for his ability to paint but we must remember how brilliant he was and how far his invention and research stretched. Through the practice of dissection, Leonardo was able to discover and accurately depict the inner workings of the body including muscles, tendons, veins and much more!
   
    What I really wanted to do with the project was to be able to connect three seemingly different topics together under the umbrella of medicine and I feel like I accomplished just that! I did not want all three of my episodes to be too similar in topic and thus become boring and predictable and thus in my search to keep things exciting I learned a great deal about the history of medicine and those people, places, cultures and diseases that helped shape ancient medicine into the modern marvel that it is today. There is no way that medicine would be where it is today without the amazing accomplishment of the Egyptians during ancient times, the devastating destruction of the Black Plague in the middle ages and the brilliant mind of Leonardo da Vinci amidst the early modern period.