✏️The Beginnings Of Change IDEA Flashcards
Vesalius - when? Who was he and what did he believe? How did he do this? How did Vesalius influence others? How was he challenging Galen’s ideas?
1514-64
Professor of surgery at University of Padua
Believed Galen’s drawings of the human body were wrong
Believed medical students should do dissections themselves
Carried out human dissections instead of animal dissections
Published findings in ‘The Fabric of the human body’/ ‘De humani corporis fabrica’.proved Galen was wrong: illustrations were copied into ‘compendiosa’ which became the most used book for barber surgeons- this influenced surgery.
University students would be more experienced at surgery in the future.
He proved Galen wrong by proving that the breast bone has 3 parts not 7 like an ape.
Accurate drawings proved Galen wrong but didn’t actually say he was wrong.
Harvey- when?
Who was he and what did he do?
How did he do this?
How was he challenging Galen’s ideas and how did people react to this?
How was his discovery significant later in surgery?
1578-1657
Proved that blood circulates through the heart.
Dissection of human hearts
Pumped liquid the wrong way through the veins, they shut, blood can only go in one direction.
Observed beating hearts in cold blooded animals.
Galen said that blood was constantly produced in the liver and was burned like fuel- Harvey said it was circulated.
New students accepted his new ideas but physicians still believed in the 4 humours and Galen.
Published ‘On the motion of the heart’ in 1628
His discovery was significant because blood transfusions were carried out in the 20th century.
Paré Who was he and what did he do? How did he do this? How did Pare influence others? How were his methods significant later in surgery?
He was a french army surgeon who made cauterisation less painful for wounded soldiers and he designed and made false limbs for amputated soldiers.
He did this by instead of using burning oil in cauterisation, he used a mixture of egg white, turpentine and rose oil which was much less painful.
He replaced stopping bleeding with cauterisation by the use of ligatures (using strings or thread in amputations).
He influenced others with his book ‘works on surgery’ 1575 which included sections of Vesalius’ work on anatomy translated into french- this increased surgeons understanding as most surgeons weren’t taught Latin.
His book circulated around Europe and was widely read by English barber surgeons - a hand written copy of his book was given to the library of the barber surgeons of London in 1591. This would have influenced how surgeons operated on patients around Europe and would have influenced them to use cauterisation techniques that would be less painful for the patients.
There were a number of surgeons in 16th century England who followed Parés renaissance approach to surgery - they observed, questioned and experimented with new ideas. William Clowes (1544-1604) was surgeon to Queen Elizabeth 1st and admired Paré as the ‘famous surgeon master’. He published book 1588 ‘Proved Practice’ which acknowledged Paré as source for his treatment of burns using onions. This meant Parés ideas were influencing later surgeons.
Medical treatments in 17th and 18th century
Who provided medical treatments and what were they providing?
What new treatments were available?
What was the significance of medical treatments being published?
How did Quacks have a negative impact on the medical profession?
Still depended on what people could afford.
Barber surgeons: small operations: tooth pulling + blood letting.
Apothecaries: sold medicines and potions.
Wise women; plants, herbs + cures based on superstition.
Quacks: Travelling salesmen who sold fake medicines and ‘cure-alls’.
Continuation: bloodletting, royal touch to cure disease, homely herbal remedies passed down generations.
New herbal remedies: bark on cinchona tree contained quinine which helped treat malaria.
Opium from Turkey used as anaesthetic.
Tobacco (wrongly) cured toothache - plague.
Military surgeon, John Woodall, used lemons + limes to treat scurvy 1617.
Introduction of printing press meant people could collect books on herbal remedies and educate themselves better.
This was significant because people could start thinking for themselves instead of being clueless about medical treatments.
Quack medicine flourished around this time which had a negative impact because a lot of the time, Quacks medicine didn’t work and they only sold it to make money. This could lead to the public’s distrust in the medical profession.
The great plague What was it and when did it happen? Why did they think it happened? How did they deal with the plague? What does this show compared to the Black Death? How did the plague end?
1665, the return of the Plague outbreak (same one in Black Death) killing 100,000 people.
Punishment from God for their sins
Movement of planets
Poisonous air
Real reason was the fleas on rats that were attracted to rubbish in poorer areas of the city.
Remedies and treatments had no effect: bleeding with leaches, smoking to keep away poisonous air.
What’s different is that:
Rich people would move to the countryside.
Plague victims were quarantined + watchmen made sure they didn’t leave to spread the disease. Large crowds were banned and homeowners swept streets in front of their houses. The government was more organised than the Black Death.
