key individuals

?

Hippocrates (Ancient Greece)

  • He was a doctor in 400BC.
  • He came up with the idea of the Four Humours: Blood, Phlegm, Yellow bile and Black bile.
  • He believed that if any of the Four Humours were 'imbalanced'- that you would become ill.
1 of 15

Galen (Ancient Rome)

  • Galen was a gladiator surgeon in 120AD.
  • He dissected animals to discover what human anatomy looked like.
  • He said that the inside of an animal was the same as the inside of a human.
2 of 15

Vesalius ( Renaissance)

  • Vesalius was an anatomist in the 1500s.
  • He took bodies from cemetries and dissected them.
  • In 1543 he published a book called 'The Fabric of the Human Body'.
  • Vesalius' book contained detailed pictures of the human anatomy.
  • He corrected over 200 of Galens mistakes.
3 of 15

Pare (Renaissance)

  • Pare was a surgeon.
  • When soldiers were wounded, they were bleeding a lot. So, instead of causterising the wounds (which was pressing a boiling hot metal iron on the wound).He used ointment of egg yolk, oil, roses and other herbs.
  • And he used ligatures made from silk threads to tie up arteries and veins to stop bleeding.
  • To tell other surgeons about his ideas, he published a book called 'Works on Surgery' in 1575.
4 of 15

Harvey (Renaissance)

  • He discovered that the heart pumped blood around the body.And that blood circulated in one direction.
  • He pushed thin metal rods into veins to prove that the blood went one way.
  • He also proved Galen wrong. Galen said that the blood was produced by the liver and burnt up by the heart.
  • So in 1528 he published a book called 'An Anotomical account of the motion of the heart and blood in animals'.
5 of 15

Jenner (18th Century)

  • He injected Cowpox into a little boy to make him immune to Small Pox.
  • Small Pox was the biggest killer of the 18th Century (killed 15% of people).
  • Jenners vaccinatin was made in 1798 and people were forced to have one in 1852.
6 of 15

John Snow (19th Century)

  • In 1854, John Snow discovered the connection between contaminated water and cholera by plotting the course of a cholera outbreak in the Broad Street area of London. He noticed that all the victims used the same water pump. When he removed the handle from the pump, the epidemic ended.
7 of 15

Pasteur (19th Century)

  • Pasteur proved that bacteria grew over time in stuff like beer and wine.
  • He said disease was not caused by Miasma ( the theory that bad smells caused disease).
  • Pasteur made his 'Germ theory of disease' in 1861.
8 of 15

Koch (19th Century)

  • Koch developed pasteur's Germ theory of disease.
  • He discvered that different bacteria caused different diseases.
  • He identified the bacteria that caused Anthrax, TB and Cholera in the 1880's.
9 of 15

Simpson (19th Century)

  • Before Simpson, patients and casulties would have operations with so much pain.
  • Simpson discovered the 1st anaesthetics (chloroform).
  • Chloroform was first used in 1847 by Queen Victoria during pregnancy.
10 of 15

Lister (19th Century)

  • He made the first antiseptics.
  • Before antiseptics many people would have died from infection (around 50% of people who had a part of their body amputated).
  • Lister used cabolic acid to kill germs and stop infections.
  • The discovery of germs led to aseptic surgery (germ free).
  • When the surgeons sterilised their equipment, the number of people dying from infection fell from 50% to 15%.
11 of 15

Rontgen (19th Century)

  • He discovered x-rays in 1895 by mistake.
12 of 15

Fleming ( 19th Century)

  • He accidently discovered penicillin in 1928.
  • He went on holiday, came back and realised a mouldy fungus blew from the window and into his petri-dish.
  • He noticed that the edges of the bacteria were killed.
13 of 15

Florey and chain (20th Century)

  • They developed the penicillin drug in the 1930s-40s.
  • The American government invested $80 million into the penicillin drug to be used for the soldiers in ww2.
  • Penicillin saved over 200 million lives in the 1900s and 15% more soldiers would've died in ww2 without it. 
14 of 15

Crick and Watson (20th Century)

  • They discovered DNA in 1953.
  • They found out that our Genes determine out hair and eye colour.
  • This led to Gene therapy and stem cell research.
15 of 15

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar History resources:

See all History resources »See all Medicine through time (OCR History A) resources »