renaissance medicine

• when was the great plague?

  1665-1666
• name 4 treatments for the plague?

  • religious charms around neck
  • cut open buboes
  • medicine like 'London Treacle' (wine, honey, herbs, opium)
  • bleeding and purging
• name 5 methods of prevention for the plague?

  • sweet smelling herbs hung in doorways
  • drank 'plague water'
  • stayed at home
  • soaked coins in vinegar
  • chewed tobacco
• what king was in charge at the time of the plague?

  Charles
• what was the peak death rate in the plague and when?

  7165 dead in 1 week in September 1665
• how many recorded deaths were there for the great plague?

  68,596
• Ambroise Pare:

  • barber surgeon in army
  • used cauterisation (rose oil, egg white, turpentine)
  • repopularised ligatures (to combat bloodless from arteries)
  • specialised in prosthetics with functioning limbs (eg knee joints/ elbows)
  • ridiculed as he recorded his discoveries in French rather than latin
• Andreas Vesalius:

  • Belgium born anatomist
  • based his observations on the dissections he made
  • book= 'fabric of the human body' published= 1543
  • successfully challenged Galen
  • said jaw bone = 1 not 2
  • breast bone= 3 not 7
  • said blood doesn't flow through invisible holes in the septum
• William Harvey:

  • 1st to recognise full circulation of blood in body
  • disproved Galen by saying blood isn't made in liver
  • book= motion of the heart and blood in humans and animals published= 1628
  • showed heart acts as a double pump
  • dissected cold-blooded animals
  • 50 years before university of Paris taught Harveys ideas rather than galens
• Thomas Sydenham:

  • nicknamed the 'English Hippocrates'
  • books= 'book on fevers' (1666) 'observations medicae' (1676)
  • believed each disease was different and diagnosis was key
  • 1st to describe scarlet fever
  • 1st to use iron to treat anaemia
  • believed body had to fight illness by itself
  • prescribed a healthy diet eg roast chicken and wine
• who was the royal society funded by?

  Charles II
• what did the royal society have?

  own lab with microscopes
• who invented the printing press and when?


  Johannes Gutenberg in 1450s
• when was the 1st blood transfusion and who was it from and to?

  1665, from sheep to a man (believed to make him smarter)