Changes in Health and Medicine c.1340 to the present day

Flashcards about advances in surgery, medicine, and treatments during the Industrial, Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern periods, including key figures, discoveries, and Welsh examples.

Anaesthetics

Substances used to relieve pain during surgery; chloroform, discovered by James Simpson, was an early example.

Antiseptics

Chemicals, like carbolic acid used by Joseph Lister, used to destroy bacteria and prevent infection during surgery.

Joseph Lister

Professor of Surgery who used carbolic acid to reduce infection rates in operations, marking a turning point in surgery.

Pasteur’s ‘germ theory’

The theory that Lister believed and which led to the development of antiseptics in surgery.

James Simpson

Professor of Midwifery at Edinburgh University, experimented and discovered chloroform, used as pain relief during childbirth.

Herbal Medicines

Use of herbs to treat everyday illnesses, supported by books like 'Leech Book of Bald' and herbals.

Barber Surgeons

Practitioners who bled patients, extracted teeth, performed minor surgery, sold medicine, and cut hair.

Blood-letting

Practice based on the belief that illnesses were due to imbalances in the Four Humours, treated by draining blood.

Four Humours

Belief that the body was made up of four body fluids, and illness occurred when these were out of balance.

The Mediciner

Physician or healer in medieval Wales who used herbal remedies and repaired broken bones.

Dynion Hysbys

Wise men in Wales believed to have the power to break spells and undo evils spread by witches to heal people.

Physicians of Myddfai

Physicians from a Welsh village who recorded cures and remedies in 'Llyfr Coch Hergest,' including surgery, herbal medicines, and bloodletting.

Curative wells

Wells associated with saints in early Christian times, used to treat conditions like rheumatism and skin disorders.

Thomas Rocyn Jones

A Welsh bonesetter in Rhymney who experimented with new methods of setting bones and developed new wooden splints.

Evan Thomas

Treated bone and joint diseases and developed the 'Thomas Splint' to stabilise fractures.

Sir Robert Jones

Nephew of Hugh Owen Thomas, became a lecturer in orthopaedic surgery and is known as the ‘father of orthopaedics’.

Marie Curie

Discovered radioactive elements like radium and polonium destroyed tissue, opening up a way of treating cancer.

Alexander Fleming

Discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928.

Howard Florey and Ernst Chain

Scientists at Oxford University who mass produced penicillin and began human trials.

Christiaan Barnard

Performed the world’s first human heart transplant in December 1967.

Human Transplantation Act 2013

Law in Wales that established ‘presumed consent’ for organ donation.

Modern Cancer Treatments

Include radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery to remove cancerous cells.

Modern Heart Disease Treatments

Include diet, exercise, drugs, surgery to install a pacemaker, by-pass surgery, and the insertion of a stent.

Alternative medicine

Includes hydrotherapy, aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, and acupuncture.