Treatments

• Modern : science used to prevent disease

  • 18 century : rich people tried to prevent diseases with fresh air, a balanced diet and exercising regularly
  • john snow used the scientific method to prevent cholera (1854)
• Germ theory : 1861

  • Koch discovered that specific bacteria can cause different diseases.
  • he also realised that antibodies work on specific bacteria
• Medieval: leeches

  • bloodletting or using leeches were to help take out “impure blood” out of your body.
  • they did this to balance out the four humours
• medieval : barber surgeon

  • little medical knowledges
  • set broken ribs , did bloodletting and performed simple surgeries
• zodiac charts

  • used to suggest treatment ( based on each body part linked to a star sign)
• Early modern

  • new ingredients discovered in the 15-17th centuries.
  • rhubarb from Asia
  • tobacco from North America
• Marie curie : radiation

  • discovered two radioactive elements
  • won a Nobel prize in 1903 and 1911
  • used to destroy cancer cell
  • during ww1 she discovered mobile X-ray units
• Fleming, Florey and chain : antibiotics

  • 1928 Fleming discovered that penicillin can kill bacteria by actually leaving a mould to grow on a petri dish
  • 1937 Florey and chain built on Fleming‘s work + government funded it
  • in WW2 USA used penicillin to help stop soldiers from being infected
• Transplant surgery

  • first kidney transplant was 1952
  • christian Barnard did the first heart transplant in South Africa in 1997
  • immunosuppressants help to increase the success rate of a transplant being successful .Itstopped the body immune system from rejecting the transplant