WOH Midterm Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key historical milestones, epidemics, figures, and medical breakthroughs from Ancient World medicine to modern public health initiatives.

Medicine in the Ancient World (pre-500 CE)

Early healthcare practices that shifted from purely supernatural explanations to systematic observations in places like Greece and Rome, prioritizing natural causes over divine punishment and establishing foundational concepts for ethics, diagnoses, and anatomy.

Hippocrates of Kos (c. 460-370 BCE)

Ancient Greek physician known as the father of western medicine for separating medical practice from religion and superstition, introducing the Hippocratic Oath, and emphasizing clinical observation and detailed patient histories.

The Four Humors and Galen (129-216 CE)

A medical doctrine popularized by Galen that attributed health and illness to the balance of four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. It remained an uncontested authority in Western and Islamic worlds for nearly 1500 years.

Miasma Theory

A long-held medical belief that diseases were caught and transmitted through bad air originating from decaying organic matter, which served as the dominant explanation for epidemics until the late 1800s and prompted urban sanitation improvements.

Medicine in the Medieval World (500-1500 CE)

An era of medicine characterized by a blend of religious dogma, humoral theory, and emerging clinical practice, where scholars preserved Ancient Greek and Roman texts and European monastic institutions laid foundations for hospital networks and university faculties.

The House of Wisdom (founded late 700s)

A major intellectual center and library in Baghdad that drove the Islamic Golden Age by preserving, examining, and expanding classical scientific and medical texts, which were later translated into Latin and shaped European university medical curricula.

Christianity, Humanism, and Medicine (c. 1300-1600)

A Renaissance-era intersection where Christian religious duty combined with humanist inquiries to reshape medical education, human anatomical dissections, and healthcare provision.

The Paris School of Medicine (late 1700s-mid 1800s)

A major movement in medical education that shifted practice away from abstract theoretical models by prioritizing hospital-based bedside teaching, physical examinations, and post-mortem dissections linking clinical symptoms directly to tissue lesions.

The Sanitary Movement (mid 1800s)

A public health reform movement aimed at improving urban hygiene, sewage, water, and housing conditions to combat industrial-era epidemics, which significantly lowered urban mortality rates and created legal frameworks for modern public health administration.

John Snow (1813-1858)

English physician who mapped cholera cases during an outbreak to prove the disease was waterborne rather than miasmatic, laying key foundations for modern epidemiology and municipal water management.

The Germ Theory of Disease (mid-late 1800s)

The scientific principle establishing that diseases are caused by specific microorganisms rather than poisonous air, replacing miasma and humoral theories and enabling the development of antiseptics, inoculations, and antimicrobial treatments.

The Antibiotic Revolution (early-mid 1900s)

The discovery and mass industrial production of antibacterial substances, primarily Penicillin in the 1940s, which dramatically reduced mortality rates from common infections and transformed fatal illnesses into treatable conditions.

The Vaccine Revolution (mid 1900s)

A period of rapid development and global deployment of immunizations against major diseases like polio, measles, and diphtheria, almost completely eliminating childhood mortality from historic endemic diseases.

Disparities in Global Public Health

Systematic inequalities in healthcare access, disease burden, life expectancy, and medical resources between wealthy and developing nations, demonstrating how economic development influences survival during disease spreads.

Yersinia pestis

The bacterium transmitted by fleas on rodents that causes the Bubonic Plague, responsible for killing more humans than any other pathogen in recorded history.

Justinianic Plague (541-549)

The first documented global pandemic of Yersinia pestis, which originated in Central Asia, spread through the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean, killed tens of millions, and caused severe economic and political disruption.

Great Famine (1315-1317)

A widespread crisis caused by adverse weather conditions and crop failures in Northern Europe that left millions dead and survivors severely malnourished immediately prior to the arrival of the Bubonic Plague.

The Black Death (1340s)

A devastating Yersinia pestis pandemic that swept through Asia, Europe, and North Africa, killing 30-60% of Europe's total population and leading to the collapse of European feudalism.

Responses to the Black Death (mid-late 1300s)

A range of public health, social, and religious measures across Afro-Eurasia to manage the plague, including formal quarantine periods, isolation wards, health boards, religious movements, and violent scapegoating of Jewish communities.

Economic Effects of the Plague (mid-late 1300s)

Severe economic shifts resulting from the death of up to half of the Eurasian population, causing labor shortages that allowed surviving peasants to demand higher wages, ending serfdom in Western Europe and driving labor-saving technological innovation.

Pericles (495-429 BCE)

Athenian statesman and general who gathered the population behind city walls to protect against Spartan land forces during the Peloponnesian War, creating conditions for a devastating epidemic that killed a third of the population, including himself.

Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE)

Athenian historian and general who survived the Plague of Athens and authored 'The History of the Peloponnesian War', providing the earliest detailed clinical account of epidemic disease symptoms and societal fallout devoid of supernatural explanations.

The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE)

Ancient Greek military conflict between the Delian League (led by Athens) and the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta), in which epidemic disease played a major role in draining Athenian wealth, manpower, and political stability.

Plague of Athens (430-426 BCE)

A devastating epidemic of uncertain etiology (likely typhoid or smallpox) that killed roughly a third of Athens' population during the Peloponnesian War and shattered its military strength.

Yellow Fever in Haiti (1802)

A catastrophic outbreak of a mosquito-borne virus that wiped out the majority of Napoleon's army sent to suppress the Haitian Revolution, forcing France to abandon ambitions in the Western Hemisphere and sell the Louisiana Territory.

Dysentery and Typhus in Russia (1812)

Massive insect- and water-borne disease outbreaks that decimated Napoleon's invading army of 600,000 in Russia, reducing it to a fraction before reaching Moscow and causing the collapse of French hegemony in continental Europe.

Disease in the U.S. Civil War (1861-65)

Outbreaks of dysentery, typhoid, measles, and malaria that caused approximately two-thirds of all military fatalities during the conflict, prompting overhauls in battlefield sanitation, military medicine, and nursing organization.

Disease in the Western Front of World War I (1914-18)

Severe health crises resulting from trench warfare conditions (including trench fever, dysentery, gangrene, and the 1918 influenza pandemic) that severely strained military capabilities during the final months of the war.

Substantial Decrease in Disease Fatalities in World War II (1939-45)

A historical milestone in military conflict where combat casualties outnumbered disease deaths for the first time, achieved through mass penicillin distribution, battlefield hygiene protocols, and improved immunizations.

Smallpox Variolation in the American Colonies (1700s)

An early immunization technique involving the transfer of fluid or scabs from a smallpox patient to an uninfected person to induce mild symptoms and confer immunity, popularized by Cotton Mather and Onesimus and later mandated by George Washington for the Continental Army.

Edward Jenner and Smallpox Vaccine (1796)

English physician who developed the world's first true vaccine by using cowpox virus material to confer immunity against smallpox, offering a safer alternative to variolation and initiating the process toward global smallpox eradication.

The Polio Vaccine (1953)

A medical breakthrough developed under Jonas Salk to neutralize the paralyzing polio virus, halting annual summer epidemics and restoring public confidence in biomedical science.

Global Polio Eradication Initiative (1988)

A public-private partnership involving national governments, WHO, UNICEF, Rotary International, and the CDC that reduced global polio cases by over 99% and brought the wild virus close to extinction worldwide.