This shows that people began making connections between dirt and disease and noticed most deaths occurred in the poorest and dirtiest parts of the city.
Rats started developing resistance to the disease so fleas didn’t need to find human hosts.
After 1666, quarantine laws prevented epidemic diseases coming into the country on ships.
18th century hospitals
Who built hospitals and what types of hospitals were there?
Why were monasteries no longer running hospitals?
What did hospitals now do that medieval hospitals had not? How did this show a change in attitude towards illness and disease?
How did hospitals help doctors to develop as a profession?
Founded and supported by charitable gifts of private people.
General hospitals for the sick, mental hospitals (St Luke’s Hospital), London’s Lock hospital for venereal (sexually transmitted) disease 1746, maternity hospital, Foundling hospital for orphan children.
King Henry VIII seized wealth of rich catholic monasteries + closed them down as part of the religious conflict between Henry VIII and the Catholic Church. He gave the money to start hospitals e.g. St Bartholomew’s + St Thomas’ where Harvey investigated circulation.
Tried to cure patients with knowledge of the 4 humours (bleeding and purging). Towards the end of the 18th century patients were treated for free and the poor were given medicines for no charge. Private patients were a doctors main source of income. Hospitals were starting to handle more patients (over 20,000 compared to 1400) and were recognising the importance of public health and were less reliant on God.
Doctors of the future received training in medical schools attached to hospitals. Doctors still learned through lectures + reading but charity hospitals (the one in Edinburgh) gave final year students the opportunity to gain experience by following the medical professor through the wards. This gave them more experience in the medical field, helped develop their profession and heightened their understanding leading to overall better healthcare.
John Hunter
Who was he and what did he do?
How did he gain access to so much knowledge of the human body?
How did his methods of observation mean that medical understanding and knowledge was developed?
Why did his ideas gain respect compared to those of Vesalius and Harvey?
-Set up a large practice + trained hundreds of surgeons, many became great medical professors (Edward Jenner).
- grave robber for his brother
- Army surgeon 1760
- surgeon at St George’s hospital 1768
- Surgeon to king George III 1776
- surgeon general to army 1790.
- promoter of careful observation and was willing to take radical approaches which meant he came out with new ideas and cures faster, developing understanding and knowledge.
- he experimented on himself in 1767 by injecting pus from the sores of a gonorrhoea patient to see if gonorrhoea and syphilis were the same disease. He didn’t know that the patient also had syphilis and spent years recovering.
- In 1785 he conducted surgery on a mans leg and tied off the artery which encouraged new blood vessels to develop and bypass the tumour in his leg. Normally the leg would be amputated but Hunter saved the mans leg with his radical approaches to surgery.
- Hunter was a respected surgeon and was elected fellow of the royal society in 1767 which would mean his ideas would gain more respect than Vesalius and Harvey.
- He had a museum with 3000 specimens.
- The Natural History of Teeth 1771, Venereal Disease 1786 (translated to several European languages + was widely read), Blood Inflammation and Gunshot Wounds (proved that gunshot wounds weren’t poisoned).
Nature of Renaissance When and what was it? Why did it happen? Effect? Medical developments?
Late 1400s began in Italy. Spread of new ideas. Development of art and new inventions (gunpowder). More scientific approach to learning: questioning
Happened because wealthy merchants paid scholars to investigate ancient ideas- spread with printing press.
Encouraging questioning meant people became more open minded so became more accepting of questioning Galen.
Role of the church is less significant and controlling over medical ideas.
Better artists meant dissection drawings were more accurate.
Invention of printing press: new ideas spread more easily and were cheaper.
Barber surgeons and apothecaries had more surgical knowledge.
Edward Jenner Who was he and what did he do? Where did his ideas come from? Why did Jenner face opposition? What was the impact of his discovery (long and short term)?
Discovered vaccination by injecting an 8 year old boy with cowpox to see if he’d be resistant to smallpox.
Went against gods will: if god wanted the person to have smallpox them they should have it.
He was a country doctor who heard that milkmaids were immune to smallpox because they caught cowpox when milking cows. They were therefore resistant to smallpox. Jenner made this link.
Fear that cows would grow out of you with the vaccination.
He couldn’t explain how vaccination worked.
Many doctors were profiting from inoculation.
Attempts to repeat the experiment failed because equipment was contaminated in the London Smallpox Hospital and a patient died.
Made people notice vaccination
By 1800s doctors were using his technique in American and Europe and in 1853 British government made smallpox vaccination compulsory.
