medicine through time

• Medieval Period


  1250-1500
• Medical Renaissance


  1500-1700
• Medieval Ideas about causes

  Punishment from God. Miasma. Imbalance of the four humours
• Medieval ideas about treatment

  Prayer. Herbal Remedies
• Medieval ideas about prevention


  Keeping streets/water supplies clean
• Renaissance ideas about causes


  Punishment from god. Miasma. Imbalanced humours
• Renaissance ideas about Treatment


  Prayer. Herbal remedies. Bleeding/purging. External operations
• Renaissance ideas about prevention

  Cleaning streets/water supplies. Quarantining the sick. Dissecting dead bodies to learn
• 18th-19th century ideas about causes


  Germ theory. Miasma
• 18th-19th century ideas about treatment

  Herbal remedies
• 18th-19th century ideas about prevention


  Smallpox vacccination. Antiseptic. Sewers. Clean water
• Modern ideas about causes


  DNA. Germs
• Modern ideas about treatment


  Antibiotic. Chemical drugs. Blood transfusions
• Modern ideas about prevention


  NHS. Knowledge. Research
• Black Death


  1348
• Vesalius publishes The Fabric of the Human Body


  1543
• William Harvey publishes his book on blood circulation


  1628
• Great Plague of London

  1665
• Thomas Sydenham publishes Observations Medicae


  1676
• Edward Jenner develops first vaccine


  1796
• James Simpson discovers chloroform


  1847
• Joseph lister uses carbolic acid in surgery

  1865
• Louis Pasteur Germ Theory


  1861
• John Snow discovers the significance of the broad street pump causing cholera

  1854
• Karl Landsteiner discovers blood groups

  1901
• Second Public Health Act

  1875. It is made compulsory to improve sewers/drainage/clean water
• The Church in Medieval England


  Priests wrote all the books dictating medical knowledge so everybody had to be religious.
• Fleming discovers penicillin


  1928
• First Magic bullet


  1909- the Salvarsan 606
• NHS introduced


  1948
• Human Genome Project began

  1990
• Education in medieval England


  The church controlled education
• Housing in medieval England

  Whole families (with animals) would live in one room.
• Communication in medieval England


  Most people were illiterate
• Supernatural explanations of illness (medieval)

  Religion and astrology
• Rational explanations of illness (medieval)

  Miasma and The four humours
• The theory of the four humours


  Four liquids within the body (blood, yellow bile, black bile, phlegm) if they became unbalanced you became ill. To get better the humours have to be rebalanced
• Galen emphasized the importance of


  studying body structure
• Galen's theory of opposites


  Based on the four humours but instead of ridding yourself of the excess humour, you needed more of the other humours
• Alternative medieval treatments if religion failed

  Amulets. Bathing. Purging. Bleeding. Herbal remedies