Medicine Unit 1 - Progress in the mid-19th century

Question 1

Four Humours

Answer 1

• Blood, Yellow bile, Black bile, Phlegm
• Treatments based on Theory of Opposites e.g. suffering from blood, treatment was something cold and wet
• Is wrong but was believed previously

Question 2

Miasma

Answer 2

• The idea that disease was carried in unpleasant smells and harmful fumes in the air
• Based on since high rate of disease in poor areas w/people in dirty, unhygienic conditions
• Also knew disease spread more quickly in hot weather
• Logical but incorrect

Question 3

Spontaneous generation

Answer 3

• Scientists knew microorganisms existed but carried out little experiments and little research
• Link between microorganisms and disease unknown
• Came with the theory that rotting material e.g. excrement created disease / spontaneously generated

Question 4

Doctor’s knowledge

Answer 4

• Understanding of the body limited
• Doctors would observe few dissections during training - most believed in life after death and wanted to be buried
• Doctors mainly used bodies of criminals that were executed
• Difficult to plan any research on symptoms of disease or study specific conditions e.g. diabetes

Question 5

Factors affecting progress

Answer 5

• Lack of understanding closely linked with level of technology available
• Problem of funding for research and development of new ideas - government didn’t feel responsible for issues and charity relied on funding
• Many doctors wanted to keep on doing what they always had done and didn’t;t want to learn new ways - no proof their methods were wrong

Question 6

Florence Nightingale background

Answer 6

• Came from wealthy middle-class background
• Family shocked when she wanted to be a nurse - very-low status job at the time
• No formal training for nurses in Britain - visited various hospitals in Britain during 1840s
• Spent 3 months in 1851 at centre in Kaiserwerth Germany - training for nurses began in 1833
• 1853 - superintendent of small nursing home in London
• Met Sindey Herbert - Secretary for War - 1847 - asked her to take a team of 38 nurses to work in military hospital at Scutari
• Britain fighting against Russia in Crimean Peninsula in Black Sea
• Many British soldiers injured

Question 7

Conditions at Scutari

Answer 7

• 10,000 patients
• Many men shared beds of lied on the floors and in the corridors
• Clothes infested with lice and fleas
• Diseases e.g. typhoid fever and cholera common
• Many patients with diarrhea
• Difficult to get enough medical supplies to the hospital
• Food supplies limited and of poor quality
• Roof leaked and wards dirty and infested with rats and mice
• Hospital was above an underground cesspool - affected water supply and air in the hospital

Question 8

Nightingale’s actions

Answer 8

• Nightingale & nurses scrubbed surfaces clean & washed all sheets, towels, bandages and equipment
• Believed in miasma and therefore opened windows to improve air flow
• Cleaned kitchens and improved quality of food
• Fund of money raised by Times newspaper to buy 200 towels, clean shirts, soap, plates and cutlery

Question 9

Impact of Nightingale’s work

Answer 9

• Army medical staff resisted idea of nurses coming out to work in Crimea - felt women’s medical knowledge was limited
• Hard a habit of making a final round w/lamp ‘The Lady with the Lamp’ - popular w/patients and back in Britain
• Death rate at Nightingale’s hospital higher than at other hospitals
• 1855 - government sanitary commission rapid the drains and improved the supply of drinking water - death rate fell dramatically