Prevention of illness over time - chap 2 Flashcards
Medieval era
Who was Hippocrates and why was he important?
- Father of Modern medicine
- Developed the Theory of the Four Humors
Medieval era
How did people try prevent illness before C.500?
- Arabs believed in clean air
- Romans built huge aquedacts to bring fresh water
Medieval era
How did the church explain illness?
Manifestation of spiritual illness
Medieval era
What is alchemy?
practice of transforming metals to gold and seeking immortality (elixir of life)
Medieval era
What was the role of alchemy in medicine?
contributed to early medicine by developing:
* herbal remedies
* chemical treatments
* metal-based cures
* elixir of life
Medieval era
How did people try to stop the spread of the Black Death?
- They used quarantine
- avoided travel
- burned contaminated items
Medieval era
How did Edward III contibute?
Establishing Quarantine Measures to stop bad air spreading
Medieval era
Who were soothsayers?
mystical figures who claimed to predict the future using:
* astrology
* dreams
* omens
* supernatural signs
Medieval Era
Why were soothsayers important?
- Guidance in Uncertainty
- Health and Disease Advice
Renaissance era
What were the key prevention methods?
- Growing scientific explanations, but miasma theory still dominated
- Variolation
Renaissance era
What was variolation?
- early method of smallpox prevention
- where a healthy person was deliberately infected with a mild case of smallpox by inserting pus or powdered scabs from an infected person into a small cut or inhaling it
Renaissance era
What was the extent of change during the renaissance?
- Some improvement
- Most people still believed in miasma and supernatural causes
- limited and inconsistent
Industrial era
Who discovered the first vaccination, and for what disease?
Edward Jenner
discovered the smallpox vaccine after noticing that milkmaids with cowpox did not get smallpox
Industrial era
Why was Edward Jenner’s discovery important?
- saved millions of lives
- It replaced variolation - early method of smallpox prevention
Industrial era
Why was Jenner’s vaccination better than variolation?
safer and more effective
Industrial era
What was cholera?
- deadly disease causing severe diarrhea and dehydration
- often leading to death within hours
- many doctors and officials believed that bad air caused it (miasma theory)
Industrial era
What did John Snow discover in 1854?
proved that cholera was waterborne not bad air (miasma theory)
Industrial era
What did Snow do to stop the outbreak?
removed the Broad Street pump handle
Industrial era
What is childbed fever?
deadly infection that affected women after childbirth
Industrial era
Who was Ignaz Semmelweis and what did he discover aboutchildbed fever?
noticed that women treated by doctors had much higher death rates than those treated by midwives
Industrial era
How did Semmelweis reduce childbed fever deaths?
introduced handwashing with chlorinated lime solution
Industrial era
What were other key prevention methods and events during this era?
- 1875 Public Health Act-Forced local councils to provide clean water, sewage disposal, and waste collection
- Louis Pasteur & Germ Theory
Industrial era
Why is the industrial era so significant - even the turning point?
- Huge shift from old beliefs to scientific medicine
- Vaccination became widely used
- Government action
20th century
Why are vaccines so important?
Eliminated endemic diseases and childhood killers
20th century
When was the last known case of smallpox, what does this tell us?
- 1977
- success story from the work of Edward Jenner
20th century
What were some more vaccines introduced after WW2?
- Polio vaccine - 1955
- MMR - 1988
- Hepatitis B - 1994
20th century
What is innoculation?
The act of implanting a pathogen or other microbe or virus into a person or other organism
20th century
What is the profound impact of vaccinations?
Fall of infant mortality
1. 150 per 1000 in 1800 to
2. 170 per 1000 in 1900 to
3. 4-5 per 1000 live births today
20th century
Who created the MMR debate, in what and what did it say?
- Dr Wakefield
- published a paper in the Lancet - medical journal in Britain
- suggested the was a clear link between the MMR and autism
20th century
What was the impact of this ‘theory’?
Press made a huge story out of it
proportion of parents having their children vaccinated plummeted
