Medicine Through Time

Prehistoric
1. prehistoric people lived nomadic lives
2. They died from Warfare, Pregnancy and childbirth, Infection, Famine and food shortage
3. Mainly, they believed that evil spirits caused illness
  1. They believed in trepanning, where they would drill a hole into the skull to release evil spirits to make someone feel better when they were ill
  2. They also used medicine men who would dress up like animals to scare the evil spirits away
4. Prehistoric people used herbal remedies made from herbs and flowers found around them to treat ailments and injuries
Ancient Egypt
1. In ancient Egypt, the country was an agricultural one, which helped stem many theories of the body
2. The river Nile made some believe that the body is full of channels, and if one channel became blocked, you became ill
  1. They used purging, vomiting and blood letting to unblock the channels
3. They also believed Gods could cure and cause disease
4. Egyptians believed in mummification
  1. They believed that you needed the body for the afterlife
  2. They prepared bodies by extracting soft organs such as the brain and the intestines, then drying what remained with salt. This gave the Egyptians some knowledge of anatomy.
  3. They believed that destroying someone’s body meant that they wouldn’t go to the afterlife, so experimental dissection was not allowed. This limited the amount of knowledge that could be gained.
5. New herbs were used as medicines
6. They had specialist doctors who looked for logical causes of disease and could identify some parts of the body
7. Cleanliness was valued. They bathed, shaved their heads and had toilets
Ancient Greece
1. Wealthier people could employ doctors.
2. Improvements in the strength of materials helped to make better surgical instruments.
3. Aristotle suggested the body was made up of four humours
  1. blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
  2. They need to be in balance for good health.
  3. You could get rid of an excess humour by purging, vomiting or blood-letting.
4. Hippocrates
  1. He believed in natural causes of disease, and encouraged doctors to treat illness using natural methods.
  2. The Hippocratic Oath is a promise made by doctors to obey rules of behaviour in their professional lives.
  3. The Hippocratic Corpus is a collection of medical books
  4. Hippocrates also came up with the “clinical method of observation” which involved looking at the patient's symptoms and then treating them
5. The Asclepion
  1. Visitors bathed and relaxed, prayed to Asclepios
  2. Asclepion was a temple where sick people would go to heal and pray to the God of healing, Asclepius.
  3. An abaton was a building with a roof but no walls. Whilst sleeping a god came come to them in a dream and cured them.
  4. Priests also did “ward rounds”, performing rituals which involved placing snakes on the patients.
Ancient Rome
1. Noticed that bad smells, unclean drinking water, sewage, swamps and dirt made people become ill.
2. They built public baths, toilets and sewers to remove waste.
3. They build aqueducts to carry clean water into cities.
4. Galen
  1. Galen was a Greek physician. He believed Hippocrates theory was correct, that illness was caused by imbalances of the four humours
  2. He developed the idea of opposite humours for counter-balancing the body’s humours.
  3. He found that the arteries, as well as veins, carry blood through the body.
  4. However, Galen made mistakes because he had to use only animals. He said there were holes in the septum of the heart which would let blood pass from right to the left side & that the blood was consumed rather than circulated.
5. Romans were not as interested as the Greeks in developing theories about the causes of disease.
6. Doctors were too expensive for most people, so they used home remedies
7. The most common surgical treatment was bleeding & Internal operations were still rare because they were too risky.
Medieval
1. Medieval doctors believed illness was caused by an imbalance of the four humours. The theory developed into a more complex system, based on the position of the stars, they believed the stars caused disease and relied on astrology when deciding on treatments
2. Monasteries controlled education, priests and monks were the only people who could read. The Church opened medical schools where the ideas of Galen were taught because he referred to “the creator” in his works., they banned books they did not want people to read.
3. Medical care for the poor came from hospitals set up by monasteries and run by monks and nuns.  They provided “hospitality” for visitors, however, genuinely ill people were turned away due to fear of disease spreading.
4. In the Middle Ages, there was great demand for surgery because of warfare but because it still had such low regard, it was mainly performed by barbers
5. The Black Death
  1. the black death arrived in Britain by 1348,
  2. it was spread by coughing and sneezing, started by black rat's flea bites.
  3. What they thought caused it and how they treated it
    1. Miasma – carried sweet smelling herbs, sat between two large fires.
    2. God – tried to appease god by praying, or whipping themselves as a punishment
    3. Humours out of balance – use of opposites, purging, vomiting and blood letting.
    4. Poisoned water – blamed the Jews.
6. Towns lacked the public health schemes of the Romans.
Renaissance
1. Andreas Vesalius – Anatomy
  1. Did his own dissections and wrote books based on his observations using accurate diagrams to illustrate his work
  2. He was able to point out some of Galen’s mistakes.
    1. there were no holes in the septum of the heart
    2. the jaw bone is not made up of two bones
  3. Studied anatomy, became professor of surgery and anatomy at Padua
2. Ambroise Paré – Surgery
  1. Paré was a battlefield surgeon; this was still a low status profession.
  2. In battle, he ran out of boiling oil which was used for treating gunshot wounds. Paré made an old Roman ointment of roses, turpentine and egg yolk, he was amazed to find out the soldier was still alive in the morning
  3. Paré develops ligatures to seal wounds instead of using a cauterising iron.
  4. Carried out an experiment to disprove Galen
    1. the bezoar stone isn’t a treatment for position
3. William Harvey – Circulation of the Blood
  1. Disproves Galen's ideas
    1. Proves the heart is a pump for blood
    2. Identifies the difference between arteries and veins.
    3. Discovers the circulation of the blood,
  2. To spread his ideas he writes “An Anatomical Account of the Motion of the Heart and Blood”.
  3. Becomes doctor the King, his ideas are very influential.
  4. However, bleeding operations still continue after Harvey as people are unsure of what else to do.
  5. Blood groups are discovered in 1901, which makes blood transfusions successful.
4. The Great Plague of 1665
  1. The death toll in London was about 100, 000.
  2. Efforts were made to control the spread of disease. Households were locked in and red crosses were painted on their doors with the words, “Lord have mercy upon us.”
  3. People realised disease was contagious, but they still didn’t understand about germs causing disease.
  4. The Great Fire of London in 1666 effectively sterilised large parts of London

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Medicine Through Time

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	Created by Olivia Clifford almost 8 years ago