c1500-1700 Renaissance

• Vesalius was mostly taught Galen's ideas at university however his tutor let him perform dissections and one night he stole the body of an executed criminal
• Vesalius published 'the six anatomical tables' which included labelled drawings of the liver, veins, arteries and the skeleton
• Vesalius' work was shown to a judge who allowed him to use the bodies of executed criminals to dissect
• Vesalius dissections found mistakes in Galen's work as he used animals not people (he thought there were two jaw bones not one)
• Vesalius didn't want to criticise Galen as his work had been believed for so long and it would be going against the church
• Vesalius published the 'fabric of the human body' which had over 270 drawings from artists he had got to watch his dissections
• the invention of the printing press meant that each copy could be easily made and the church couldn't stop him printing it as it was no longer monks coping books out
• vesalius found around 300 mistakes in Galen's work
• physicians felt threatened by vesalius as they had built their carears on Galen's work
• William Harvey was interested in Vesalius' theory that veins contained valves and how blood flowed through the body
• Harvey dissected animals and pumped liquids through the valves of the heart into veins. He also pushed rods down veins and found they would only go in one direction
• Harvey measured the amount of blood in the body and cut up cold blooded animals to see the movement of their blood whilst they were alive and dissected human hearts
• harvey found out blood flowed in a one way system and that the heart acted as a pump
• in 1628 Harvey published 'an anatomical account of the motion of the heart and blood in animals'
• Harvey proved lots Galen's ideas wrong such as the liver producing blood as it is used up
• Humanists developed and they had a love for learning and believed they could make up their own minds and that God wasn't the cause for everything that happened
• The reformation happened. People began criticising the church and set up new reformed protestant churches so the church was no longer as powerful despite people being religious still
• instead of relying on the church educated people wanted to check for themselves leading to a scientific approach to testing and recording theories
• The royal society met weekly to discuss new ideas in science and demonstrated experiments and then published books on new ideas and discoveries
• King Charles II attended royal society meetings and gave their work loks of credibility and publicity
• in 1665 the royal society began publishing a journal called 'philosophical transactions'
• the invention of the printing press meant new ideas could easily and quickly spread and that the church was no longer in charge of what information was spread
• the dutch scientist Antione van Leeuwenhoek developed a lens for microscopes and he was the first person to see microscopic organisms which he called 'animalcules'
• thomas Sydenham refused to rely on old textbooks when diagnosing patients, instead he treated the disease and not the symptoms
• Sydenham believed each disease was different and it was important to identify them so they could treat them and identify them easier
• Sydenham discovered measles and scarlet fever were two different diseases
• Sydenham introduced the use of laudanum as an anaesthetic to knock people out
• Sydenham's theories were published in the textbook 'observationes medicae' which became the standard medical textbook
• They believed disease was caused by chemicals inside of the body and less the theory of the four humours
• They still believed in miasma and seeds spread in the air as a cause of disease
• there was a better understanding of human anatomy but not the causes of disease due to a lack of medical instruments
• people still used the theory of the four humours as it was what they had been taught and were used to
• bleeding, purging and sweating were still popular methods of treatments to balance humours
• there was a new theory of transference where you rubbed something on your body or boils to transfer the disease
• herbal remedies were popular treatments and there were new herbs due to exploration
• people began looking for chemical cure. this was called 'iatrochemistry'
• people became superstitious. people believed if King Charles II touched them they would be cured from scrofula
• prayers, charms and spells were used to prevent disease
• people still followed the regimen sanitatis to prevent disease
• people tried to stay clean from bad smells however bathing became less popular due to the spread of syphillis from them