The Influence Of Fire

Fire has played a major role in evolution of humans. Even well before humans arrived on earth, fire played an important role in plant adaptations and distribution of ecosystems. Humans initiated a new stage in ecosystem fire, using it to make the Earth more suited to their lifestyle. Fire served the early humans as a source of warmth during cold nights which could have facilitated their expansion from warm to cold places. It also provided protection from predators. Once man gained control on fire, he used it for cooking and making tools/weapons. Hence, fire gave man the ability to cook meat before eating opposed to eating it raw. This was responsible for increase in brain size observed in humans as compared to earlier apes. Fire was also an

Fabricius Hildanus, a 15th century German physician, was the first to classify burns into three degrees and debates raged well into the 20th century about how best to treat the burns – to cool or to not cool, to moisten and drain or to dry and seal for sterility (2). It was decided after First World War that skin transplantation was the best treatment method along with subsequent scar reduction and pain control medications. Around 1950s the most important treatment for 30% total body surface area (TBSA) was skin grafting. In 1950s and 1960s there was extensive research in the field of burn treatment and by then, patients with more than 90% TBSA burns can expect a fighting chance for survival when offered treatment from a protocol involving surgical burns therapy consisting of localized treatment and systemic medical management. The systematic treatment was based on pathophysiology of the burns. This theory consisted of management of shock, prevention of infection and systemic nutrition supply to tissues and whole body. Along with skin grafting, surgical excision also became popular. This involved drying the burnt skin to form a crust (partial thickness) or eschar (full thickness) which was accompanied by surgical excision i.e. removal of the eschar to allow the growth of underlying skin. These treatments became the ‘standard of care’ and became known collectively as ‘conventional surgical burns therapy’ or ‘surgical excision and skin grafting burns therapy. In 1980s, burn specialists found that this conventional burn therapy was rather a destructive therapy as far as local tissue is concerned. They noted that conventional therapies neither rehabilitate the burned tissue itself, nor do they cooperate with the natural physiological repair mechanisms of