2: beginnings of change

• when was the renaissance period?

  late 15th century until the 18th century.
• what was the renaissance?

  a cultural movement that revived part of Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman culture.
• during the renaissance, what were scholars paid to do?

  restore old texts and fix bad translations that had been published in the middle ages. The theories proposed by Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna became popular again.
• what was humanism + why did it become more popular during the renaissance?

  there was an increased focus on the importance of human factors rather than supernatural things (humanism). There was also a focus on direct observation and experiments to explain things rather than blaming the supernatural. Which led people to question the church.
• when was the printing press created?

  1440
• what did the printing press allow?

  knowledge to be shared with more people very cheaply: books and leaflets could be printed off and sent across Europe whereas previously, a lot of information was only told person-to-person.
• what did the rediscovery of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna mean?

  people begun to see the importance of dissection and the anatomy. The focus on humans and the increased spread of ideas all encouraged experimentation and the search for explanations. People begun dissecting human bodies and there were illustrations in medical books.
• who used dissections to prove that Galen was wrong?

  Vesalius thought that surgery would only get better if people understood the body and the anatomy better. He faced opposition for criticising Galen and had to leave his job at the university.
• what advancements did Vesalius make to renaissance medicine?

  he published Six Anatomical Pictures in 1538, and then published On The Fabric of the Human Body in 1543, which had illustrations based on his dissections. Copies of Vesalius' works reached physicians in England.
• how were gunshot wounds treated as Pare began work on the battlefield?

  using boiling oil and this would cauterise (seal) the wound, but often this didn't work.
• how did Pare treat gunshot wounds?

  in 1537, Pare ran out of oil on the battlefield. He used cream/ointment instead of oil. This seemed to work better than oil.
• how did Pare make advancements to amputations?

  Pare used ligatures to tie blood vessels together before an amputation instead of burning them as had been done previously. This did increase the risk of infection but was a lot less painful for patients. Pare was also the first person to have fitted prosthetic limbs on his patients.
• how did Pare make advancements in surgery?

  in 1575, Pare's Works on Surgery was published. Surgeons across Europe read Works on Surgery and Queen Elizabeth I's surgeon promoted his discoveries. Pare then became a surgeon for 4 French kings.
• what aspect of Galen did Harvey challenge?

  the understanding of blood and how it circulated around the body. Harvey thought that blood circulated the body, which is different to Galen's view as he believed that blood was made in the liver and used as fuel.
• how did Harvey disprove Galen?

  Harvey used valves to show that blood could only flow in one direction and thought that there was too much blood in the body to be continously created as fuel. He showed that the heart was a pump for blood in the body.
• what happened after Harvey published his discoveries?

  he was ridiculed. Professional opinion did change, but it took a lot of time and lots of doctors continued to use blood-letting despite Harvey showing it would not be effective.
• by 1480, how many printing presses were in Europe?

  110
• how had doctors changed by the Renaissance period?


  they still didn't have much training and they still used old methods that people like Harvey thought were ineffective, but some people began to use more modern techniques.
• how did religion and the supernatural affect medicine during the Renaissance period?

  Europe was still a very religious place and doctors still believed that supernatural things caused illness, so pilgrimages and prayers were still used to cure illness. The people believed in the Royal Touch could cure disease. People still sought wise women and apothecaries to cure disease.
• by the Renaissance period, what advancements had been made to medicine?

  • hospitals began to focus on treating patients, not just caring for them.
  • lots of towns had pharmacies.
  • books were being published which covered how to treat illness at home.
• what was quackery?


  a form of medicine based on spectacles and displays. Many people viewed this as fraudulent medicine and this became more common in the 17/18th century. Quacks claimed their medicine could cure everything but they were usually ineffective.
• when did the Great plague come to Britain?

  1665
• what % of London's population was killed by the Great plague?

  25%
• what did people blame for the Great Plague?

  people still blamed miasma or supernatural/religious causes (God's will) just like they did in the Black death.
• what were the remedies for the great plague?

  included blood-letting through leeches, smoking, using animals such as frogs/snakes to "draw out the poison" or move to the countryside. In 1666, the plague seemed to be ending, some people believed the Great Fire of London (1666) killed a lot of the bacteria causing the plague.
• what improvements had been made in the 317 years between the black death and the great plague?

  • people recognised the link between dirt and disease.
  • local governments were more organised, quarantine was more effective, bodies were buried 6 feet deep in plague pits.
  • people were locked in their houses.
  • the England-Scotland border was closed.
• how did doctors protect themselves against the great plague?

  they wore special suits to protect them against miasma: they had masks stuffed with aromatic herbs to stop the bad air from reaching them.
• when were modern hospitals born?

  17/18th centuries: these hospitals were funded by wealthy people or by private subscriptions from the local community. Specialist wards (like maternity wards) and specialust hospitals were established to treat certain diseases.
• how had hospitals changed during the Renaissance?

  not much had changed in nursing. Reformers like Florence Nightingale drove a lot of reforms in hospitals, but this didn't happen until the mid-1800s. Following her work, there was a higher level of cleanliness and organisation demanded from hospitals.
• where were poor people often looked after?

  in workhouses which were large buildings where the unemployed, ill, or elderly could be looked after. Conditions in workhouses were often very bad, although they got better after 1850.
• how had the number of hospitals changed?

  in the 18th century, there was a significant increase in the number of hospitals. for example, in London there were 5 new general hospitals built between 1720 and 1750. Hospitals like Guy's Hospital were opened.
• when was the College of Physicians set up?

  1518: most British doctors were trained here and they were still learning Galen's works. In the 18th century, most doctors still believed in the 4 humours and miasma. Doctors got a license of if they were trained at the college of physicians.
• how did Florence Nightingale make medical advancements?

  her work with 38 nurses in the Crimean war in 1854 reduced death rates hugely because of her improvements in the hygiene of wards. When she got back from war, she published Notes on Nursing. The status of nursing was enhanced as they were expected to care for patients and assist doctors.
• by the middle ages, what were the 2 types of surgeons?

  • professional surgeons: trained at university, were expensive and well-paid.
  • barber surgeons: unqualified and not very well respected.
• what did John Hunter do?

  • discover STDs
  • saved millions of people's legs by learning to treat an aneursym in 1785
  • served as a surgeon in the army, working on the battlefields of France
• what did John Hunter advocate in surgery?

  the scientific approach
• what was the most fatal disease in the 1700s?

  smallpox: it was very contagious and its symptoms were a fever, headache, rash, and blisters filled with pus. 30% of people who got smallpox died.
• what was the smallpox innoculation?

  involved putting pus from a person with a mild form of smallpox into a cut in a healthy person's body. People believed this gave them resistance. Innoculation was popular with aristocrats in the 1700s.
• what were the problems with innoculation?

  • people believed it interfered with God's will
  • the dose could be too big and kill the patient
  • innoculated people could still pass on the disease
  • it was a treatment that only the rich could afford
• what was Edward Jenner's research + when did he publish it?

  Jenner thought that people who had cowpox were immune to smallpox. He gave an 8 year old boy, James Phipps, cowpox before injecting him with smallpox: he didn't catch the smallpox. He published his research in 1798.