Case Studies in Medicine Through Time
- Created by: poppymanders12
- Created on: 16-02-18 01:29
Medieval: Black Death
- It first hit, in Britain, 1348
- It was caused by the Medieval causes
- It was actually caused by rats and lice
- It was prevented by
- It could be attempted in treating by
- It could be prevented by
- Examples of symptoms were buboes
- The Black Death started in China and then spread across to Europe
Renaissance: The Great Plague in 1665
- Symptoms were the same to the Black Death
- People would try and prevent the plague by having public days of fasting and prayer ordered by the King
- People would pray for the sick and would put magical / religious charms on the buboes to let the pus out as well as bleeding and purging
- People believed that miasma spread disease but it was actually via rats and lice
Renaissance: Harvey and Blood Circulation
- He discovered blood circulation via dissecting cold-blooded animals
- This was a breakthrough because it was the first step into breaking away from the church and starting scientific developments
- Harvey had read about previous doctors' work, such as Galen, and developed his theory from there
- A limitation was that because he dissected animals and not humans, because dissecting humans was not allowed, so Harvey was not able to know everything about the human heart
- An example of what Harvey didn't know about the human heart is that he did not know how blood moved from the arteries to the veins
Industrial: Jenner and Vaccination
- Jenner made the first major breakthrough, discovering the smallpox vaccintion
- He observed that people who contracted cowpox didn't contract smallpox
- He experimented by injecting a small inactive dose of cowpox and they didn't get smallpox
- The vaccination became a new breakthrough in medical history
- The word vaccination was used because "vacca" in latin means cow
- He then went on to publish his work in 1798
Industrial: The Cholera Outbreak in 1854
- When cholera first broke out it killed approximately 14,000 people
- The Cholera Outbreak was solved in Broad Street by John Snow
- John Snow was a physician who observed cholera in Broad Street
- A way people treated cholera was the Public Health Acts which ordered for an improvement in Public Health but it was not for another 20 years that it was enforced!
- Snow found that cholera was caused by dirty water
- He then made a water pump to produce clean water
- The water pump reduced death rate massively
Modern Day: Penicillin
- In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered that penicillin and went onto publish a book on his discovery
- In 1938, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain read about Fleming's work and realised it could be very effective
- Florey and Chain got £25 funding from the government
- It wasn't until 1941 when they tested penicillin on a man with septicaemia and it worked
- In 1941, just post Pearl Harbor so Florey went to America and soon American Government was having penicillin mass-produced
Modern Day: Lung Cancer
- Lung Cancer is caused by smoking - 90%
- By the 1900's there was over 40,000 cases of lung cancer per year
- Some cases of lung cancer were caused by passive smoking
- Only 10% of people live for more than 5 years once diagnosed
- Lung Cancer can be treated by chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy or surgery
- The only prevention would be not smoking however other than that there is no prevention
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