Medicine Flashcards
What caused St Anthony’s disease?
Fungus in bread
What percentage of chidren, in medieval times, died before the age of seven?
30%
How did medieval people try to cure rheumatism?
Wear a donkey skin
What was Bald’s Leechbook?
A 10th century medical text
What theory did Hippocrates establish?
The Four Humours
How did Hippocrates influence later medicine?
He wrote 60 books and his ideas were used in Western medicine for centuries
Where did Galen learn about anatomy?
He worked in a gladiator school, in Rome, treating injuries
How did Galen affect later medicine?
His books were used as university text books and they taught dissection
Which Arab doctor wrote the first description of smallpox symptoms?
Rhazes
Which Arab doctor wrote the book called The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine?
Avicenna
What medical equipment did Islamic doctors invent?
Stitching and scalpels
What are the Four Humours?
Blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile
Some people believed that God made diseases but also provided herbal cures. What was this idea called?
The Doctrine of Signatures
What did medieval religious people think caused illnesses and epidemics?
An individual or a whole society were leading sinful lives
What herb was used to break up kidney stones?
Saxifrage
Who carried out minor operations such as pulling teeth?
A Barber-surgeon
What would an apothecary sell?
He would sell simples – a medicine made of one herb or compounds which were a combination of ingredients e.g. red rose and bamboo juice for treating smallpox
Which women would provide medical care in medieval times?
Wise woman, the lady of the manor and nuns
What were the two main charts used by physicians to diagnose illness?
Urine charts and Zodiac charts
What were the two methods of bleeding done by medical people?
Cupping (slicing a vein) and leeches
What did people believed caused tooth ache?
A tooth worm
Why was the Catholic church important in medical care in medieval times?
The church encouraged people to prayer for deliverance from illness, people could buy indulgences (special prayers) and go on a pilgrimage to special shrines for a cure, monks and nuns treated people and copied out medical books.
Can you name famous medieval shrines?
The most famous pilgrimage was to the Holy Land, but in England you could visit Canterbury, Walsingham, Glastonbury or the Priory at Bridlington where St John of Bridlington’s grave was a source of miracles.
How many hospitals did the church set up in the 12th and 13th centuries?
160
What places of learning did the Church help to establish?
The church set up university schools of medicine in Europe where physicians were trained using the texts of Galen and Hippocrates
How did the medieval church limit medical progress?
The church made it difficult for scholars to dissect human bodies, the church’s insistence that Galen’s work should be used limited progress in understanding the human body, Scientists who tried to challenge Galen’s work were often arrested e.g. Roger Bacon
What was cauterisation?
Cauterisation, where very hot metal was applied to wounds to stop bleeding and was often painful or fatal
What diagram was used to treat wounds caused by weapons?
The Woundman
What did Robert Grosseteste encourage?
Scientific enquiry and experiment.
How did Bishop Lanfranc assist medicine?
Bishop Lanfranc constructed a decent house of stone. He divided the main building into two, one for ill men and the other for women in a bad state of health. He made arrangements for their clothing and daily food.
What medieval hospital helped pregnant women?
St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, 1123
Which hospital helped “poor and silly people”.
St Mary of Bethlehem, 1247
Why were medieval towns so unhealthy?
Close housing, No waste disposal, contaminated rivers, butchers’ waste in the streets, cesspits for human waste next to wells, animals roamed the streets, rotting food was sold, clothes were very dirty, people drank “small beer”.
Which medieval town tried to clean up?
Coventry
How did Coventry improve its public health?
Every man cleaned the street in front of his house, 1420 waste collection started, waste pits and dung hills were moved outside the town, toilets over the stream were banned and butchers were stopped from throwing animal parts into waterways.
List 5 causes of the plague, according to medieval people.
Bad smells, Four Humours out of balance, comets, planet alignment, Jews poisoning water, wearing fancy clothes, sin, dancing in the streets, long hair, Miasma (evil spirits), God is angry, earthquakes in China
How did people try to avoid the plague?
Praying, burning tall candles, avoid baths, avoid sex, clean filth from streets, bathe in urine, attend church
How did people treat the plague?
Pop buboes, attach a live chicken to the buboes, drink a mixture of vinegar and mercury, flagellation, bleeding
What were the results of the Black Death?
Wages increased for the workers left alive, 1:3 people died, Workers rights improved, many religious people died, towns became deserted
How did Islam improve medicine?
translated medical books, used clinical observation, understood hygiene, set up hospitals
How did Islam hinder medicine?
banned dissection, prayed to Allah as a cure
What did Ibn al - Nafis discover
He discovered how blood was circulated
Who was the most famous Muslim surgeon?
Abulcasis
What was the most common cause of death during surgery in medieval times?
