Britain: Health and People c1000-present day1

Why did Medieval doctors rely on ancient Greek and Roman ideas?

They created the Theory of the Four Humours (phlegm, blood, yellow bile, black bile) and the Theory of Opposites. The Catholic Church aggressively protected Galen's books because he believed the body was perfectly designed by a single creator, which fit Christian theology. Disobeying Galen was branded as heresy.

What were the believed causes and actual impacts of the …… Black Death?

• 1348

People blamed miasma, God’s punishment, or planetary alignment. Treatments included flagellation and bloodletting. The massive shortage of workers shattered the feudal system. Surviving peasants successfully demanded higher wages, showing how medical crises reshape society.

How did the Church influence hospital care and public hygiene?

Monasteries had advanced systems with clean running water, latrines, and filtering. However, Church-run hospitals focused entirely on spiritual healing and care, explicitly banning doctors from preforming surgeries or treatments that altered the body.

How did Andreas Vesalius challenge medical orthodoxies?

He preformed direct human dissections and published The Fabric of the Human Body (1543). He proved Galen wrong on jaw anatomy and the breastbone.

The newly invented printing press allowed his detailed anatomical diagrams to be copied quickly and taught to doctors across Europe.

What were Ambroise Paré's two major surgical breakthroughs?

1) Replaced boiling oil for wounds with a soothing mixture of egg yolk, oil of roses, turpentine.

2) Used ligatures (silk threads) to tie off blood vessels during amputations instead of red-hot cauterising irons. This drastically reduced patient shock and infection rates.

What did William Harvey discover about the human body?

Discovered that the heart acts as a pump, circulating blood in a continuous one-way loop around the body. This disproved Galen's claim that the liver constantly manufactured new blood. His discovery was an anatomical breakthrough but did not instantly save lives because doctors still lacked the technology to preform safe blood transfusions.

How did the response to the …. Great Plague differ from the 1348 Black Death?

• 1665

The government took structured control. Mayors banned public gatherings, ordered fires to burn on streets to drive away miasma, and appointed Searchers to lock infected families inside their houses for 40 days. This proved that local councils were learning to isolate diseases.

What was Edward Jenner's breakthrough and why did it face resistance?

Discovered that infection with mild cowpox granted immunity against deadly smallpox (1796), creating the first vaccination. Inoculators resisted it because it threatened their high profits, and the anti—vaccine movement feared turning into animals. Parliament made the smallpox vaccine compulsory in 1853, proving a shift toward state-enforced public health.

What was the ….. Germ Theory and what did it replace?

In 1861, Louis Pasteur proved that microscopic germs in the air cause decay and disease, completely disproving spontaneous generation (the belief that decay creates microbes). This revolutionised hospital sanitation, water treatment, and vaccine manufacturing.

How did Robert Koch build upon Pasteur's Germ Theory?

Invented industrial dyes to stain specific microbes under a microscope, successfully identifying the specific bacteria responsible for deadly diseases like anthrax, tuberculosis, and cholera. This allowed scientists to target and attack specific illnesses.

How did James Simpson and Joseph Lister transform surgery?

• Simpson discovered chloroform (1847) to put patients to sleep, ending surgical pain. (Anaesthetics)

• Lister used carbolic acid spray (1865) to sterilise operating theatres, cutting post-surgery gangrene deaths from 50% to 15%. (Antiseptics)

How did John Snow and Edwin Chadwick clean up Britain's cities?

• In 1842, Chadwick's report proved poverty was caused by disease and filth, forcing the 1848 Public Health Act.

• In 1854, Snow mapped cholera deaths around the Broad Street pump in London, proving cholera was waterborne, not spread by miasma. This forced the construction of London's massive sewer network

How was the world's first antibiotic developed?

Alexander Fleming discovered pencillin mould killing bacteria by accident (1928) but stopped his research. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain purified it for human use in 1940. The US government funded massive factory production during WW2 to treat thousands of wounded Allied soldiers, saving millions of lives.

Why did the British government suddenly introduce welfare reforms?

Booth and Rowntree published reports proving over 30% of city populations lived in absolute poverty. During the Boer War, 40% of army recruits were physically unfit to fight. To ensure a strong workforce and military, the government passed Free School Meals (1906) and the National Insurance Act (1911).

Who established the NHS and what obstacles did it face?

Launched by Health Minister Aneurin Bevan to provide free healthcare from “cradle to grave”. The British Medical Association (doctors) aggressively resisted it because they feared losing independent income. Bevan won them over by “stuffing their mouths with gold” (allowing them to keep lucrative private patients).

• What factors catalysed the birth of the NHS in…..?

• 1948

Wartime collectivism (Blitz experience requiring unified state response), the 1942 Beveridge Report identifying the “Five Giants” (want, disease, ignorance, squalor, idleness), and the public rejection of pre-war interwar health inequalities.