Renaissance medicine piggy facts

• Individuals started to speak out against the church like a man named Paracelsus (appointed town physician and lecturer to the university in Basel), he stated that "Galen is a liar and a fake" and that "they are good for nothing. You will not need them. Reading never made a doctor. Patients are the only books. You will follow me".
• what year did Paracelsus theorized that disease was caused by problems with chemicals inside the body?


  1526
• What year and who created the first printing press?

  1440- Johanne Gutenberg
• By 1500 there were hundreds of printing presses across Europe. It was a faster way of producing more accurate information instead of having to spend lots of time hand writing them. It also took copying out of the Churches control meaning they are loosing more control.
• Fugitive sheets (cheaper information sheets) were used as whole texts were expensive, they provided prints of anatomical drawings.
• What year did the first person use the printing press to print a book and who?

  1476- William Caxton
• The control of the Church decreased, as Henry VIII wanted a divorce from his wife Catherine of Argon and the Pope didn't allow a divorce since it was disapproved by Catholics, so the only way he could get that divorce was to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism since now he as the king was in charge of the church. This decreased the churches control, as monasteries closed so books and education was restricted so new breakthroughs could occur since the church can no longer be in control of what the people do. (Reformation 1534-36)
• Vesalius was born in Belgium in 1514 and started to study medicine at the university of Paris. He then moved to Italy, where he started teaching anatomy and surgery. He encouraged students to do dissections as he believed that anatomy could only be learned by direct observations rather than just reading Galens books.
• What year did Vesalius release his book, what was it called and what did it consist of?

  1543, the book was called "The fabric of the human body" and it included a complete guide of the human body and also displayed errors that Galen had made (like he said that the human breast bone was 3 segments and not 7, the human jawbone is made up of 1 bone and not 2 and the human liver do not have lobes). It also contained more accurate drawings of the human body.
• Vesalius was knowledgeable about the human body since he experimented by dissecting bodies of criminals.
• Many challenged Vesalius's ideas at first, some even said that the human body has changed since Galen's time and so therefore he wasn't wrong!
• in 1620s, Harvey went about proving Galen wrong by performing dissections, and he did this by: dissecting live cold-blooded animals, dissecting human bodies, then proving that the body has a one-way system for the blood by trying to pump liquid past the valves in the veins but was unsuccessful, then he proved the veins carried blood then lastly calculated the amount of blood going into the arteries each hour was 3x the weight of a man.
• Harvey proved Galen wrong by stating: blood, was re-used and not used up, blood pumped around the body in one direction (one way system) and disagreed that blood passed through a wall in the heart.
• What year did Thomas Harvey realease his book and what was is called?

  1628- "An Anatomical account of the motion of the Heart and Blood".
• It wasn't until 1673 that Thomas Harveys teachings were taught since he wasn't believed at first and even lost his job!
• Thomas Sydenham was a doctor in London in the 1660s and 1670s. He was known to be the "English Hippocrates" as, like Hippocrates, he advised physicians to not just rely on medical books when making a diagnosis but to instead he told them that "you must go to the bedside. It is there alone that you will learn about disease". He also said "you must closely observe the symptoms and take a full history of a patients health and symptoms before making a diagnosis"
• Thomas Sydenham also came up with another idea where diseases could be put into categories and discussed what treatments worked best for different diseases, by this he was able to show that the measles and scarlet fever were two different illnesses. He also treated illnesses by using ingredients from the New World (e.g. cinchona bark for malaria which is still used today).
• What year was the Royal society set up?

  1660
• The Royal Society was an organization set up in London which aimed to promote and carry out experiments and share knowledge, it improved scientific knowledge. This was a change from the Middle Ages, as now debates are being held whereas before, Roger Bacon was imprisoned for questioning ideas.
• What year did Charles II share his support for The Royal Society?why was it significant for the organization?


  1662- it raised their profile which meant more people would be willing to donate money to the organization.
• What year did the Royal Society release the first scientific magazine and what was it called and what did it consist of?

  1665- "Philosophical Transactions", it was a journal which communicated new ideas and shared individuals work.
• The royal society encouraged its member to write their reports in English and not Latin to make it more accessible to everybody and also requested members to provide copies of their work into a reference library to make a available for everybody to study.
• Apothecaries in the Renaissance started to use remedies the same color as the sickness that needs to be treated.
• Physicians were starting to be taught new subjects, like iatrochemistry (understanding medicine in terms of chemistry) and works of individuals like Harvey. They also sometimes started to use more dissections but it was hard to find enough dead bodies.
• In the Renaissance, there was a shift towards using bloodletting less often because they realized that it could cause death if too much blood is taken away
• Patients you would find a Renaissance hospital were: people with curable diseases, people with illnesses that were contagious or people with wounds
• Pest houses were hospitals that specialized in one particular disease.
• People were still commonly treated by women at home. One famous woman was called Lady Grace Mildmay.
• What year was the Great Plague?

  1665
• How many were killed by the Plague?

  Serious outbreak, 7000 deaths were recorded in one week, 100,000 Londoners died. 1 in 5.
• How long did the plague last?

  1 year, from June 1665-July 1666
• Symptoms of the Great plague includes: shock, extreme weakness, abdominal pain, skin and other tissues turning black + dying, fatigue, vomiting, dark blotches, etc.
• People tried to prevent the Plague by: quarantining people with families (locked them away and painted a red cross on their doors so people know they are infected), stopping people entering London, pomanders, diets, physicians wearing special costumes with a bird-like hood to attract the disease out of patients they has sweet herbs in beaks, catching syphilis, killing stray animals, fires.
• People tried treatments for the plague like: physicians advised patients to wrap themselves in thick Wollen cloths and lay by a fire to sweat the disease out, transference (strapping a live chicken to a swollen lump to draw the poison out), quack doctors (not medically qualified).
• The Government did things like: Mayor closed gates of London, King Charles II fled, banned public meetings, theatres closed, streets kept clean, dogs and cats killed on the streets, quarantined in homes and wardens go to houses to check plague victims, painted red crosses on infected homes and sent local authorities to bring them food.
• People who died of the plague, were buried in mass pits and they dug outside cities and had to be at least 6 feet deep. People thought that infected bodies could make the air go bad (miasma).
• Who discovered animalcules and when?

  Antony Van Leeuwenhoek in 1674
• what year was the microscope invented and by who?

  1665- Robert Hooke