Pus and infection
Which Italian wrote surgical books such as Cyrurgia which encouraged a more antiseptic approach to surgery?
Theodoric of Lucca
What was the name of the book published by Vesalius in 1543?
The Fabric of the Human body De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Which individual did Vesalius prove wrong?
Galen
Which of Galens ideas were proved wrong by Vesalius?
That the lower jaw was in two parts. That blood passed through the septum.
What was the effect of the work of Vesalius?
He made people question Galen and showed the importance of human dissection. Englisg surgeons and physicians used his book as a manual
Who did the colour illustrations in the Fabric of the Human Body?
Leonardo Da Vinci
How did Pare help wounds to heal?
He used an ointment of egg yolks, oil of roses and turpentine
What was the effect of Pares ointment?
The soldiers wounds healed cleanly with less pain than if boiling oil was used.
How did Pare stop bleeding?
He used ligatures (silk threads) to tie the blood vessels closed
What method did ligatures replace?
Cauterisation where you use a red hot iron to seal wounds closed.
What was a problem with ligatures?
Pare didn’t understand that the silk threads could carry germs into the wounds and cause infection.
What did William Harvey discover?
He showed that blood was pumped around the body by the heart.
Who did Harvey prove wrong?
Galen, he believed that blood was produced in the liver to replace the blood that was burnt by the body as fuel.
How did Harvey prove his discovery?
He dissected live cold blooded animals to observe how their hearts worked as well as dissecting human bodies.
How did William Harvey show that blood could only flow one way?
He tried to pump liquids past the valves in the veins but wasn’t able to.
What was Thomas Syndenham’s contribution to medicine?
He believed in observation and that each disease had a separate and unique cause.He treated smallpox with “cool therapy”, lots of fluids, and keeping cool.
What was John Hunter’s contribution to medicine?
He was a surgeon who believed that deep wounds should be left alone to let nature help heal. Famous as a teacher of anatomy and dissection.
What improvements had been made to surgery by the early 1800s?
10,220 people were on the medical directory, half of doctors had been apprentices and trained, you had to have a licence to practise medicine, surgeons had to attend courses and have a year of experience to be a surgeon.
Who was Lady Johanna St. John?
Lady Johanna St. John is perhaps typical of the local ‘lady of the manor’s’ role in healing. She lived at Lydiard House near Swindon and combined her role of running a large household with compiling a recipe book of cures.
Who was Nicholas Culpepper?
Nicholas Culpeper published his Complete Herbal in 1653 and it is still in print today. Culpeper classified herbs and plants by their uses. He tried to combine the use of herbs with the Doctrine of Signatures and astrology.
What was quackery?
People began to invent and sell medicine which they knew didn’t work. They were good salesmen.
What did Daffy’s Elixir claim to cure?
He claimed it cured, among other things; ‘convulsion fits, consumption, agues, piles, fits, children’s distempers, worms, gout, rheumatism, kidney stones, colic and griping of the bowels’, all common ailments of the time.
What did Thomas Coram set up in 1741?
The first foundling hospital to care for abandoned children. Children were looked after and trained for life in domestic and military service.
How many new hospitals were between 1720 and 1750?
14
How many patients were treated in London’s hospitals by 1800?
20,000
How many people died from smallpox in 1796 and between 1837 and 1840?
1796 - 35 000 1837-1840 - 42 000
What was inoculation?
You are given a minor form of the disease to stop you getting a more severe version. Lady Mary Montagu gave her children mild smallpox.
Why didn’t the church like inoculation?
Disease was God’s punishmnet and man shouldn’t interfere.
Describe the work of Edward Jenner.
Heard a milk maid clain that victims of cowpox never got smallpox, gave a nine year old called James Phipps cowpox and then a dose of smallpox. Phipps never got smallpox meaning he was immune. He took detailed notes and published the book “An Inquiry into the causes and effects of Varioae Vaccinae, or cow pox.
How did the government support Jenner?
In 1802 he was given £10,000 and in 1807 a further £20,000 after the Royal College of physicians confirmed how effective his vaccination was.
Why didn’t some people like Jenner’s vaccinations?
Physicians lost money as they charges £20 for inoculations, religious people thought it was God’s punishment, others thought it was a parental decision to vaccinate not the governments. In 1866 an Anti-Vaccine League was set up.
When was smallpox vaccination made compulsory?
1853
When was the Great Plague?
1665
Where did the Great Plague occur?
It was centred in London
Which section of society was blamed for the spread of the Plague?
Poor people
Why were poorer members of society more at risk from the Great Plague?
Because they lived in poor quality overcrowded housing. This made them more exposed to rats, fleas and spreading the disease between people.
