Before science, disease was a curse, a dark magic. For millennia, humanity stumbled in the dark, fighting an invisible, shapeshifting enemy that stalked our families and crippled our civilizations. This is the story of how we began to fight back. In this episode of The Human Odyssey, we journey from the surgical kits of Roman gladiators to the forgotten knowledge of the Islamic Golden Age; we stand beside the rebels who defied dogma to map the human body, and we witness the tragic tale of a doctor who discovered a life-saving truth but was destroyed by the establishment. This is the story of medicine: a saga of courage, discovery, and the indomitable human will to understand, to heal, and to survive.

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