Medicine Through Time

Ideas about the cause of disease:

• Supernatural
• People became ill when exposed to bad smells, unclean drinking water, swamps and dirty conditions

Approaches to treatment and prevention:

• Galen- Based his cures on the theories of balance and treatment by opposites 
• Public health- Aqueducts, public baths, toilets, sewers, swamps and marshes drained

Factors affecting development:

• War
• Religion

Ideas about the cause of disease:

• 4 Humours
• Religion
• Miasma

Approaches to treatment and prevention:

• The church maintained some of the public health measures of Ancient Rome and set up hospitals that concentrated on providing clean and quiet conditions however the Church were more concerned with providing care than treatment

Factors affecting development:

• The Black Death

Ideas about the cause of disease:

• 4 humours
• Supernatural

Approaches to treatment and prevention:

• Blood letting
• Purging 
• Herbal Remedies
• William Harvey showed how the heart acted as a pump

Factors affecting development:

• Scientific revolution
• Vesalius 

Ideas about the cause of disease:

• Evil Worms
• 4 Humours
• Miasma

Approaches to treatment and prevention:

• More powerful microscopes
• Vaccination- Jenner
• Koch found a link between germ and disease and antibiotics 

Factors affecting development:

• Increase in scientific knowledge
• Improved technology
• Role of Government of electricity

Ideas about the cause of disease:

• Germ Theory
• Scientific approach

Approaches to treatment and prevention:

• Penicillin

Factors affecting development:

• War- Needed to heal soldiers

• Came up with the theory of Four Humours; body made up of four components, these need to be balanced for a person to remain healthy
• Four Humours were; Blood (related with Spring), Phlegm (related with Winter), Yellow Bile (related with Summer), Black Bile (related with Autumn)
• Clinical Observation first used looking for symptoms of imbalances of the Four Humours; the basis of modern diagnosis
• Didn’t believe that Gods or supernatural things were to blame for  any illnesses; thought it to be environment
• Believed in using herbal remedies before resorting to surgery
• Wrote 60 books called Hippocratic Collection (not all written directly by him) focus on the body and how it works
• Could only dissect animals so some of his ideas were wrong or inaccurate

• Began studying medicine at aged 16
• Spent 12 years travelling to improve his knowledge
• Visited Medical school at Alexandria in Egypt
• Gained practical experience from working as a surgeon at a Gladiator school; treated wounds, broken bones other major injuries
• 162 AD; travelled to Rome and became Royal Physician to Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius
• Also became teacher of other doctors

• Works the basis of medicine for over 1’000 years

• Was a French Surgeon
• Notable for; Ligatures (slowed blood-loss)
• Official Surgeon to  Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III respectively
• Considered one of the fathers of Surgery
• Lead in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine
• Speciality was the treatment of wounds; also he was an anatomist and the inventor of several surgical instruments
• Cauterisation; used egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine for war wounds rather than boiling oil, it was more effective and less painful
• Phantom Pains; documented the feelings of phantom pains in the missing limbs of amputees, said it occurred in the brain and not the remnants of the limb
• Important figure in the progress of Obstetrics in 16th Century; he revived the operation of
• Podalic Version and showed how surgeons with this operation could often rescue an infant even in cases of head presentation

• Was an anatomist, physician and author of one of the most influential books on Human Anatomy
• The Heart; Disproved Galen, Monodinode, Liuzzi and Aristotle on the structure of the heart
• Is often referred to as being the founder of Modern Human Anatomy
• He carried out dissections as his primary teaching tool believing in hands-on, direct observation
• He supported Galen’s idea of blood-letting near the illness point (where it started... Don’t get that really)
• Human Anatomy; He showed that Galen was wrong in regards to the fact that Galen thought that Barbary Apes anatomy would be similar to human anatomy
• Correction of Opera Omnia; he published a corrected version of Galen’s book and began to write his own anatomical text 
• Jaw bone; he disproved Galen’s theory of the lower jaw bone consisting of two bones which Galen concluded from animal dissections

• Systemic Circulation; he was the first one in the western world to successfully describe systemic circulation (where blood goes in the body)
• Heart pumping blood;  research lead him to believe that the heart pumped blood around the body instead of Galen’s idea of the heart and the liver producing blood
• Personal physician to James I and Charles I
• Valves in Veins; did experiments to discover the purpose of the valves in the veins as well as the flow of blood
• Two separate, closed loops of circulation; he proposed that blood flowed through two separate and closed loops, the first loop (Pulmonary Circulation) sent blood to the lungs, the second loop (Systemic Circulation) causes blood to flow to the vital organ and tissue
• Ideas accepted; his ideas were eventually accepted during his lifetime

• Was a French Chemist and Microbiologist
• Did experiments that backed up the idea of Germ Theory; exposed boiled broths to the air but with filters over them. This meant nothing grew in them unless they didn’t have the filter and he used this to back up the idea of Germs not being spontaneously generated
• Father of Germ Theory and Bacteriology; along with Robert Koch who also did experiments
• Immunology and Vaccination; working on Chicken Cholera Pasteur discovered that  a weakened strain of the virus could produce an immunity.
• Rabies; He decided to test a new vaccine against rabies on a young boy (Joseph Meister, aged 9) who had been mauled by a dog on July 6th 1885. The vaccination against rabies proved successful and Meister was immune to the disease as a result.

• Was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist
• Best known accomplishments; discovery of the enzyme Lysozyme and the mould Penicillium Notatum (the fungus which Penicillin comes from)
• Awarded the Nobel Prize along with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain