medicine factors: science and technology

Question 1

medieval: medicine

Answer 1

Experimentation and Observation:

• John Arderne’s painkilling ointment of Hemlock, opium and Henbane
• Urine charts (colour of wee observed to diagnose illness), Wound Man painted by Da Vinci for treating injury.
• Rhazes observed that fever was the body’s natural impulse to heal itself

Question 2

medieval: surgery

Answer 2

Equipment and Medicine:

• Arrow cup for removing arrows
• Robert Grosseteste’s work led to development of spectacles
• Muslim doctors discovered anaesthetics to make surgery less painful (spread to Europe)

Question 3

early modern: medicine

Answer 3

Experimentation:

• Pare and his egg yolk, turpentine, rose oil experiment.
• Harvey’s experiment on amphibians to show circulation
• Hunter’s experiment of venereal disease
• Jenner’s experiment of James Phipps for smallpox and cowpox

Question 4

early modern: surgery

Answer 4

Equipment:

• Pare’s crow’s beak clamp to halt bleeding and his artificial limbs
• 1590, microscope invented
• 1683, Anton Van Leeuwenhoek observes bacteria under a microscope

Question 5

19th century: medicine

Answer 5

Experimentation:

• Pasteur’s, Koch’s, and Erhlich’s germ theory (involved sampling and staining of germs)
• Pasteurisation made food and drink safer from infection. Pasteur’s work on chicken cholera, led to a vaccine against rabies in 1880.
• Erhlich and Salvarsan 606 (developed in 1910) as the first effective treatment for syphilis.
• This was literally the 606th drug he and his colleagues had used to try and kill syphilis.

Question 6

19th century: surgery

Answer 6

Equipment:

• Stethoscope widely used from 1850
• Thermometers
• X-Ray machine in 1895
• Lister’s carbolic acid spray
• Halstead’s rubber gloves and Moyniham’s surgical gowns

Question 7

20th century: medicine

Answer 7

Experimentation:

• Fleming’s attempts to find a killer of Staphylococci
• Discovery of DNA in 1953

Question 8

20th century: surgery

Answer 8

Equipment:

• Thomas’ splint used in WW1
• Pacemaker for heart problems
• CAT scanner in 1973
• Endoscopes for looking inside the body in 1975
• MRI scanning in 1987
• Keyhole surgery and Microsurgery
• Laser Surgery in 1987