Medicine - Advances in medical knowledge

Question 1

What did alchemy have to do with medical knowledge?

Question 2

What did astrology have to do with medical knowledge?

Answer 2

• Belief that movements of the stars and moon influenced the body.
• Doctors checked the moon’s position before medical procedures, and collected herbal remedies when it was in the ‘right’ phase.

Question 3

Who was the four humours theory created by and what was it?

Answer 3

Hippocrates and Galen furthered it, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. They had to be balanced to prevent disease

Question 4

What did Vesalius do and when?

Answer 4

Published ‘The Fabric of the Human Body’ 1543

Vesalius’ detailed illustrations of the body meant doctors were more willing to question existing ideas

Question 5

What did Pare do and when?

Answer 5

• a new mixture for helping wounds heal
• Ligatures to stop bleeding during amputations and –surgery (still used now).
• Artificial limbs for amputees

1575

Question 6

What did Harvey do and when?

Answer 6

published ‘On the Motion of the Heart’ (1628)

Question 7

What did Harvey prove?

Answer 7

• blood circulates around the body
• the heart is the pump
• blood flows in a ‘one-way’ system. Valves in veins stop it flowing backwards.

Question 8

What did Koch do?

Answer 8

developed a method of staining bacteria so they could be seen under a microscope

Question 9

What did Ehrlich do?

Answer 9

He developed Salvarsan 606, the first effective treatment for syphilis.
This was the first modern medical drug treatment. It was a chemical ‘magic bullet’

Question 10

When were X-rays discovered and by who?

Answer 10

1895 by Wilhelm Rontgen

Question 11

When was Ultrasound invented and what for?

Answer 11

During WW2. Uses high frequency sound waves to produce an image of soft tissues.

Question 12

What are other examples of scanning techniques that were developed?

Answer 12

• MRI scans use magnets to make the hydrogen ions in the body vibrate, allowing very detailed images
• CT scans take many X-rays from different angles to build up a detailed cross-section of the body
• PET scans - a radioactive tracer is injected into the blood, allowing 3D colour images of tissues and bones

Question 13

Who discovered DNA and when?

Answer 13

1953 by Crick, Watson, and Rosalind Franklin

Question 14

What did the discovery of DNA do?

Answer 14

• understand the causes of genetic disease
• produced a complete ‘map’ of human DNA
• allowed genetic screening
• Genetic engineering can be used to change DNA. In this way, mutations that cause certain illnesses can be ‘fixed’.