Ideas about the Cause and Disease of Illness

Medical Renaissance

• New ideas began to influence medicine and slowly replace old beliefs

• Protestantism began to spread, meaning the Catholic Church was less able to promote their beliefs and control medicine

• Scientific ideas were discovered in medicine and beyond as society developed

Continuity in Explanations

• Miasma: continued and became more widespread during epidemics

• Influence of the Church: during epidemics, like the Great Plague, they were still influential

• Supernatural: from 1500, astrology became less popular, but charms were still warn as protection from evil spirits during epidemics

Changes in Explanations

• Practice of medicine did not change much, but ideas about cause were starting to change

• Decline in influence of the Church meant that most believed God didn’t send disease

• Theory of 4 Humours was discredited and was not believed by physicians at the end of the 17th century, but it still used to be diagnosed because patients understood it

• Urine analysis: physicians now understood that urine wasn’t linked to ill health and wasn’t used to diagnose illness

• By the end, there was a move away from old ideas, but they hadn’t been fully replaced

Animalcules

• A new idea that little animals were the cause of illness

• Developed after they could be seen by newly invented, powerful microscopes

• Images were not very clear

Thomas Sydenham

• Important part of moving medicine away from Hippocrates and Galen

• Believed in closely observing the symptoms of the patient

  • Noting down in detailed description

  • Looking for remedies to treat the disease, instead of relying on medical books

Influence of the Printing Press

• In the fifteenth century, the first printing press was invented

• Enabled medical information to spread further and more quickly

• Contributed to the decline in the influence of the Church

• Now physicians could publish books that criticised Church

Royal Society

• Founded in London in 1660 to discuss new ideas in astronomy, medicine and science

• Important in the development of new medical ideas

• Made it possible for scientists and physicians to study one another work

• Also sponsored scientists and assisted them with the publication of their ideas