Paper 1 - Medieval Medicine Through Time Flashcards

‘Bad air’ which was blamed for spreading diseases

Using human urine to diagnose disease

To open a vein or apply leeches to draw blood from a patient, restoring the balance to the humours

• God had sent the illness to punish you

• It was an imbalance to the four humours

• Astrology

• Fasting

• Healing prayers and incantations

• Pilgrimage

• King’s healing power

• Star charts

• Horoscope of patients

• Blanc Mangier

• Mint, chamomile, rose oil

• Theriaca

• Bathing

• Cupping

• Leeches

• Blood-letting

• Purging

• Hygiene - Regimen Sanitatis

• Purifying the air - cleaning streets, herbs, posies

• Diet - Aid digestion by not eating too much

• The Church - live sin-free, pray regularly, offer tithes

• Women (wives, mothers and midwives)

• Physicians (university trained doctors - expensive)

• Apothecaries (mixed and sold medicines)

• Hospitals (run by the church - monks and nuns)

• Barber-surgeons (performed basic surgery)

A physician would diagnose the illness but not treat it. He would look at the patient’s urine, faeces and blood, then, he would consult the astrological charts and create a course of treatment

Mainly mixed herbal remedies. They had a good knowledge from experience and family business. They weren’t considered as skilled as physicians but were much cheaper.

Least qualified. Good with knives and had a steady hand so performed surgery such as pulling teeth or bleeding patients

A herbal manual used by apothecaries

• No dissections because of the church

• You couldn’t question Galen as it was considered heresy

• Theory of Four Humours and The Theory of Opposites

• Miasma

• Physicians were university trained

• The Church believed in helping people that were sick as it is what Jesus did

• Animal and human excrement was common in streets, rubbish was not removes and rats were common

• London had a big problems the water pipes had leaks. This meant that water was contaminated and in short supply leading to many people preferring Ale over water

• Rich people had good standard of hygiene

• Nuns and Monks had simple but hygienic lives

• Town councils recognised the importance of public health (e.g. Southampton)

• Stewes - large baths were people bathed together however this was denounced by the church for immoral behaviour

• Public Latrines became more popular

• Muck-rakers were hired to clean the streets and gong farmers cleared cesspits and latrines

• The Church had control over everybody’s ideas

• Communications - printing came to England in the 1470s but before that there were few books and knowledge was slow to spread

• Work and Harvests - meant there was little time for education or reading

• Education - the Church controlled education, especially were physicians were trained

• Attitudes - people were encouraged to not think for themselves or challenge traditional ideas

• The king and government - cleaning streets was up to local governments but they had very little money

• Food supplies and Transport - animal excrement was everywhere and butchery created dirt in the streets. Horse and cart were used for transport and this created more dirt

1348

A third

1543

1565

1628

1660

1665

• A well respected doctor in London in 1660s and 1670s. Sydenham’s work was important in moving medicine in Britain away from the classical ideas of Galen and Hippocrates

• He encouraged his students to observe their patients and note down their symptoms in detailed descriptions and then look for remedies. Theorised that the nature of the patient had little to do with disease

• He wasn’t able to isolate and identify the various microorganisms causing diseases he was observing. But he was able to identify that measles and scarlet fever were separate diseases.

• Prof. of surgery and taught anatomy, did his own dissections, published drawings he believed had a place in medicine

• Published The Fabric of the Human Body in 1543. Each section started with complete picture, which then was broken down and examined layer by layer - corrected Galen’s mistakes

• A new method for anatomical progression - public dissection, publication of work with diagrams

• Made one of the most important breakthroughs in medical history when he discovered that blood circulates around the body

• Disproved Galen in his book published in 1628 by showing that the heart acts as a pump

A group of people interested in science who met weekly. They had a laboratory with microscopes. King Charles II was a patron

• The government under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were strong and rich

• The economy boomed and trade prospered. As a result of this, people could afford to spend more money on healthcare

• Artists (such as Michelagelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Titian) transformed paintings as they painted the world and things relevant to people in new ways.

• This led them to study the body in more detail, and was connected to improved knowledge of anatomy

• The Renaissance saw the beginning of scientific method

• This involved conducting an experiment, collecting observations, then coming to a conclusion

• Universities built new medical schools where scholars looked at ancient ideas about medicine. At first they though that there were proving these ideas but soon they began to conduct experiments which led them to question the knowledge of Hippocrates and Galen

• This was important for the development of medicine

• During the Renaissance people began to question the church meaning that science and experiments became more popular. As a result a group called the Royal Society was established

• Scientists such as Robert Hooke met there to share ideas leading to many new discoveries such as new microscopes

• This was important for medicine because it encouraged people to work together to find new ideas about the causes and treatments of disease

• It’s official foundation date is 28th November 1660

• Aim: to found ‘a College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning’

• Protected by king Charles II

• It had a library (the first book was presented in 1661) and a museum of specimens of scientific interest.

