Renaissance➡️c.1400AD-c.1600AD

Question 1

How did lifestyle change in the Renaissance and how did this change medicine?

Answer 1

• Art was more detailed and careful➡️Detailed drawings of organs and muscles were made.
• Printing press invented➡️Books and ideas can be copied much quicker.
• New countries discovered➡️Trade and wealth increased, new foods and luxuries brought to Europe.
• New technology➡️New windmills, water pumps and watermills.
• New scientific discoveries➡️Copernicus and Galileo both proposed that the Sun was at the centre of the Universe.
• Challenges to authority➡️The Church held less power over people, and people were more willing to challenge the state.

Question 2

Who was Andreas Vesalius?

Answer 2

Vesalius was born 1514 in Belgium.

He came from a wealthy family of physicians, and studied medicine in Paris and later in Padua.

Question 3

How did Vesalius carry out anatomical investigation in Paris?

Answer 3

Vesalius stole bodies to study the human body himself➡️Studies bones, muscles and organs.

Question 4

How did Vesalius carry out anatomical investigation in Padua?

Answer 4

In Padua, dissection was permitted and Vesalius’ new ideas were permitted.

Here, Vesalius could make repeated and comparitive dissections of the human body, as opposed to Galen who only dissected animals.

Question 5

How did Vesalius prove Galen wrong?

Answer 5

Vesalius corrected over 200 of Galen’s mistakes, for example:

• The right kidney was not higher than the left.
• The jawbone was singular, as opposed to being constructed of two bones.
• Blood didn’t pass through the septum of the heart.

Question 6

What immediate impact did Vesalius have on medicine?

Answer 6

• Published book: ‘On the fabric of the human body’.
• Drawings were made based upon careful dissection and sent to the best printers.
• Vesalius encouraged doctors to dissect and challenge/test Galen’s ideas.

Question 7

How did Vesalius fail to make an impact on medicine?

Answer 7

• People didn’t listen/wanted to believe the Church.
• As a result, in original publishing Vesalius didn’t state Galen was wrong.
• Vesalius didn’t discover any new ways of treating illness or improving health.

Question 8

What long term impact did Vesalius have on medicine?

Answer 8

Harvey went on to explain how Galen was wrong and blood flowing through the septum.

Question 9

Who was William Harvey?

Answer 9

Harvey was born in Kent in 1578.

His father was a wealthy merchant, and he studied at King’s College (Canterbury), Cambridge University and then at the University of Padua in Italy.

Question 10

How did Harvey carry out anatomical investigation in Padua?

Answer 10

Harvey was able to carry out several dissections to build up a detailed knowledge of the heart.

In his experimentation, he tried to pump past the valves in the veins but could not do so.

He also measured the amount of blood that was moved by each heartbeat and calculated how much blood was in the body.

Question 11

How did Harvey carry out anatomical investigation in England?

Answer 11

Harvey established himself as a successful physician, working for King James I.

He continued his research on the heart by dissecting live, cold-blooded animals with slow heart beats (like lizards) so he could see the movements of each muscle in the heart.

Question 12

What immediate impact did Harvey have on medicine?

Answer 12

Published his findings in 1628 in a book called, ‘An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and the Blood in Animals’.

Question 13

How did Harvey fail to make an impact on medicine?

Answer 13

• Many doctors struggled to believe that Galen was wrong.
• Harvey’s ideas didn’t help to improve health in his own lifetime, and he didn’t develop any new treatments.

Question 14

How did Harvey prove Galen wrong?

Answer 14

Harvey discovered that blood flowed just one way: it was carried from the heart through the arteries and back to the heart through the veins.

He proved that the heart worked like a water pump, pumping blood around the body again and again, as opposed to Galen’s theory that new blood was constantly being produced in the liver to replace blood that was burnt up by the body.

Question 15

What long term impact did Harvey have on medicine?

Answer 15

Almost 300 years after Harvey, when blood groups were discovered, Harvey’s ideas on circulation were used to create the first blood transfusion.

Question 16

How did Harvey rely on the influence of others to come to his discoveries?

Answer 16

• Vesalius had said that Galen was wrong about blood flow before, Harvey simply explained how/why.
• Fabricius (a scientist and surgeon who tutored Harvey at Padua) recognised that the veins in the human body have one-way valves, Harvey simply solved the riddle of what part the valves played in the circulation of blood.

Question 17

Who was Ambroise Paré?

Answer 17

Paré was born in 1510.

He learned surgery as an apprentice to his brother, and spent 20 years as an army surgeon.

He became the surgeon to the King of France and the most famous surgeon in Europe.

Question 18

What was surgery like by the time of the Renaissance?

Answer 18

• There had been no major breakthroughs.
• Gunshot wounds were treated by pouring boiling oil onto them or ramming an oil-soaked cloth into the wound and binding it up. Both were extremely painful.
• Open wounds and amputations were closed using cauterisation which was also very painful.

