renaissance medicine Flashcards
When was the second plague?
1655
How did people treat the plague?
- cutting open buboes
- using medicines that contained: herbs, spice honey and opium
- bleeding or purging
How did people avoid catching the plague?
- carrying strong smelling herbs
- stayed home
- coins were soaked in vinegar to stop the spread
- chewed tobacco
- fasting
How did the plague end?
a mixture of cold weather, the disease reaching the end of its natural course and the great fire of london
Who was known as the ‘English Hippocrates’?
Thomas Sydenham
What did Thomas Sydenham do?
- made the first description of scarlet fever
- believed in letting the body fight disease itself
Who were the royal society and what did they do?
group of people interested in discussing new scientific ideas.
- demonstrated experiments
- published books and articles to spread new ideas and discovery
When was the first royal society meeting?
1645
Who invented the printing press and when?
Johannes Gutenberg in the 1450s
What did William Harvey discover?
how the blood circulates around the body
How did Harvey disprove Galen?
- proving that blood doesn’t passed from one side of the heart to the other through invisible holes in the septum
- proving that the body has a one-way system for blood
- proved that blood isn’t made in the liver
What was William Harvey’s book called and when was it published?
An anatomical account of the motion of the heart and blood
- published in 1628
How did Harvey prove this?
- dissecting live cold-blooded animals whose hearts beat slowly
- dissecting human bodies to build up detailed knowledge of heart
- proving that the veins carry blood
How did Vesalius prove Galen wrong?
- the human jaw bone is made from one bone, not two
- Breastbone has three parts, not seven
- blood does not flow into the heart through invisible holes in the septum
What was Vesalius’s book called and when was it published?
The Fabric of the Human Body in 1543
What did ‘The Fabric of the Human Body’ contain?
detailed illustrations of the human body
How did Vesalius research?
he stole the body of a criminal from the gallows to dissect
Who created the vaccination?
Edward Jenner
Describe how the vaccination was created?
- he observed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox never caught small pox
- inserted some cow pox matter into a few cuts in someones hand
When did Edward Jenner publish his book?
1798
When did Pasteur publish germ theory?
1861
What did Robert Koch do and when?
He made the first identification of the bacterium causing an individual disease in 1876
What is the first bacterium that Koch identified?
anthrax
What did Koch and his team discover in 1882?
the bacterium that caused tuberculosis
Who created the rabies vaccine?
Edward Jenner
What did Edwin Chadwick do and when?
he wrote the ‘Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population’ in 1842
When was the first public health act?
1848
What was the first public health act?
- a national board of health was set up
- In towns where the death rate is high, local councils were made to make improvements to water supply and sewerage
- encouraged to collect taxes to make health improvements
When was the first cholera break out?
1831
How did John Snow discover cholera in the broad street pump?
- within ten days 500 people around broad street pump had died. So, he took the handle off and there were no more deaths
What happened in 1858?
an effective sewer system was built after the very hot summer of 1858, with no rain, river levels fell, especially in the Thames. The smell grew worst and worst
When was the second public health act?
1875
What did the second public health act contain?
- compulsory for local councils to improve sewers and drainage, provide fresh water supplies and appoint medical officers and sanitary inspectors to inspect public health facilities
When was the Crimean war?
1854
how did Florence Nightingale affect death rates in hospitals?
they fell from 40% to 2%
When was the Nightingale School for nurses set up?
1860
What were Florence Nightingale’s two books called and when were they published?
- Notes on nursing- 1859
- Notes on hospitals- 1863
What did Florence Nightingale improve?
- sanitation in hospitals
- ventilation to make sure patients got fresh clean air to breathe
- food supplies, clothing and washing facilities for patients
What were local hospitals called?
cottage hospitals
What was the first anaesthetic and why wasn’t it successful?
laughing gas (nitrous oxide)
- it irritated the eyes and lungs
What did James Simpson do and when?
discovered chloroform in 1847
How did Simpson discover chloroform was a good anaesthetic?
One evening him and his colleagues tested different chemicals to test what anaesthetic effects they had. He poured some chloroform in a tumbler and inhaled it before dinner and within minutes his wife found him ‘under the table’
Who figured out how to regulate the dose of chloroform, when and how?
John Snow in 1848 by creating an inhaler
When was surgeries ‘black period’?
1850-70
What caused surgeries ‘black period’?
- using too much chloroform
- some doctors thought pain-free surgery was unnatural
- increased blood loss and infections due to doctors attempting more complex surgeries while using anaesthetics
What was the first antiseptic?
carbolic acid
How did Lister experiment with carbolic acid?
he experimented by treating fractures where the bone is sticking out the skin- he would apply carbolic acid on a bandage and they wouldn’t develop gangrene
When did Joseph Lister publish his results?
1867
When was the first successful heart operation?
1896
