MAKING HISTORY The increase and the decline in the numbers of deaths worldwide due to AIDS 2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
.5
0 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2007 Some people preferred to use alternative medicines, sometimes called Holistic
medicine. These include treatments such as aromatherapy, hypnotherapy and acupuncture. There is also much support for herbal remedies and this has led to the growth of health shops.
Changing lifestyles have also presented problems for
medicine. Heart disease and liver disease are two killer diseases in the modern world, which are largely caused by smoking, lack of exercise, obesity, bad diet and excessive alcohol. Medicine now has an educational role in trying to change people’s lifestyles to prevent disease.
Surgery Surgery made significant advances during the 20th century, World War II facial reconstruction 390
partly due to the impact of two world wars, which produced injuries that doctors had to find new skills and methods to deal with. In World War I, surgeons used skin grafts to reconstruct damaged faces. They also benefitted from the discovery of blood groups before the war, and its use in blood transfusions during the war. After the war, in 1921, the British Red Cross created the first blood donor scheme. There were further advances in World War II, when surgeons used plastic surgery to treat the faces of airmen burnt in the war.
