Key Individuals

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Key Individuals - Galen

Galen - 

  • Galen was Greek and was born in Pergamum in around 129AD
  • Pergamum had a very important Asklepion where Galen first started his training, he later moved to Alexandria to continue his studies
  • He wrote over 100 medical textbooks 
  • Galen was very supportive of Hippocratic ideas, especially the theory of the four humours and clinical observation 
  • He also belived in the treatment of opposites where if you had fever you could be treated with a cool cucumber (opposites) 
  • He increased his anatomical knowledge by dissecting animals - dissecting corpses was still forbidden outside of Alexandria 
  • He made some important discoveries such as the fact that the voice was controlled by the brain instead of the heart. 
  • Although the dissection of animals was useful, he was deceived by many of them and got a lot of his discoveries wrong.
  • It wasnt until the 15th and 16th century when people such as William Harvey and Andreas Versalius corrected him and proved him wrong, Here are some examples:
    • the human jawbone had 2 parts instead of 1 (it only had 1) 
    • the human kidneys were arranged with one on top of the other (only like that in dogs)
    • the heart consumed blood as fuel (just wrong) 
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Key Individuals - Galen

The Impact of Galen - 

  • Altogether Galen wrote over 350 medical books, and because of his reputation the books became standard and unchallenged 
  • Within these books he included the work of earlier physicians such as Hippocrates and it also contained his own ideas, such as theory of opposites
  • It was known as an encyclopedia of medical knowledge 
  • He became the supreme authority on medical matters for centuries to come 
  • Another reason for Galen being unchallenged was probably due to the fact his work fitted with the Christian Chruch 
  • During the Middle Ages the Christian Church largely controlled education
  • Galens work agreed with the fact that human beings were created by one God and therefore to challenge Galen would have been seen as blasphemous 
  • He also had a great influence over the Arabic world as they too agreed with the monotheistic ideas 
  • Nobody challenged him for over 1500 years 
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Key Individuals - Rhazes

Rhazes - 

  • Was a Muslim from the Arab world and was round about 750 AD 
  • He followed many of the Hippocratic ideas and stressed the importance of careful observation 
  • He wrote over 200 medical books
  • He specifically was one of the first people to question Galen and he wrote a book called Doubts about Galen.
  • He believed it was his duty to question the work of his teachers, so he could progress medical knowledge 
  • He was asked by a local city to help set up a hospital 
  • To find the best place possible he hung meats up around the city to see which one decayed the slowest and he built his hospital there 
  • He also identified the difference between smallpox and measles 
  • He was physician to the royal court, he engaged in medicine on a practical level and these experiences permeate his writings.
  • He stressed the importance of clinical observation - that was his main aim 
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Key Individuals - Ibn Sina

Ibn Sina -

  • Ibn Sina is perhaps the most famous out of all of the Islamic physicians 
  • His work led him to be called the Galen of Islam 
  • He was Persian and was born about 980 AD 
  • Perhaps his most distinguished piece was a medical textbook which he wrote called the Canon of Medicine which combined the likes of Aristotle, Galen and Hippocrates 
  • This book is one of the most important ways in which these classical ideas got back to the West 
  • It was used as a standard text in European schools and universities until the Renaissance 
  • The book included different chapters on:Ibn Sina did not believe in personal immortality and he didnt believe that God was interested in individuals or the creation story 
    • eating disorders 
    • obesity 
    • and the medicianl uses of hundreds of drugs 
  • This caused him to have many enemies who encouraged the decline in rationalist philosophy in the Islamic world 
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Key Individuals - Parè

 Ambroise Parè - 

  • Ambroise Parè was a barber surgeon born in 1510
  • Being a barber surgeon was not a very hughly regarded position so it was hard to get his findings out.
  • He became and army surgeon and felt pity for all the wounded soldiers whose amputations were painful 
  • Before Parè surgery was often very brutal and wounds were sealed using a red hot iron (cauterisation) and bullet wounds had hot burning oil pured into them (they were thought to be poisonous).
  • Parè used different methods to try make surgery more comfortable 
  • After running out of hot oil he turned to a soothing ointment made from 
    • egg yolk
    • rose oil 
    • turpentine 
  • To seal amputations he used silk threads called ligatures which he tied around the blood vessels to stop bleeding.
  • He was one of the first to design prosthetic limbs for wounded soldiers.
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Key Individuals - Parè

The situation after Parè - 

  • Parès methods particulalry the treatment of wounds worked really well. 
  • In contrast his impact and influence was limited due to many different factors such as: 
    • using the silk ligatures was very slow - many thought cauterisation was faster and saved more lives 
    • the ligatures caused infection - sometimes if the thread was dirty it could introduce infection, and the turpentine was not a powerful enough antiseptic 
    • his social status - because he came from a normal background and had a lack in education many doctors looked down on him, it took the approval of the king to gain the respect from others 
    • pain and infection remained unsolved - the reason for pain and infection after having surgery was unknown for centuries afterwards 
  • He eventually became surgeon to the King of France. 
  • He wrote a famous medical book called the Works on Surgery in 1575 
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Key Individuals - Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius -

