Flashcards

Date: Ancient Greece

Key Facts: Hippocratic Oath (doctors promise to try their best to treat patients). First natural theory of illness-Four Humours (Blood, Yellow Bile, Black Bile and Phlegm) 

Short Term Impact: Encouraged healthy diet and exercise to keep humours in balance.  Encouraged observation. 

Long Term Impact: Idea of bleeding and purging persisted until Medieval Period. It was wrong! 

Date: Ancient Rome

Key Facts: Developed Four Humours Theory of Opposites. Dissected animals and discovered that the brain controlled the body.

 Short Term Impact: Dissection- mostly of animals. Knowledge of anatomy.

 Long Term Impact: Ideas persisted until Medieval Period, because he was supported by the church. Many mistakes! 

Date: Medieval Time Period

Key Facts: Qur’an tells Muslims they have a duty to care for people who are sick. Led to Hospitals being built in Baghdad.

Short Term Impact: Hospitals were places of learning, with wards. They specialised in eye and tumour surgery. Key individuals:

Rhazes- descriptions of smallpox and measles. Ibn Nafis- challenged works of Galen. Avicenna- wrote 1-million-word textbook.

Long Term Impact: Ideas brought back to Europe during the Crusades. 

Date: 1348

Key Facts: Outbreak of Bubonic and Pneumonic Plague. Estimated to have killed 40% of people in England, 1.5 million people. 

Short Term Impact: Death of 1.5 million people. Persecution of Jews.

Long Term Impact: Shortages of workers allowed workers to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Led to Peasants Revolt. 

Date: Renaissance

Key Facts: Discovered the jawbone 1 bone not 2.

Short Term Impact: Not believed, because Galen was popular. Improved anatomical understanding.

 Long Term Impact: Encouraged others to challenge old ideas and encouraged dissection

Date: Renaissance

Key Facts: Discovered that the heart acts as a pump and blood circulates around the body. Proved that Galen was wrong (he thought it was created in the liver and used up each day.)

Short Term Impact: Anatomical understanding. Proved importance of dissection and experimentation.

Long Term Impact: Led to blood transfusions once blood groups discovered in 1901.

Date: Renaissance

Key Facts: Discovered/ created False Limbs, Ointments, Ligatures

Short Term Impact: Ligatures often took infection deeper into wound as before germ theory. Ointment relieved pain. False limbs clumsy but improved lifestyle.

Long Term Impact: Stitches, Improved false limbs 

Date: Renaissance

Key Facts: Specialist in anatomy- collected body parts to study. Army surgeon who trained other doctors including Jenner. He encouraged others to follow scientific methodology.

Short Term Impact:  Proved that gunshots did not poison the area around a wound, reduced unnecessary amputations

Long Term Impact: Encouraged scientific methodology and trained Jenner- vaccination.

Date: 1665

Key Facts: Killed 100,000 people in London. The cause of the spread was poor sanitation, which led to sewage and waste being discarded in the streets and river.

Short Term Impact: Death of 100,000 people. Government response included quarantines and red crosses on the door. Killed Cats and Dogs.

Long Term Impact: Great Fire of London led to rebuild of the city and sanitation was improved, no further outbreaks.

Date: 1796

Key Facts: Jenner created a Smallpox vaccine using Cowpox.

 Short Term Impact: Opposition from doctors (inoculation), religious opposition. Could not explain why it worked. Made compulsory in 1850’s.

 Long Term Impact: Smallpox eradicated. Once germ theory discovered other vaccines were developed e.g. Pasteur- Rabies Vaccine.

Date: 1842

 Key Facts: Published a report showing the terrible state of housing for working class people.

 Short Term Impact: Challenged laissez faire attitudes. Public Health Act 1848 (Non-Compulsory)

Long Term Impact: Public Health Act 1875 (Compulsory)

Date: 1847

Key Facts: Discovered first effective general Anaesthetic (Chloroform), used by Queen Victoria during birth of 8th child.

Short Term Impact: Lots of deaths as before germ theory took infection deeper into the body. Dosage problems. Pain relief.

Long Term Impact: More complex surgery including first heart transplant in 1968.

Date: 1854

Key Facts: Hired by the government to improve infection rates during Crimean War. She cleaned hospitals.

Short Term Impact: In six months cut the death rate to 2 in every 100.

Long Term Impact: Established nursing as a profession. Opened Training School. “Wrote Notes for Nursing.” 

Date: 1854

Key Facts: Snow proved cholera was water borne by experiment with water pump in Soho.

Short Term Impact: Not believed as before germ theory. Disproved Miasma.   

Long Term Impact: Better sanitation e.g. Bazalgettes sewers.

Date: 1858

Key Facts:  After the Great Stink 1858- the government was concerned that miasma from the River Thames would make MPs ill. They hired Bazalgette to build sewers.