• Isaac Newton was on its presidents in the 18th century

• Published books and journals such as the Philosophical Transactions

• Translated books into English

• Held meetings to witness experiment

• Members to have experiment diaries

• Had a regular journal publishing news

• Government in 1850 helped by giving a grant to the Society of £1000 to assist scientists in their research and to buy equipment

• Important because unlike Universities, it was not afraid of change and was ready to accept new ideas which were not necessary in line with those of Galen

• The invention of the printing press, a machine that allowed documents to be copied easily meant that new ideas could spread faster around Europe

• The most famous printing press was the first made in 1428 by Johannes Gutenberg

• This helped medicine because it allowed people to swap ideas about diseases easily therefore helping them create new ideas

• America was discovered by 1492 by Christopher Columbus

• This meant that new foods and materials were brought back from the New World

• This helped medicine as many of these new plants and foods had medicinal properties allowing new medicines to be made

• The invention of new weapons (especially gunpowder) led to soldiers getting different sorts of wounds such as powder burns and bullet wounds

• This was important for medicine because it challenged doctors to make new treatments on the battlefields to cope with these new wounds

• Changes in religion known as the reformation, led to a decline in the Church’s authority, even though most people remained strongly religious

• A new attitude began to spread. Instead of relying on the views of an accepted authority, educated people wanted to check knowledge for themselves

• This led to a scientific approach of testing and recording details, then sharing these results with other people

• Belief in humoural imbalances persisted through to the end of the 17th century and beyond

  • Therefore the old treatments which were aimed at rebalancing humours continued as well such as bleeding, purging and sweating.

• A new popular theory in this period was the idea of transference

  • This meant that an illness or a disease could be transferred to something else

  • For example, people believed that if you rubbed an object on an ailment the disease would transfer from you to the object.

  • There was also a popular theory that you could get rid of warts by rubbing them with an onion - through transference, the warts would ‘transfer’ to the vegetables

• Despite there being some continuity with herbal remedies.

  • Since there was an age of exploration, new herbal remedies started to appear from other countries

  • New plants started to appear from the New World

  • Some physicians believed that within each country were herbal remedies which would cure the diseases that came from that country: the appearance of new remedies opened up a huge number of new possibilities for treatments and cures

  • New remedies that started to appear included sarsaparilla from the New World, used to treat the Great Pox, and ipecacuanha from Brazil, later known just as ipecac, which was effective as a cure for dysentery

  • Thomas Sydenham popularised the use of cinchona bark, from Peru, in treating malaria. This was an effective remedy as long as patients continued to take it for some time after it seemed as though the disease had gone

  • Physicians also tested other new arrivals like tea coffee, nutmeg, cinnamon and even tobacco to see if they had any impact on diseases

• Herbal remedies continued to be popular, although their use changed slightly

  • In the renaissance, often remedies were chosen because of their colour or shape.

  • For example, yellow herbs, such as radish and saffron, were used to treat jaundice (which turns the skin yellow). Smallpox, which had a red dash as one of the symptoms, was treated with the ‘re cure’ - drinking red wine, eating red foods and wearing red clothes

• The growth of alchemy, which laid the foundations for the modern science of chemistry, had an impact on medical treatments

  • People began to look for chemical cures for diseases instead of relying on herbs and blood-letting. This new science was known as iatrochemistry, or medical chemistry, and it was extremely popular in the 17th century

  • Inspired by Paracelsus, the scientist who experimented with chemical treatments; medical chemists experimented with metals as a cure for common ailments.

  • The Pharacopoeia Londinensis, published by the College of Physicians in 1618 as a manual of remedies, included a chapter of salts, metals and minerals. Among its 2140 remedies were 122 different chemical preparations, including mercury and antimony.

  • In small doses, antimony promotes sweating, which cools the body down. This fitted in with the idea of purging the body of disease. Patients would leave wine in an antimony cup overnight and drink the contents in the morning.

  • In larger doses, antimony was used to encourage vomiting - another type of purge.

  • Although, it is poisonous in its pure form, a compound of it, known as antimony potassium tartrate, was said to have cured Louis XIV of France of typhoid fever in 1657, and became wildly popular afterwards.

• People still believed that there were many factors that could prevent disease including superstitions and prayer

• Cleanliness was very important

• People continued to practise regimen sanitatis

• Miasma was still believed in

• People started to believe that other things could help avoid disease, such as practising moderation and your condition at birth

• Bathing has become a lot less fashionable in England since the arrival of syphilis. People now kept clean by changing their clothes more often

• By the end of the 17th century, people began to think that disease was related to other factors

• More steps were now taken to remove miasma from the air (for example, removing sewage and picking up rubbish from the streets)

• The Theory of the Four Humours can’t be used to explain certain diseases anymore

• They were more curious about the world, so there are lots of new ideas about the causes of disease and illness

• Now many scientists and great thinkers want to better understand the world around them

• They still relied on remedies and cures from earlier times

• They still believed that miasma causes disease

• The practice of medicine is the same, even though ideas about medicine are changing