medicine through time

Medicine both progressed and regressed during this period.

regressed

-In the West, learning collapsed.

-The only authority was the Church and books survived only in monasteries.

-But the Church prevented experiment by insisting that disease had a spiritual cause.

progressed

-monks began to experiment with herbs and other cures and in many ways these must have resulted in better understanding of how to treat disease.

-In the Islamic world, the eighth and ninth centuries were very important in medicine.

-Many books were collected and translated into Arabic and cities became the centres of learning. Cordoba had a central library of 600,000 books.

-Islam also emphasised washing and the giving of alms. These led to better medical practice and the building of many hospitals for the poor.

religion both helped and hindered the development of medicine during this period.

-In Christian Europe, the Church safeguarded what books had survived the collapse of the Roman Empire and preserved medical knowledge in monasteries.

-prevented any new developments being made by banning dissection and experiment.  monks often cared for the sick because it was part of their Christian duty.

-In the Islamic world, however, many discoveries were made and these often were influenced by religious belief.

-Cleanliness and alms were two of the five Pillars of Islam and had great influence on medical developments.

-Frequent washing improved standards of hygiene and alms-giving often led to the creation of hospitals and medical treatment for the poor.

-Islamic doctors had access to the complete works of Galen and other writers and were able to make further discoveries.

-considerable development in surgery and in the care of the sick.

distinguish between the influence of religion and the influence of the Church.   

-very few important developments in medicine from the end of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance.

-real change did not take place until the nineteenth century.

-The destruction of central authority and with it buildings and books meant that doctors could not be trained and new ideas could not spread.

-The only surviving authority was the Church.

-taught that doctors should only care for the sick and leave curing to God.

-Church banned dissection and experiment and gave its backing to the teachings of Galen.

-Doctors,  had little option but to toe the line until the weakening of the influence of the Church and the availability of printing in the sixteenth century.

-Medical schools were established from the twelfth century and dissection was possible in some universities in the fourteenth century.

-Knowledge of anatomy improved.

-The colour of urine began to be used as a means of diagnosis.

-ligatures for sealing blood vessels to staunch the flow of blood

-Malpighi and the microscope 1661observe the capillaries and filled in harveys missing knowledge so docters might beleive his findings more. -Inoculation- based on an easily observed medical fact - that those who contact an infectious disease and survive are protected against catching it again. Inoculation is a precautionary measure but is similar to Jenners ideas.

-Jenner and vaccination: 1796-1798 -Johannes Gutenberg  printing press 1440 (knowledge could spread so much faster)

-there were important discoveries, but Paré, Vesalius and Harvey all faced considerable opposition

-Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood was the only major development

-treatments at the end of the seventeenth century were no better than at the beginning of the sixteenth

-the Great Plague in 1665 was tackled in much the same way as the Black Death in 1348–49

-the Four Humours still dominated medicine and blood-letting was widely used

- country doctor who observed that milkmaids who caught cowpox did not catch smallpox.

-decided to test his theory that cowpox protected a person from smallpox.

-He injected James Phipps and then later exposed him to smallpox. He survived. Although many doctors attacked his discovery, he was awarded large sums of money by Parliament.

-Vaccination also spread to North America and Jenner received a letter of congratulation from the President of the USA.

-vaccination for infants was made free in 1840 and compulsory in 1853.

-smallpox was the first epidemic disease to be conquered.

-Jenner could not explain how or why his discovery worked.

-It was the result of simple observation and a readiness to take risks.   

-Miasmas and an imbalance of humours were the main beliefs in 1700 and were still accepted in 1800.

-Some doctors had begun to believe in spontaneous generation, which was a slight improvement, but this was not an important development.

-Edward Jenner did make a major breakthrough in understanding. Until he demonstrated the effects of vaccination in 1796, there was no evidence that people could protect themselves successfully against a disease.

-There were attempts to protect against the plague by wearing masks, burning barrels of tar and keeping windows closed, but these did not target the specific disease.

-Jenner showed that an individual disease could be effectively prevented.

-few people at the time realised the wider significance of his discovery.

-In 1880, when Louis Pasteur developed a culture that could kill anthrax, he named it a vaccine as tribute to Jenner.   

-Real progress is impossible if doctors are restricted by technical weaknesses or inaccurate scientific knowledge.

-The new technology of the Renaissance had led to major discoveries in medicine but further breakthroughs were impossible until science and technology made them possible.

-The Industrial Revolution was the most important factor for change in technology.

-Glass for better lenses

-the thermometer had been invented by Fahrenheit and developed by Celsius. This would have been impossible without improvements in the production of glass and the discovery of chemical elements.

-medicine had changed relatively little in thousands of years.

-Jenner's discovery of vaccination was made possible by observation and the technology he used had not changed for centuries.

-Further progress would only be possible when scientific knowledge improved and when technology enabled doctors to observe bacteria.