Question 19

How did Paré change surgery in the Renaissance?

Answer 19

• Paré mixed an ointment of egg yolks, oil of roses and turpentine instead which was found to be more effective and far less painful.
• Paré developed the use of crow’s beaks (an instrument to clamp an artery) and ligatures (stitches of silk thread) to stop bleeding instead of cauterisation.
• Using Vesalius’ work on anatomy Paré was able to design false limbs for wounded soldiers.

Question 20

What factors allowed medicine to move forward in the Renaissance and how?

Answer 20

• The printing press allowed ideas to spread quickly.
• Improved artistic standards helped Vesalius to produce highly accurate diagrams in his Fabrica.
• Chance: Paré discovered his ointment after having run out of oil by accident, and Harvey was lucky the pump was invented when it was and that Vesalius’ work was still in circulation.

Question 21

Define Bezoar Stone.

Answer 21

A hard, stone-like mass of material found in the intestines of goats.

In the Renaissance, it was believed to have magical properties as an antidote to poison. Paré proved this to be untrue.

Question 22

What limitations were there to Paré’s work?

Answer 22

• His discoveries were small scale; there was no anaesthetic or antiseptic to stop infection and they still didn’t understand about blood groups.
• Stopping bleeding with ligatures was slow: in the chaos of war using a cautery was faster and could be effective.
• The Bezoar stone was still used as a treatment even after Paré proved that it didn’t work.
• Ligatures were dangerous➡️The thread could carry infection deep into a wound, causing death.

Question 23

Define emetic.

Answer 23

Causing a person to vomit.

Question 24

Define enema.

Answer 24

The insertion of a liquid into the bowels via the rectum, a common treatment for constipation.

Question 25

Define Peruvian bark.

Answer 25

The bark of the cinchona tree; used to make quinine which could reduce a fever.

Question 26

What ideas did people have about the causes of illness during the Renaissance?

Answer 26

• Four Humours.
• Miasmas.
• Astrology.
• God or Devil.

Question 27

What treatments were used in the Renaissance?

Answer 27

• Use of opposites.
• Bezoar stone.
• Blood-letting.
• Emetics, enemas and laxatives.
• Herbal remedies.

Question 28

What treatments were used during the Great Plague?

Answer 28

• Abracadabra charms.
• Prayers and confessions.
• Pigeons and chickens on buboes.
• Dead collected and buried.
• Tobacco.
• Plague doctors.
• Quarantine (infected houses were sealed).
• Vinegar to clean money.

Question 29

Who provided medical care in the Renaissance?

Answer 29

Licensed:

• Physician➡️Fully qualified, expensive.
• Apothecary➡️Sold and mixed medicines, treated for small fee.
• Surgeon➡️Trained by watching.
• Midwives➡️Licensed to supervise pregnancy and deliver babies.

Unlicensed:

• Family➡️Wife or mother.
• Wise women➡️Knowledge that’s been passed down.
• Travelling quack➡️Found at fairs and markets.
• Lady of the manor.

Question 30

How and why did things develop/progress in the Renaissance?

Answer 30

• Wealthy people could afford doctors.
• Improved knowledge of anatomy➡️Vesalius, artists.
• Scientific methods➡️Led to questioning Greek and Roman theories.
• Printing press➡️Ideas spread quickly.
• Discovery of America➡️New foods and medicines.
• New weapons➡️Soldiers getting different sorts of wounds.

Question 31

How and why did things stay the same in the Renaissance?

Answer 31

• Many doctors rejected new ideas which challenged Galen and the Church.
• No discovery of germs➡️No great improvement in curing illness.

Question 32

How did ideas and treatments improve in the Renaissance?

Answer 32

• Vesalius➡️Improved anatomical knowledge.
• Harvey➡️Circulation of heart.
• Paré➡️Ointment instead of boiling oil, ligatures instead of cauterising. Fake limbs.
• Paracelsus➡️Discovered laudanum as a painkiller.

Question 33

When was the Great Plague?

Answer 33

1665.

Question 34

Where was the Great Plague?

Answer 34

It was concentrated in London; 15% of the London population died, but it spread to York and Eyam through trade.

Question 35

What ideas were there about the causes of the Great Plague?

Answer 35

• Astrology.
• Miasmas.
• Imbalance of Four Humours.

Question 36

How was the Great Plague similiar to the Black Death?

Answer 36

• Both spread due to poor living conditions.
• Superstitious causes and treatments for both.
• Continued belief in miasmas and four humours.

Question 37

How was the Great Plague different to the Black Death?

Answer 37

GP: Not as widespread, more miasma-based treatments, more understanding of contagion.

BD: Higher death rate, less prevention of spreading.