Zusammenfassung der Ressource
History- Medicine In Britain
- Disease and the Supernatural.
- Many people believed that
disease was a punishment
from God.
- The church made people
believe this
- This prevented people from trying to find cures for
disease- if disease was a punishment from God, all
you could do was pray and repent
- They thought that the way to cure disease
was through prayer and repentance.
- Flagellation- when you hit, whip or hurt
yourself to show forgiveness to God
- Astrology was a common theory in medieval times.
- Astrology is the idea that the movement of planet and
stars have an effect on the Earth and on people.
- Astrology was a new way of diagnosing disease.
- Different star signs were thought to affect different parts of the body.
- The Roman Catholic church was an extremely powerful
organisation in Europe.
- It dominated the way people studied and thought about a range of
topics, including medicine.
- People believed that some diseases could be
caused by evil spirits living inside someone
- Members of the church performed exorcisms
- Exorcisms is using chance to remove the spirit from someone's body
- Natural Explanations
- Four Humours.
- The theory of the four humours
was created by the ancient
greek DR. Hippocrates.
- Hippocrates believed that the
body was made of four fluids.
- Blood, Phlegm, Yellow bile and Black bile.
- These were linked to the four
seasons and the four elements.
- To get better again the humours need to be balanced.
- To get your humours balanced, you need to go to a
barber surgeon.
- There you are either treated through purging or blood letting.
- Some treatments in Medieval Britain were based less on religious faith
and more on natural theories and observation of the physical world.
- Miasma Theory.
- The Miasma Theory blamed bad air for causing disease.
- this bad air may come from human waste or dead bodies.
- This theory originated in ancient
Greece and Rome and was
incorporated by Galen into the
Theory of the Four Humours.
- This idea was extremely popular in medieval Britain.
- Treating and preventing diseases.
- The Miasma Theory led people to believe
in the power of purifying or cleansing the
air to prevent sickness and improve health.
- Physicians carry posies and oranges around with them
when visiting patients to protect themselves from
catching a disease.
- During the Black Death, juniper, Myrrh and incense were burned so the smoke
or scent would fill the room and stop bad air from bringing disease inside.
- People had burning bins at the end of streets, so it would burn away the bad air.
- People carried around
herbs and strong
smelling flowers to
prevent themselves from
disease.
- People used herbs and scents like
Lavender, Basil, Rosemary and Sage.
- Germ Theory.
- Discovered by Louis Pasteur.
- Pasteur was a French chemist and he got
employed in 1857 to find the explanation
for the souring of sugar beet used in
fermenting industrial alcohol. His answer
was to blame germs.
- Pasteur proved there was germs
in the air, he showed that
sterilised water in a closed flask
stay sterile, whilst sterilised water
in a open flask bred germs.
- In 1861, Germ Theory was published.
- Pasteur argued that microbes in the air caused decay.
- He suggested some germs caused disease.
- In 1867, Pasteur released evidence proving
there was a link between germs and disease.
- The Germ Theory wasn't popular at first because
people couldn't believe that tiny microbes could
cause disease
- The theory inspired the surgeon
Joseph Lister to develop antiseptics
- The theory confirmed John Snow's cholera theory
- This theory put pressure on the government to pass the 1875 Public
Health Act
- The Miasma Theory was so influential that it
lasted until the 1860s when Germ Theory replaced
it.
- The German Theory Robert Koch built on
Pasteur's work by linking specific
diseases to the particular microbe that
caused them
- Robert Koch