GCSE History Britain: Health and the People Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering major medical figures, breakthroughs, treatments, and concepts in British medical history from c1000 to the present day.

Avicenna

Celebrated philosopher and physician in the early Islamic Empire whose 40 surviving medical texts were printed in Europe at least 60 times between 1516 and 1574.

Hippocrates

Ancient Greek doctor who developed clinical observation of patients and created the Hippocratic Oath as a code of conduct for medical practitioners.

Galen

Greek doctor during the Roman Empire who expanded on clinical observation, dissected animals due to human dissection bans, and whose medical work formed the basis of medical training for 1400 years.

Theory of the Four Humours

Medical theory created by Hippocrates stating that the human body contained blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, and that illness resulted when these were out of balance.

Doctrines of Signatures

Medieval belief that God created illnesses along with specific plants resembling the affected body part to cure them (e.g., Lungwort for breathing problems, Saxifrage for kidney stones).

Barber Surgeons

Town practitioners who completed an apprenticeship to perform minor operations, tooth extractions, hair cutting, and bloodletting.

Apothecary

Shopkeeper who served a 7-year apprenticeship to prepare and sell remedies, herbs, spices, 'simples', and 'compounds' directly to patients or physicians.

Wise Woman

Local female healer with inherited community knowledge who provided practical herbal remedies, family healthcare, and midwifery services.

John Arderne

First famous English surgeon (1350) who developed a battlefield pain-killing ointment of hemlock, opium, and henbane, eliminating the need for cauterisation and improving amputation speed.

Cauterising

The procedure of applying heat or burning hot oil to deep wounds to seal flesh, stop bleeding, and prevent infection.

Flagellation

Medieval practice during the Black Death where people walked through the streets praying for forgiveness and whipping themselves to ward off God's punishment.

Andreas Vesalius

Renaissance professor of surgery (1514-1564) who dissected human corpses to challenge Galen's anatomical mistakes and create an accurate view of the human body.

Ambroise Paré

French army surgeon (1510-1590) who replaced hot oil cauterisation with a mixture of egg, turpentine, and oil of roses, introduced ligatures for amputations, and wrote Le Oeuvres (1575).

Ligatures

Cords or threads used during surgery to tie off blood vessels tightly to stop bleeding after amputations.

William Harvey

English physician who published On the Motion of the Heart (1628), proving that blood flows in a one-way circular system pumped around the body by the heart.

Thomas Sydenham

Known as the 'English Hippocrates', he advocated close observation of symptoms, minimal intervention, and devised 'cool therapy' for smallpox.

Burking

The crime of murdering a person for the purpose of selling their corpse to surgeons and anatomy schools for dissection.

Quackery

The sale of ineffective or fraudulent medicines ('quack medicines') by travelling salesmen using charm, charisma, and false advertising.

Foundling Hospital

Hospital established in London in 1741 by Thomas Coram to shelter, foster, and educate abandoned children.

Inoculation

Preventative method introduced to England in 1721 by Lady Mary Montagu, involving scratching a mild form of smallpox into the skin to induce immunity against severe outbreaks.

Edward Jenner

Country doctor in Gloucestershire who created the first smallpox vaccine in 1796 by injecting James Phipps with cowpox pus from an infected milkmaid.

Plague Doctor Outfit

Protective outfit designed by Charles de Lorne in 1619 featuring a waxed gown, stout boots and gloves, a wide-brimmed hat, and a beak mask filled with sweet herbs to ward off miasma.

Louis Pasteur

French chemist who established Germ Theory in 1861, proved micro-organisms cause disease, created a rabies vaccine, and invented pasteurisation.

Germ Theory

The scientific concept that infectious diseases are caused by microscopic living organisms called germs.

Robert Koch

German microbiologist who isolated the specific bacteria responsible for tuberculosis (1882) and cholera (1883) and developed techniques to stain bacteria.

Paul Ehrlich

German physician who created Salvarsan 606 in 1910, the first chemical 'magic bullet' designed to treat syphilis without damaging the body.

Magic Bullet

A chemical drug targeted to attack and destroy specific disease-causing germs with little to no effect on the rest of the body.

Florence Nightingale

Nursing pioneer who improved hospital sanitation during the Crimean War, dropping mortality rates from 40% to 2%, and founded Britain's first nurse training school at St. Thomas' Hospital.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

First female doctor to qualify in Britain (1865), who founded the New Hospital for Women and Children and helped establish the London School of Medicine for Women.

James Simpson

Edinburgh doctor who discovered the pain-relieving properties of chloroform in 1847 for use in surgical operations and childbirth.

Joseph Lister

Surgeon who pioneered antiseptic surgery in 1865 by spraying carbolic acid over wounds and operating theatres to kill germs and prevent gangrene.

Aseptic Surgery

Surgical practice aimed at preventing germs from entering the operating theatre by sterilising equipment, scrubbing hands, and wearing sterile surgical clothes.

John Snow

London surgeon who mapped cholera fatalities during the 1854 Broad Street outbreak, proving the disease was transmitted by contaminated water rather than miasma.

Alexander Fleming

British scientist who discovered penicillin mould in 1928 after noticing it killed staphylococci bacteria in a petri dish.

Howard Florey and Ernst Chain

Scientists who successfully isolated, tested, and developed mass-production techniques for penicillin, enabling its widespread military use in WWII.

National Health Service (NHS)

British state healthcare system launched in 1948 by Clement Attlee's Labour Government to provide medical services free for all at the point of delivery.

AIDS

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome; a viral disease first identified in 1981 caused by HIV that attacks and breaks down the human immune system.