Medicine Through Time
Check List
Medieval Causes
(Four Humours, God, miasmas)
Medieval Prevention and Treatment
(Theory of opposites, religious, phlebotomy,
trepanning etc.)
Renaissance causes
(Sydenham, Harvey, Vesalius, miasmas, four
humours, God)
Printing Press and Royal Society
Renaissance Prevention and Treatment
(Quarantine, Great Plague rules, hospitals)
Industrial causes
(Miasma, Spontaneous Generation, John
Snow, Germ Theory)
Industrial Prevention and Treatment
(Antiseptic, anaesthetic, hospitals, Florence
Nightingale, Public Health Acts)
Modern Causes
(Genetics, lifestyle)
Modern Prevention and Treatment
(Vaccinations, lifestyle campaigns, smoking
laws, penicillin, magic bullets, technology)
, Medicine Through Time
Causes (all periods summarised)
MEDIEVAL (1350-1500)
The Church did not allow dissections because they believed the body had to still be
intact to receive Heaven
GOD – The Church were in control of all ideas and research because monks were the
only ones who could write, and people would find out new information from church
gatherings or church bulletin boards.
FOUR HUMOURS – based on Hippocrates idea that humans are made up of four
humours which become imbalanced resulting in disease. The Church promoted this
idea because it said that an ill person with an imbalance of humours had upset God
by sinning.
Miasmas – bad smells indicated sin, believed that’s how you contracted disease
through bad air.
RENAISSANCE (1500-1700)
People were still devoutly religious, but more people were trying to find
explanations for disease
Thomas Sydenham – Introduced the idea of observing a patient’s symptoms,
categorising diseases which leads to the correct treatment. Published book
‘Observationes Medicae’ in 1676. Known as the ‘English Hippocrates’ because of his
impact on medicine.
Vesalius – Carried out dissections that people could go to watch at Padua University
where he became a professor at in 1533. He disproved Galen wrong over 200 times.
E.g., the human jaw is only one bone, not two and that men and women have the
same number of ribs - which previously was believed that men had one less because
in the Bible Eve is made from Adam’s rib. Vesalius published ‘On the Fabric of the
Human Body’ also known as ‘Fabrica’ in 1543 – this had big influence because the
printing press allowed for it to be shared around the world. Vesalius’ work inspired
many more medical professionals including William Harvey.
William Harvey - discovered that the heart is a pump and proved Galen wrong a
number of times for example: Galen said blood was produced by the liver and
absorbed into the blood, but Harvey proved this wrong. By 1700, Harvey’s work was
being taught in medical schools, he was a royal physician which meant he was
