Arthroscopy joint by a portal on the outer border of the patella. It is not clear if these examinations were of deceased or of living patients. Pioneering work began as early as the 1920s with the work of Eugen Bircher. He published several papers in the 1920s about his use of arthroscopy of the knee for diagnostic purposes. After diagnosing torn tissue, he used open surgery to remove or repair the damaged tissue. Initially, he used an electric Jacobaeus thoracolaparoscope for his diagnostic procedures, which produced a dim view of the joint. Later, he developed a double-contrast approach to improve visibility.
Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body were successfully making quasi-empirical preparations of active substances with androgens and estrogens, a technique that modern biochemists did not develop until the early 20th century. The physician William C. Cooper and the sinologist Nathan Sivin (1973) chose what the Chinese call "rényào" 人藥 "human drugs" as a pilot experiment sample for pharmacologically analyzing the efficacy of drugs used in TCM. In contrast to many traditional Chinese plant, animal, and mineral pharmaceuticals with uncertain active constituents, the chemical composition of the human body and parts is well known, and "their therapeutic effectiveness, or lack of it, can be objectively, if approximately,