Replica of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's microscope of the 1670s

Mandrake (written 'ΜΑΝΔΡΑΓΟΡΑ' in Greek capitals). Naples Dioscurides, 7th century

A cochlear implant is a common kind of neural prosthesis, a device replacing part of the human nervous system.

Andreas Vesalius's 1543 De humani corporis fabrica contained intricately detailed drawings of human dissections, often in allegorical poses.

Guy's Hospital in 1820

18th-century medical remedies collected by a British Gentry family

The oldest Polish Collegium Medicum at Jagiellonian University founded in 1364

Medical recipe concerning poisoning. Terracotta tablet, from Nippur, Iraq, 18th century BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul

Assorted dried plant and animal parts used in traditional Chinese medicines, clockwise from top left corner: dried Lingzhi (lit. "spirit mushrooms"), ginseng, Luo Han Guo, turtle shell underbelly (plastron), and dried curled snakes

Traditional medicine in a market in Antananarivo, Madagascar

American combat surgery during the Pacific War, 1943. Major wars showed the need for effective hygiene and medical treatment.

Smallpox vaccination in Niger, 1969. A decade later, this was the first infectious disease to be eradicated.

The plinthios brochos as described by Greek physician Heraklas, a sling for binding a fractured jaw. These writings were preserved in one of Oribasius' collections.

Ayurvedic herbal medicines

The Hippocratic Corpus
A collection of early medical works may be associated with Hippocrates

Mexico City epidemic of 1737, with elites calling on the Virgin of Guadalupe

Most countries have seen a tremendous increase in life expectancy since 1945. However, in southern Africa, the HIV epidemic beginning around 1990 has eroded national health.

Curandera performing a limpieza in Cuenca, Ecuador

The Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, gained international prominence as a centre for moral treatment and a model of asylum reform following the publication of Samuel Tuke's Description of the Retreat (1813).

Louis Pasteur experimenting on bacteria, c. 1870

Monumental stone relief of a fish-garbed figure from the Temple of Ninurta in the Assyrian city of Kalhu, believed by some experts to be a representation of an āšipu, or exorcist-priest, who functioned as a kind of healer and primitive doctor

Depiction of smallpox in Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún's history of the conquest of Mexico, Book XII of the Florentine Codex, from the defeated Aztecs' point of view

Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, c. 1850–58. The asylum population in England and Wales rose from 1,027 in 1827 to 74,004 in 1900.

Florence Nightingale triggered the professionalization of nursing. Photograph c. 1860

Sometimes traditional medicines include parts of endangered species, such as the slow loris in Southeast Asia.

Botánicas such as this one in Jamaica Plain, Boston, cater to the Latino community and sell folk medicine alongside statues of saints, candles decorated with prayers, lucky bamboo, and other items.

American Civil War hospital at Gettysburg, 1863

The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, written in the 17th century BC, contains the earliest recorded reference to the brain. New York Academy of Medicine.

"Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale.