WIPS global: Top 10 inventions that have preserved human health

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced the “Top 10 Inventions that Protected Human Health,” selected by Facebook friends of the KIPO in celebration of the “April Health Month” in Korea.

Vaccines were selected as the best invention, followed by antibiotics, refrigerators, masks, and soaps. In addition, air purifiers, endoscopes, anti-inflammatory analgesics, anesthetics, and flush toilets were selected as inventions that gained a lot of support.

Looking at the results of the investigation,

Comments on the vaccine, which accounted for 17.5% of the effective responses and was selected as the best invention, were 'No. 1 public confidence to protect humanity from infectious diseases', 'I'm really scared if there was no vaccine in this corona virus times', 'The vaccines for the corona virus has been invented and now, the eradication seems to be coming soon'.

Antibiotics, ranked second, accounted for 11.4% of the effective responses, and there were opinions such as “innovation in the medical field” and “it’s made dramatic increase to human lifespan.”

Refrigerators, which were selected in the 3rd place, accounted for 9.4% of the effective responses, and supportive opinions are, ``refrigerator is also the way to store vaccines and medicines,'' and ``I lived without a refrigerator for two weeks because the refrigerator broke down, and the quality of life was poor”., and so forth.

Below are the results and explanations of the 10 inventions.

Rank	Inventions	(%)	Contents
1	Vaccines	17.5	In 1796, the British doctor Edward Jenner injected the pus, which is from a cowpox patient into a boy’s arm who hadn’t been infected by smallpox. After an experiment. in 1798, the medical community announced, and in 1853 the Congress made it mandatory to use vaccinia using cowpox.
2	Antibiotics	11.4	In 1928, chemist Alexander Fleming discovered that a green mold made staphylococcus stop to grow. After that, two professors, Florey and Chain, continued their research on the chemical substance (penicillin) obtained from the green mold, and succeeded in mass production of penicillin, the first antibiotic in 1942.
3	Refrigerator	9.4	In 1922, von Platen and Munters attending the KTH Royal Technical School in Stockholm, Sweden. invented a gas-absorbing cooling cabinet for preserving food. This refrigerator was produced in 1923 by a company called AB Arctic, but it was not popular.
4	Mask	8.6	Pliny, the ancient Roman natural philosopher, devised a mask using the bladder of an animal to protect the miners' respirator from asbestos. This is the first dust mask. In the Middle Ages, masks in the shape of a bird beak were used to prevent the Black Death.
5	Soap	6.3	Around 25000 B.C., the Sumerians of Mesopotamia boiled goat oil and wood ash and used it. This is the origin of soap. In 1790, when French chemist Nicolas Leblanc invented a method of mass-producing soda from sea salt and rock salt as raw materials, soap began to spread to the general public.
6	Air purifier	5.7	It is first known in 1830 that a device consisting of a copper helmet with a flexible collar and clothing was granted a patent to Charles Anthony Deane. In the form of a helmet, a long leather hose at the back was used to supply air, and the air inhaled through a short pipe was blown out.
7	Endoscope	4.3	The inventor of the modern endoscope was Basil Hirschowitz of America in 1958. He looked at his hair and came up with an idea, inventing an endoscope called a Fiberscope that used optical fibers. More than 100,000 optical fibers with 10-20 microns in diameter were bundled, and a camera was connected to the end of the fiber so that the inside of the human body could be observed through a screen.
8	anti-inflammatory analgesics	4.0	Dr. Felix Hoffman, who worked at Bayer in Germany, created a substance called acetylsalicylic acid and named it aspirin while researching a way to improve the drug resistance of sodium salicylate, which his father was taking to relieve the pain of rheumatoid arthritis.
9	Anesthetic	3.9	The effect of anesthetic, diethyl ether, that is to say nitrous oxide, which appeared only in the mid-19th century, was discovered in 1800 by British chemist and inventor Humphry Davy. It was the first time that ether was used as a general anesthetic in an operation to remove a molar tooth on a patient named Abbott by William Morton, an American dentist, on October 16, 1846.
10	Flush toilet	3.3	The first inventor was John Harrington, a British nobleman in 1596, but it was Alexander Cumming, a British watchmaker in 1775, who applied for the world's first patent for a flush toilet. His flush toilet succeeded John Harrington in many ways but it’s built an innovative system called, 'S- trap'.