TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - History of Telehealth A1 - Nesbitt, Thomas S. A1 - Katz-Bell, Jana A2 - Rheuban, Karen Schulder A2 - Krupinski, Elizabeth A. Y1 - 1 N1 - T2 - Understanding Telehealth AB - Since early human history and throughout many cultures, accessing a healer or someone with “expert health knowledge” was considered beneficial in alleviating maladies. Healers such as shamans, priests, and medicine men or women are known to have been part of prehistoric cultures. These healers normally required communication with and ideally visualization of the patient in order to diagnose and treat.1 In many cultures, over time, healers became known as physicians; the first acknowledged physician, an Egyptian named Imhotep, lived during the 27th century BCE.1 By 420 BCE medicine began to develop standards, with Hippocrates credited for initiating the age of “rational medicine.” That era was characterized by the development of the idea that diseases have natural causes and the origination of the concept of ethics in medicine, perpetuated as the Hippocratic Oath. The Asclepion Temples that the Greeks erected became some of the world's first health centers.2 People (pilgrims) traveled great distances to these temples to seek medical advice, prognosis, and healing.2,3 In approximately 300 BCE in India, specific structures were constructed for health care, with basic sanitization standards.4 Around 100 BCE, the Romans erected buildings called valetudinarians for the care of sick slaves, gladiators, and soldiers.3 With the fall of the Roman, Greek, and Egyptian civilizations came a decline in the formal study and practice of medicine in these cultures.5 SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/28 UR - accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1158358774 ER -