renaissance period

• Medical Renaissance in England

  Period from about 1500 to 1700
• Changes during the Medical Renaissance

  • Ideas about disease began to change but the way doctors treated and prevented disease hardly changed at all
  • Key factors: changes in attitude (humanism, secularism), developments in technology (clocks, microscopes, thermometers), education developments, improved communication (printing press)
• Humanism


  A set of beliefs that included rejecting religious ideas and using science and experiments to answer questions about the world
• Secularism

  The idea that religion should be kept separate from other aspects of life, leading the church to gradually lose its control over education and medicine
• Developments in technology


  • Clocks
  • Microscopes
  • Thermometers
• The printing press, developed in 1440, allowed for quicker and cheaper book production, reducing the church's control over ideas and enabling scientific journals
• The Royal Society


  • A scientific society set up in 1660 with a Royal Charter, giving it credibility and support
  • Had its own laboratory and journal (Philosophical Transactions)
  • Reports were written in plain English, making work accessible
• God and sin


  The idea that disease was seen as a punishment from God or a test of faith
• Four humors theory


  The belief that unbalanced humors caused disease
• Miasma


  The idea that bad air smells created by rotting matter could make you ill
• Contagion


  The belief that diseases were caused by seeds in the air and certain conditions spreading diseases
• Astrology and digestion were ideas about the cause of disease that became less popular during the Medical Renaissance
• Thomas Sydenham


  • Argued against Galen and Hippocrates, believed disease came from outside the body, encouraged close observation of symptoms, treated the disease not just symptoms, helped set up a more scientific approach to medicine
• Medical care and healers in the Renaissance

  • Physicians (university-educated, expensive)
  • Apothecaries (mixed remedies, cheaper than physicians)
  • Surgeons/barber-surgeons (did simple operations, cheaper than physicians)
  • Hospitals (funded by charity, began admitting infectious patients)
  • Home (most care from women, herbal remedies)
• The Plague of 1665 in London


  • 100,000 people died
  • Causes: miasma, punishment from God, position of planets, contagion
  • Treatments: transference, herbal remedies, quack remedies
  • Preventions: praying, removing miasma, quarantines, cleaning streets, catching syphilis
• The 14th century refers to the medieval period, while the 17th century refers to the Renaissance period