Medicine-The people who did it

He was born in c. 460 BC on the Greek island of Cos. 

He created the Hippocratic Oath to give people confidence in doctors. He made it clear they weren't magicians. They had to keep high standards of treatment & behaviour & work for the benefit of their patients, not making money. 

He probably wrote some of the books in the Hippocratic Collection. The collection is important because they detailed lists of symptoms & treatments. These were used for many centuries. He showed it was important to observe & record symptoms & the development of diseases. The 2 advantages were they were more likely to find the cure & it helped for future cases. 

He looked and encouraged the use of natural treatments rather than prayers. 

He recommended a light diet, gentle exercise & rest to stay healthy. 

They four humours were blood, black bile, yellow bile & phlegm. These were balanced when you were healthy, but became unbalanced, making you sick when there was too much or too little of one. 

He was born in Greece in AD 129 & began studying medicine at 16-travelling to great places. At the end of his life he was working for the emperors after years of putting on public performances.

He wrote books with medical teaching which were used for 1500 years. They contained information on careful observation, the four humours, dissectio  & surgery. 

His work was built on the four humours & observation. 

He believed diet & exercise prevented illness. He often used bleeding to balance the humours. His theory of opposites also balanced them. 

He believed it was important to find out as much as possible about the structure & workings of the human body. His discoveries were important-he found the brain controlled speech & thay arteries carried blood around the body. 

He wrote 100s of books-including work of earlier doctors & his discoveries on the body's structure. His ideas fitted in with those of the Christian Church which meant they were accepted & he believed that the body was made by one God. 

His father was a doctor. He studied medicine in Paris, Padua & Italy. He was Professor of Sugery in Padua. He wrote The Fabric of the Human Body which was about human anatomy.SO FAR... Doctors believed that Galen was correct about anatomy & dissection was carried out to prove he was right. 

The Fabric of the Human Body was the first illustrated book of human anatomy. Vesalius respected Galen's work, yet proved him wrong. 

• The human haw is made from one bone, not two. 
• The breastobn has three parts, not seven. 
• Blood does not flow into the heart through invisible holes in the septum, they didnt exist. 

He showed doctors could learn more about anatomy and had to carry out human dissection.

Vesalius made great use of the invention of printing so his work was spread quickly. He was inventive and determined. Vesalius used artists to illustrate his book. He believed the vital questions were just answered by human disection. 

William Harvey (1578-1657) studied at Cambridge and Padua, worked as a doctor in London. He published An Account of the Montion of the Heart and Blood in 1629 about blood and circulation. He became doctor to King Charles I. 

He proved the heart acted as a pump, pumping the blood around the body. He did this by dissecting live cold-blooded animals whose hearts beat slowly so he could see the movement of each muscle in the heart. He dissected human bodies to build up detailed knowledge and proved that the body had a one-way system for the blood (he tried to pump liquid past the valves in the veins but couldn't). He calculated the amount blood going into the arteries each hour was 3x the weight of a man. This showed that the same blood was being pumped around by the heart. 

HOWEVER... There was still more to discover about the blood; his discoveries were only gradually excepted and it did not make anyone better. 

William Hunter (1718-1783). 

He was trained at Edinburgh University and became a doctor in London. He and his younger brother, John, were important leaders in improving training of doctors in the late 1700s. Both emphasised the importance of careful observation of patients' symptoms and of experimenting to test treatments, not just accepting what they read in books. 

Edward Jenner (1749-1823) at age 13 apprenticed for a surgeon for 6 years. He studied with John Hunter aged 21 in London. In 1772 he began work in Berkeley, Gloucestershire as a country doctor but kept in touch with Hunter. His book An Enquiry into the causes and effects of Variola Vaccinae known by the name of cowpox was published in 1798 about a vaccination that could save people from catching smallpox. 

A handful of doctors had realised that milkmaids who caught the mild disease of cowpox never got smallpox. Some infected themselves on purpose to prevent catching the bad disease. This had never been scientifically tested. Jenner knew about this theory and kept it in mind, doing tests about it. In the 1790s he carried out experiments to test the theory and recorded the results carefully in his book, describing 23 different cases to prove his work. He called his method 'vaccination' and his discovery saved thousands of lives in Britain and millions worldwide. 

Jenner had followed Hunter's advice and tested a connection between smallpox and cowpox. He was given £30,000 by the government between 1802 and 1807 to help develop his work. the vaccine was made compulsory in Britain in 1852. He realised the link was important and had the determination to carry on researching. 

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was born in France and was a university scientist, not a doctor. He loved to do experiments in public to show when he was right and someone else is wrong. He was hugely determined. 

GERM THEORY. He developed his theory whislt working for industries in France. His experiments suggested that beer, wine and milk were going sour because of the microbes in the air. He suggested that they were the cause of disease. His germ theory was published in 1861 and 3 years later he carried out a series of experiments that convinced scientists that his theory was correct. This meant that people knew the cause of disease in general, but they did not know exactly which microbes were causing which diseases. 

Pasteur knew about Jenner's work and realised that he did not know why the vaccination worked exactly. He developed vaccinations to prevent anthrax and chicken cholera in animals. He next investigated rabies, testing his vaccine on dogs and in 1885 on Joseph Meister, a boy who had been bitten. He gave the boy 13 injections over a 2 week period and Joseph survived. 

Robert Koch (1843-1910) was born in Germany and was a doctor who became interested in Pasteur's work, and began to study bacteria. He did detailed laboratory work with a team of assistants. 

MICROBE HUNTER-Koch set out to find the specific microbe or bacterium that was causing an individual disease. He succeeded when he investigated anthrax, a diease common in animals that could also infect people. This was the first time anyone had identified the specific microbe that causes an individual disease.

Next he investigated tuberculosis and in 1882 found a way of staining the microbe causing the disease so that it stood out under a microscope from other microbes. This breakthrough was important because now other scientists could use this method.