Short Term Impact: Improved sanitation, less disease.

Long Term Impact: Deliberately built sewers larger to account for population growth. Still basis of London sewers today. 

Dates: 1848 and 1875

Key Facts: 1848 recommended (non- compulsory) appointing Medical Officers, Improving drainage and sewage. But 1875 Act enforced the changes (compulsory).

 Short Term Impact: 1848 Act- 50 Medical Officers appointed, but very little improvements as few councils embraced changes because of cost.

Long Term Impact: End of Laissez Faire, move towards welfare state. Improved sanitation and less disease.

Date: 1861

Key Facts: Swan necked flask experiment to prove germs in the air, and could be boiled to be killed. Observed germs using microscope.

Short Term Impact: Not believed by some as he was a scientist not a doctor. Disproved miasma theory. Pasteurisation of milk, Vaccines for Rabies etc.

Long Term Impact: Koch proved Pasteur correct. Public Health Act 1875, Lister and Carbolic Spray 

Date: 1870s and 1880s

Key Facts: Used staining of germs to identify the specific cause of disease.

 Short Term Impact: Proved Pasteur’s Germ Theory correct. Identified Anthrax, TB, Cholera and Tetanus germs.

Long Term Impact: Enabled others to create vaccines to some of these diseases. E.g. Pasteur Rabies Vaccine in 1882. 

Date: 1867

Key Facts: Carbolic Spray- antiseptic in surgery

Short Term Impact: Opposition as it caused cracked hands and was time consuming. People did not accept germ theory until later.

Long Term Impact: Reduced death rates from infection. Developed into aseptic surgery- masks, gowns, gloves. Also steam sterilisation.

Date: Booth 1889, Rowntree 1900

Key Facts: Booth found 25% of Londoners were living in abject poverty.  Rowntree found same in York.

Short Term Impact: Showed that the Public Health Acts had not done enough to tackle the causes of poverty.

 Long Term Impact: Inspired the Liberal Reforms e.g. Old Age Pension Act and National Insurance Act. 

Date: 1905- Ehrlich, 1932- Domagk

Key Facts: Ehrlich found drug Salvarsan 606 to treat Syphilis. Domagk found Prontosil to treat blood poisoning. First compounds found to effectively kill/treat specific bacteria. They were both forms of sulphonamides, so other drugs could then be made.

Short Term Impact: Cures for Blood Poisoning and Syphilis

Long Term Impact: Other drugs created from sulphonamides to treat Meningitis, Pneumonia. Maternal deaths reduced as infections post birth could be treated. 

Dates: 1914-1918

Key Facts: Trench warfare so terrible conditions, new technology so severe wounds. People with PTSD.  X-rays, Psychiatry, Blood Transfusions, Skin Grafts

 Short Term Impact: Loss of surgeons, X rays, Blood Transfusions, High level of infections due to trenches. Skin grafts to hide scarring.

 Long Term Impact: Psychiatry, changing attitude to mental health,

Date: 1928

Key Facts: Accidentally discovered when window left open and penicillin dissolved staphylococci bacteria.

 Short Term Impact: First time could find a way to kill harmful bacteria. Treat infection but could not mass produce.

 Long Term Impact: Mass produced by Florey and Chain. Estimated 15% of wounded would have died without Penicillin after D- Day landings. MRSA (Antibiotic resistance) 

Dates: 1939- 45

Key Facts: In June 1944 USA, Britain and Canada were involved in the D-Day invasion to liberate France from Nazi Germany.

 Short Term Impact: Skin Grafts improved, Penicillin Mass Produced- estimated 15% of wounded would have died without Penicillin after D- Day landings.

 Long Term Impact: NHS, evacuation led to the erosion of laissez faire attitudes and start of welfare state. 

Date: 1942

Key Facts: He recommended that the government should act to deal with what he called the ‘five giants’. Ignorance, Squalor etc. He recommended a system of social security from the “cradle to the grave”

Short Term Impact:  Initial opposition to idea of NHS due to cost and government control (90% of doctors and Conservatives opposed)

 Long Term Impact: Nye Bevan Health Minister started NHS in 1948 

Date: 1939-1945

Key Facts: Florey and Chain read Flemings work on Penicillin. Mass produced antibiotics, with $80 m funding from US government due to WW2.

Short Term Impact: Estimated 15% of wounded would have died without Penicillin after D- Day.

Long Term Impact: Over prescribed and then not taken correctly has led to the development of MRSA (Antibiotic resistance). 

Date: 1942

Key Facts: He recommended that the government should act to deal with what he called the ‘five giants’. Ignorance, Squalor etc. He recommended a system of social security from the “cradle to the grave”

Short Term Impact: Initial opposition to idea of NHS due to cost and government control (90% of doctors and Conservatives opposed)

Long Term Impact: Nye Bevan Health Minister started NHS in 1948