Health and the British people: 1000 to the present day. Flashcards
What were some of the people that you went to if you were ill in Medieval Britain?
Barber surgeons, wise men or women, trained doctors in large towns and herbalists in monasteries.
What did barber surgeons do?
They carried out bloodletting and minor surgery.
What did wise men or women do?
They gave first aid, herbal remedies and their work was based on word of mouth and trial and error.
What were some of the ways Christianity affected medieval medicine?
- The Christian church believed in following the example of Jesus who healed the sick.
- They believed that God sent illness as a punishment.
- Monks preserved and copied ancient medical texts.
- Christians believed in caring for the sick meaning that they started many hospitals.
What was the influence of Islam on medieval medicine?
Islamic doctors were the ones that were developing medical knowledge in medieval times.
What were some of the Islamic ideas about medicine?
- They encouraged medical learning and discoveries.
- They were encouraged to discover cures and drugs.
- They valued Hippocrates and Galen’s work.
How did Islamic medical knowledge spread?
It spread to Italy around 1605. It also reached England through the process of trade.
Who were some of the important Islamic doctors?
Rhazes:
- He distinguished measles from smallpox.
- He was critical of Galen.
Avicenna:
- He listed the properties of 760 different drugs which became the standard medical textbook for European Medical teaching.
What were the limitations of medical surgery?
- Operations were carried out without effective painkillers.
- Had no idea that dirt carried disease.
- Could not help patients that had deep wounds to the body.
- They thought pus in the body was good.
What were the medieval surgical procedures?
Bloodletting: Done frequently to balance the humours.
Amputation: Cutting off a painful or damaged part of the body.
Trepanning: Drilling a hole into the skull to let the demon out.
Cauterisation: Burning a wound to stop the flow of blood.
What is public health?
Public health is the health and well-being of the population as a whole.
Why was it difficult to keep medieval towns clean?
- Town populations grew and the public health facilities couldn’t cope.
- Rivers were used for drinking water, transport and to remove waste.
- People were not knowledgeable of germs and their link to disease.
What were the conditions in monasteries and abbeys?
Lavatorium: The pipes delivered local well water to wash basins where the filters would remove the dirt.
Dormitory: Monks washed their clothes, feet and faces regularly.
Privies: These sometimes contained potties to collect urine.
Privies: Toilets were emptied into pits where the water would be taken to be used for manure.
Why were conditions better in monasteries?
Wealth: They had money to spend on cleaner facilities.
Many people gave money, valuables and lands i return for prayers to be said for them when they died.
They made money from making wool.
Knowledge: Monks could read and understand books that were in their library.
They learned the basic idea of separating clean water from the wastewater that came from the toilet.
They understood the ancient Roman idea of a simple routine which involved balancing the humours.
Location: isolation helped protect monks from epidemics.
Christian monasteries were near rivers.
Rules: The monks obeyed the abbot strictly.
They lived clean and simple lives.
What was the Black Death?
The Black Death was a medieval epidemic disease that came to Britain in the 14th century.
What were the symptoms of the Black Death?
Lumps, fever and vomiting.
What were the believed causes and what were the real causes?
Believed causes: Position of the stars and the planets.
Bad Air
Well poisoned by Jews
Punishment from God.
Real causes: Bacteria that grew in fleas’ stomachs.
Fleas fed on rats’ blood, disease killed rats and the fleas then moved onto humans.
Fleas passed the disease onto humans.
Food shortages.
Why did the disease spread so quickly?
Poor street cleaning, dirty streets encouraged rats to breed, unhygienic habits, animals dug up buried bodies, laws were hard to enforce, quarantine was not effective and an ignorance of germs and causes of disease.
What was the Black Death’s impact on society?
- It killed nearly half of Europe’s population.
- In Britain, it killed at least 1.5 million people between 1348 and 1350.
What were the social, political, religious and economic impacts?
Social: Whole villages were wiped out.
Political: Demands for higher wages led to the Peasant revolt of 1381 and the weakening of the feudal system.
Religious: Damage to the Catholic church because experienced priests died: others had run away.
Economic: Plague created food shortages.
Landowners switched to sheep farming.
Farm workers demanded higher wages and less were willing to be tied to the land and work for the feudal landlord.
Did the Plague ever die out in England?
No however it subsided. It came again in 1603 and 1665.
What was the Renaissance?
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that began in Italy in the early 1400s.
Who was Vesalius?
Andreas Vesalius was a medical professional that began to question Galen’s work while studying at the university of Padua in Italy.
What was his work?
He carried out dissections himself, he wrote the fabric of the human body which corrected Galen’s mistakes.
What were some of his notable achievements?
He transformed anatomical knowledge, he showed others how to conduct dissections properly and he transformed the way in which people saw the body.
Who was Ambroise Pare?
Pare was the most famous Renaissance surgeon in Europe and he also published several books about his work.
What happened before Pare’s work, during his work and after his work?
Before: - Gunshot wounds were thought to be poisonous meaning that they were burned out using boiling oil. Wounds were cauterised.
During: Pare did many amputations, he designed false limbs and he used Galen’s methods of tying blood vessels with ligatures.
After: Pare’s patients recovered well and he wrote a book about treating wounds.
What was his contribution to England?
He translated the works of Vesalius, surgeons copied his work and Queen Elizabeth’s surgeon made his work known.
Who was William Harvey?
William Harvey was an English doctor who challenged Galen by claiming that blood circulated around the body.
How did he discover blood circulation?
He mathematically calculated how much blood would have to be produced if it was a fuel for the body, he observed the beats of the heart, read what the Italian anatomists thought, he dissected human hearts and he experimented pumping liquid the wrong way which proved that blood could only go one way.
What was the significance and reaction to Harvey’s discovery?
Reaction: Harvey’s critics said that he was mad or ignored his ideas. He however was accepted by many doctors.
Significance: His discoveries were not immediately useful but they have proved useful.
What did Harvey do?
Harvey used scientific methods to discover the circulation of the blood.
What was the Great plague?
The great plague returned in 1665 in an epidemic that killed about 100,000 people in London and thousands more in the rest of the country.
What remedies and treatments were being used at the time?
- Bleeding with leeches.
- Smoking to keep away the poisoned air.
- Sniffing a sponge that is soaked in vinegar.
- Using frogs, pigeons, snakes and scorpions to draw out the poison.
- Moving to the countryside.
