Medieval Health Flashcards
When was the medieval period?
10th - 15th century
What was a barber surgeon?
A dentist who carried out minor operations
When was the Norman conquest?
14th October 1066
What is an epidemic?
A sudden widespread infectious disease
What is effluent?
Liquid waste
What is the Hippocratic oath?
Oath taken by new doctors to help their patients
What is the doctrine of signatures?
States that herbs that look like parts of the body can be used by herbalists to treat those specific body parts
What is a cesspit?
A hole in the ground full of sewage
What is the term used to describe the burning of skin around a wound?
Cauterisation
What is the theory of the four humours?
Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile and Black Bile, should be balanced with the body to prevent disease
Give 2 reasons why living in a town in the middle ages was unhealthy?
poor, cramped housing, human and animal waste in streets, no access to clean drinking water
Give 2 ways that towns tried to improve public health in the middle ages?
Wells for drinking water, fines for not cleaning street, tax for street cleaning, muck rakers, bath houses
How did medieval people keep healthy?
tooth picks and mouth washes, combs and brushes, chewed fennel, bath house, drinking small ale
If you were poor who would treat you if you became ill?
Women
Name two ways you could be treated by a barber surgeon?
extraction of teeth, removal of moles, etc., setting of broken bones
How would an apothecary treat you?
herbs, spices, herbal potions, use of four humours being balanced
What was the name of the book published by Vesalius in 1543?
The fabric of the human body
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
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.
When was the great plague?
1665
Where did the Great Plague occur?
London.
