medicine through time

• Beliefs about the cause of the Black Death


  • Judgment from God
  • Humor imbalances
  • Miasma
• Attempts to prevent the spread of the Black Death


  • Prayer and fasting
  • Bloodletting and purging
  • Carrying charms or using magic potions
  • Refusing to let the bishop extend the cemetery
  • Shutting off the town from the outside world
• The disease reached London in November 1348 and in January 1349 King Edward the third closed Parliament
• The government created laws such as the 1349 Ordinance of Labourers to try and stop peasants from moving around the country
• Some people think the Black Death helped cause the peasants revolt in 1381 and eventually the collapse of the feudal system in Britain
• In the Renaissance, Western doctors gained access to the original writings of Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna
• The Renaissance saw the emergence of science as we know it, with a move away from the magic and mysticism of medieval medicine
• The Reformation reduced the influence of the Catholic Church, leading to improvements in medical knowledge
• Doctors in the Renaissance trained at the College of Physicians, where they studied recent medical developments and performed dissections
• The College of Physicians encouraged the licensing of doctors to stop the influence of quacks
• Explorations abroad brought new ingredients for drugs back to Britain, including guaiacum and quinine
• The dissolution of the monasteries led to the closure of many hospitals, which were gradually replaced by free hospitals run by trained physicians
• The invention of the printing press allowed new ideas to spread more easily and encouraged scientific debates
• The Royal Society encouraged people to be skeptical and question scientific ideas
• Ambroise Paré improved surgical techniques, including a method of tying off severed blood vessels with ligatures
• Many doctors were reluctant to accept that Galen was wrong, so they continued to use similar treatments to the medieval period
• Living conditions in Renaissance towns were terrible, with overcrowding, lack of light and fresh air, and poor sanitation
• Hospitals in the Renaissance were for the sick and deserving poor, and some were used for entertainment by visitors
• Andreas Vesalius

  Medical professor in Padua who performed dissections and wrote books on human anatomy, challenging Galen's ideas
• Thomas Sydenham

  Physician in London who made detailed observations of patients and classified diseases, rather than relying on theoretical knowledge
• William Harvey


  Discovered the circulation of blood, challenging previous theories about how blood flows through the body
• The Great Plague struck London in 1665, killing about 100,000 people, or 20% of the city's population
• Responses to the Great Plague


  • Wearing lucky charms or amulets
  • Saying prayers and fasting
  • Special remedies using ingredients like dried toad
  • Bloodletting
  • Believing the disease was caused by miasma
  • Strapping a live chicken to swellings
• Councils tried to quarantine plague victims and close down crowded areas to prevent the spread of the disease
• Until the 1970s, people had few effective ways to prevent the spread of disease
• Edward Jenner's discovery of the smallpox vaccine was a landmark in the development of preventative medicine
• Before Jenner, the only way to prevent smallpox was through inoculation, which involved infecting people with a mild form of the disease
• Jenner

  Country doctor in Gloucestershire who discovered that people who had cowpox did not get smallpox, leading to the development of the smallpox vaccine
• Edward Jenner's discovery of the smallpox vaccine


  A landmark in the development of preventative medicine
• Before Jenner, the only way to prevent smallpox was inoculation
• In the 1970s, smallpox was one of the most deadly diseases
• In 1751, over 3500 people died from smallpox in London alone
• Inoculation


  Introduced into Britain from Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1780, it involved making a cut in a patient's arm and soaking it in pus taken from the swelling of somebody who already had a mild form of smallpox
• Edward Jenner


  • He was a country doctor in Gloucestershire who heard that milkmaids didn't get smallpox but they did catch the milder cow pox
  • In 1796, he tested his theory by injecting a small boy called James Phillips with pus from the sores of Sarah Nelms, a milkmaid with cow pox, and then infecting him with smallpox, finding that James didn't catch the disease
  • He published his findings in 1798 and coined the term 'vaccination' using the Latin word for cow 'vaca'
• There was huge opposition to Jenner's vaccination during the 1700s
• In 1802, Parliament gave Jenner 10,000 pounds to open a vaccination clinic
• In 1840, vaccination against smallpox was made free for infants
• In 1853, vaccination against smallpox was made compulsory for infants
• Jenner's vaccine was a success, contributing to a big fall in the number of smallpox cases in Britain
• Jenner didn't know why his vaccine worked, so he couldn't develop any other vaccines