medicine through time <3 gcse
Medicine through time
Medieval period –500AD-1500AD
Hippocrates 460BC to 360BC, father of modern medicine
Unlike other doctors who prayed to gods for help he believed in treating the human body
He believed in the four humours, black bile ,yellow bile, blood and phlegm
He believed if the humours were out of balance you would become ill, to bring these humours back into balance he suggested purging or bleeding.
He came up with the Hippoctratic oath-”Doctors must do their patients no harm intentionally”
Claudius Galen 130AD to 216AD
Galen lived in Rome and made many major anatomy breakthroughs by cutting open pigs, apes and even humans.
Galen discovered that arteries carry blood
The Dark Ages
There were wars breaking out across Europe during this time, so people resolved to supernatural approaches to medicine.
The Middle Ages 1000AD-1500AD
Medicine didn't get much better
The church held a tight grip over medical ideas and believed sickness was punishment for sins, the church did allow dissection, but the results would have to support the ideas of Galen as he supported the church in saying there was only one God.
During this time doctors still based their knowledge in the four humours
People turned to apothecaries because they could not afford doctors, monks and wisemen who had little to no medical knowledge
The Black Death 1348
Wiped out 40% of Britons due to overcrowding, poor living conditions and terrible public health it was near impossible to control
The disease caused violent fevers, oozing sores and swollen armpits (boils)
Most people believed it was a curse from god and prayed
18th century medicine
Doctors began to challenge modern ideas
Dr. Edward Jenner (The Father of Immunology)
Jenner lived in England when smallpox was at its height
He realized that milkmaids that had previously had cow pox were immune to smallpox because the diseases were from the same family, from this Jenner discovered if you inject someone with a small dose of cowpox
You could make them immune to smallpox, he tested his hypothesis on 25 people including a small boy names James Phips and his own son Robert
Once Jenner injected a small dose of cowpox his subjects would gain a few cowpox symptoms, but they soon recovered leaving the person immune to smallpox
When Jenner published his findings everyone laughed at him who didnt realise that Jenner had changed ideas of science for ever because he had just invented the first vaccine
Dr John Hunter ( Edward Jenner’s professor)
Hunter made it his mission to make surgeries more popular
Surgeons were not very properly trained, with most learning on the battle field or from a barber surgeon
Hunter wanted surgeries to be viewed as more of a science than a craft and that surgeons should be properly trained with a methodical approach
More public hospitals were built due to charities and wealthy philanthropists who began funding free healthcare and building medical facilities, these hospitals used modern methods of training and practice under the guidance of doctors who were becoming widely respected.
More and more people were seeking out professional medical opinions and soon enough there were doctors all over the world.
From birth through sickness to the death bed
It was becoming harder to pass off religious ideas as medical science.
As the number of doctors and public hospitals rose so did the population, especially urban areas. The average person's health was still quite bad even after all this because people were living in dirty spaces whilst suffering from poverty.