  • Andreas Vesalius was born into an Italian medical family in 1514.
  • Before Vesalius Galen had been unquestioned, and all doctors believed that he was right as his books had been used for so long. 
  • He was able to dissect corpses because of the new chapter of the Renaissance and leniance from the Church, so he repeated some of Galens anatomical investigations
  • The main mistakes he found was that:He dissected his own corpses as opposed to employing a menial demonstator, and wrote books about his observations using diagrams to illustrate his work Vesalius produced the first comprehensive anatomical textbooks, his most famous being The Fabic of the Human Body in 1543
    • there was only 1 part of the human jawbone 
    • the liver was situated differently to how Galen had described it. 
    • there were no holes in the septum of the heart 
  • He illustrated in enormous amounts of detail so that he could annotate and refer to different parts in the text.
  • Although he proved Galen wrong his impact was limited because: 
    • many doctors refused that Galen was wrong, they said Vesalius must have been mistaken 
    • secondly his work did not have any practical uses at that time, so he cured nobody 
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Key Individuals - Harvey

William Harvey 

  • William Harvey was born in 1578 and studied in Padua before becoming the personal physician to James 1 and Charles 1 
  • Before Harveys discovery the blood was thought to be consumed by the heart, as said by Galen 
  • Harvey did comparative studies and he realised he could test Galens theory on his subjects 
  • Harvey performed careful experiments and kept very detailed notes.
  • He proved that the heart pumps blood around the body in one direction and he showed that the heart lets the blood pass through it via the septum and that the arteries take the blood away. 
  • He also identified the difference between the arteries and the veins, and building on Erasistratus's discoveries that the blood changed colour as it goes through the lungs. 
  • Although Harveys work was a significant turning point in anatomy it had a limited impact:
    • didnt change the practise of surgery and had limited practical value 
    • Again like Vesalius, other doctors refused to belive that Galen was wrong 
    • Harvey could not be specific in explaining how the blood moved between the arteries and veins (through capillaries)
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Key Individuals - Simpson

James Simpson -             see anaesthetics

  • James Simpson was the founder of chloroform an anaesthetic used in the 19th century. 
  • Before chloroform was founded things like nitrous oxide was used and ether, but were otherwise proved unsucessful
  • In 1847 Simpson experimented on himslef to find an alternative to these anaesthetics. 
  • It was widely used to reduce pain during childbirth in operating theatre, but had the risk of maing the heart stop suddenly. 
  • This improved the practise of surgery as it stopped the pain. 

There were many oppositions to Simpsons find in chloroform. 

  • Religious groups felt that pain, particularly childbirth was sent by God, so should be suffered
  • Doctors and dentists feared about giving the correct dose of chloroform, as men women and children all needed different doses, as a result many people died
  • Resulted in the "Black Period" of surgery 
  • There was a lot of outcry to the use of chloroform, until in 1853, Queen Victoria used it when giving birth to her son under anaesthetics. 
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Key Individuals - Lister

Joseph Lister -                                  see antiseptics 

  • After surgery there were two main approaches to reducing infection 
    • antiseptics and asepsis 
  • Jospeh Lister pioneered the use of Antiseptics
  • He had seen carbolic acid sprays being used in sewage works to stop it from smelling , so tried it in the operating theatre, and saw massive reduced infection rates
  • After hearing about the germ theory in 1865, he realised that germs could be anywhere. 
  • He started using the carbolic acid on instruments and bandages. soaking them in it and also used a carbolic acid spray to kill germs in the operating theatre. 
  • He cut the death rate in a Glasgow hospital from 46% to 15% in only three years 
  • With Listers carbolic acid, surgeons were able to perform safer surgery with safer equpiment
  • Like most things there was some opposition to the antiseptics:
    • Some surgeons thought using antispetics took too much time
    • Carbolic acid was unpleasant to use, irritated the throat, dried out their hands and made their Many still would not accept the "germ theory" so refused to use carbolic acid 
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Key Individuals - Semmelweis

Ignaz Semmelweis - 

  • Ignaz Semmelweis was the first to stop the spread of infection 
  • He came from Hungaria and was a doctor working in Vienna during the 1840s 
  • He was horrified how so many women dies after childbirth from a disease called puerperal fever. 
  • He belived that it was the spread of the diseases from the doctors hands after dealing with other ill patients, and would then go and tend to a pregnant woman making her ill
  • He was not influenced by the "germ theory" because it was yet to be discovered until 1865
  • He dramtically cut the death rate after ordering doctors to wash their hands inbetween seeing patients
  • He told them to wash using a solution of chloride of lime, which was an effective antiseptic which killed the bacteria
  • Although he was correct he could not prove it because the germ theory was another 20 years in the future 
  • His ideas were dropped when he left Vienna in 1848, but again the death rates rose up. 
  • Although his theory was sucessful, the chloride of lime was unpleasant to use. 
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Key Individuals - Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich -                               see antibodies 

  • In 1889 Paul Ehrlich set out to find chemicals that could act as synthetic antibodies. 
  • It was known that antibodies only attacked specific microbes so they were nicknamed magic bullets - compund (nickname) not only stain the germ but also attack and kill it 
  • Ehrlichs main find was a chemical treatment for syphilis a widley spread sexually transmitted disease. 
  • Firstly, Ehrlich dicovered dyes that could be sued to kill malaria and sleeping sickness germs. 
  • In 1905 the spirochete bacteria that caused syphilis was identified. Syphilis had been for many years been cured using arsenic and mercury, both are poisonous, sometimes death
  • Ehrlich and his team decided to search for an arsenic compund that was a magic bullet for syphilis, in hope of finding a cure 
  • Its main objective was to target the spirochete bacteria without harming the rest of the body
  • Over 600 different compunds were tried but none worked until one of Ehrlichs team looked back over the results and found that number 606 worked. 
  • It was named Salvarsan 606 and was first used to treat a human in 1911. 
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Key Individuals - Fleming

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