Technology, Business and the

Market
Lecture 1
Approximate age of
the Earth = c.4.5
billion years.

Emergence of
‘humanoid’
ancestors = c.3.5
million years.

Neolithic Revolution
= c. 10,000 years
ago.

Emergence of
industrial/scientific
era = c.200/250
years ago.
 Advocated a scientific
methodology based on
detailed observation of
revealed phenomena rather
than merely applying
theory. Believed in human
progress through scientific
and technological change
rather than merely looking
back to some ‘golden era’ in
the past.

Francis Bacon
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) – life in the State of Nature is
‘solitary, poor, nasty and short’.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
James Gillray ‘Bleeding a Vein’ (1801)
Rembrandt ‘Dr. Nicolas Tulp’s Demonstration of the Anatomy of the Arm’ 1632
William Hogarth ‘A Rake’s Progress’ (1733)
William Hogarth ‘A Rake’s Progress’ (1733)
William Hogarth ‘The Anatomy Lesson (The Reward of Cruelty)’ 1751
John Hunter (1728-93) surgeon and scientist –
from a portrait by Joshua Reynolds
Ship surgeon’s instruments
Amputation without anaesthesia
The old operating theatre at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London
James Gillray ‘Metallic Tractors’ (1801)
 Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
published ‘Frankenstein; or the
Andrew Ure (1778-1857) Modern Prometheus’ in 1818
Robert Liston (1794-1847) could amputate a leg in 2.5 minutes –
performed the first operation in Europe under anaesthesia at
University College on 21 December 1846.
Thomas Eakins ‘Gross Clinic’ 1875
Thomas Eakins ‘The Agnew Clinic’ (1889)
Theodor Billroth (1829-1894)
founder of abdominal surgery
• Anaesthesia and antisepsis greatly improved the
success rate of surgery but the surgeon was still
‘working blind’ until the accidental discovery of X-
rays by Wilhelm Rontgen in 1895.

Wilhelm Rontgen (1845-1923) awarded

the Nobel Prize for physics I 1901
Surgery in the early 20th century
by which time the status of the
surgeon was greatly elevated
and ‘scientific’ medicine
established.
Prontosil was the
first ‘sulfa’
(sulphonamide)
drug. Developed by
Bayer in the 1930s it
was the first drug
capable of treating
bacterial infections
inside the body.

Alexander Fleming (1881-1955)
The era of antibiotics
began with the accidental
discovery by Alexander
Fleming ,at St. Mary’s
Hospital Paddington ,of the
antibiotic properties of
Penicillium rubens . He
named his discovery
‘penicillin’. Progress in the
medical application of his
discovery was slow and
inhibited by the difficulty
in producing the substance
in quantity. Mass
production and
widespread application
was achieved in the USA
during WW2 . By 1945
almost 650 million units a
year were being produced.
Christiaan Barnard (1922-2001) cardiac
surgeon who in 1967 performed the
world’s first successful human to
human heart transplant.
Da Vinci X1 Surgical System