Summary AQA GCSE History Health and the People Detailed Notes
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Course
History
Institution
GCSE
AQA GCSE History Health and the People Detailed Notes, provides all the knowledge you need for the whole course, with more detail than the summary notes, can be printed as a booklet for a resource
Paper 2: Britain: Health and the People, c1000 to the present day
Checklist: Key Topics to Revise
1. Medicine stands still
i. What did people believe caused illness? How were diagnoses made?
ii. How was religion used to explain illness?
iii. How else did people try to rationalise illness?
iv. What progress was made in the Medieval period?
v. How effective was Public Health in the Middle Ages?
2. The beginnings of change
i. What changes took place during the Renaissance?
ii. How was disease dealt with during the Renaissance?
iii. What opposition to change was there?
iv. What changes were made to Public Health during the Renaissance?
v. What was done to prevent disease?
3. A revolution in medicine
i. What was the importance of Germ Theory
ii. Was there a revolution in surgery?
iii. How was anaesthesia developed?
iv. How was infection dealt with?
v. How did the medical profession develop?
vi. How did Public Health develop in the c19?
4. Modern medicince
i. Modern treatment of disease
ii. What was the importance of Penicillin?
iii. What impact did war have on medicine?
Part one: Medicine stands still
,Medieval medicine
i. What did people believe caused illness? How were diagnoses made?
Supernatural explanations of disease could relate to the planets that were visible in
the sky.
When planets appeared near each other, it was believed they could influence people
on Earth.
The movement of the planets was often thought to have a bearing on the way that
the world worked and the cause of the spread of diseases such as Plagues.
People though that the alignment of the planets could cause illness.
Guy de Chauliac the famous Medieval Doctor believed the Black Death was caused
by the close position of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars three years previous to the
outbreak.
Astrology was also taken into consideration when performing surgery on patients.
Studies of astrology were translated from Arabic to Latin in the 12th and 13th
centuries and soon became part of everyday medical practice in Europe.
Medieval astrologers believed that the movements of the stars influenced the inner
workings of the human body.
Doctors often carried around illustrated star charts, allowing them to check the
positions of the stars before making a diagnosis.
Surgeons would consult a Zodiac Chart which advised when it was safe to operate.
Many of these almanacs included illustrations, helping to explain complicated ideas
to patients.
One example was 'zodiac man', which comes from an almanac from 1399. It
superimposed the appropriate star sign onto body parts
The diagram was intended to explain how star signs rule over each part of the body.
By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate
the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such
as surgery or bleeding.
Operations on the feet were supposedly unsafe during the months associated with
Pisces.
ii. How was religion used to explain illness?
God was often thought to be the cause of diseases. In a world in which godliness
was off the utmost importance, illnesses were considered to be a punishment
from god.
Methods of prevention and cure would be based upon to please God or atone for
ones sins.
Groups such as the Flagellants would travel around Europe self harming and praying
in the hope God would forgive them of their sins and send the plague away.
The Catholic Church also believed epilepsy and mental illness was due to evil spirits
possessing the body.
When medicine could not help, the faithful often turned to saints, and visited saints'
shrines in the hope of miraculous cures.
, The windows of Canterbury Cathedral show pilgrims flocking to Thomas Becket's
shrine. They are suffering from illness, injury and even insanity
In some scenes, physicians with urine flasks turn away in despair, unable to equal the
healing power of the saint.
iii. How else did people try to rationalize illness?
Most medieval ideas about medicine were based on those of the ancient work,
namely the work of Greek physicians Galen (AD 129 - 216) and Hippocrates (460 BC -
370 BC).
Their ideas set out a theory of the human body relating to the four elements (earth,
air, fire and water) and to four bodily humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black
bile).
It was believed that health could be maintained or restored by balancing the
humours, and by regulating air, diet, exercise, sleep, evacuation and emotion.
Doctors also often advised risky invasive procedures like bloodletting.
Hippocrates
In about 400 BC, Hippocrates suggested that diseases have internal, personal,
causes; they were not caused by gods or spirits.
He said that the body contains four humours –fluids: black bile, yellow bile, blood
and phlegm. Human beings became ill when these humours were unbalanced.
Hippocrates took care to observe and record all the patient’s symptoms.
He said that people to lead simple, balanced lives in order to keep these humours in
balance.
Hippocrates’ ideas were a major turning-point because:
He wrote many books and these recorded his ideas.
His ideas were followed by Galen and formed the basis of medical practice and
theory for 2,000 years, in some cases until the 19 th century.
He turned attention away from the gods and the spirits towards the body. Although
his ideas were wrong, it meant that further advances were possible.
He emphasised clinical observation and the importance of keeping records.
He was the founder of the medical profession. The Hippocratic Oath (That a doctor
will always try to save a patient and act only in the patient’s interests, without fear
or favour) is still taken by all doctors to this day.
Galen
He was born in 120 AD. His books were used for 1,200 years.
The Roman authorities did not like the dissection of humans, so Galen worked on
pigs and apes. This explains some of the mistakes he made, for example regarding
the liver.
Galen rose to prominence following his appointment as the surgeon to the
Emperor’s son, Commodus.
This allowed him to study and teach medicine, which led to his development of ideas
and his establishment of new laws of medicine.
, Galen studied the bodies of animals to support his research. He particularly used
Barbary Apes which are very similar in terms of anatomy to Humans.
This type of research, along with the dissection of human remains that he conducted
in Alexandria, led to the development of his theory on the human body's
physiological system.
This was a remarkable, if slightly incorrect, development which would allow doctors
and physicians to clearly understand the effects of the treatments given.
However, some of Galen’s knowledge was so accurate that he must have looked at
humans. He may have opened graves or studied the bodies of dead gladiators.
He was a surgeon at a school for gladiators for a while. There are pictures of
surgeons stitching up wounds.
He took up the Theory of the Four Humours, wrote over 60 books and was the most
famous doctor of the Roman world.
He developed a system of treatments by opposites: treating imbalance in the four
humours by giving something opposite to the humour that was in excess. He was
also important in the development of surgery.
Galen's work was painstaking. His writings always dealt with possible objections and
criticisms of theories and he regularly reviewed practices.
The depth of his writings and his belief in a Creator’ gained him the support of the
authorities, including the leaders of Christianity and Islam.
This led to his belief in clinical observation and diagnosis becoming the standard
practice for doctors in Europe over the course of the next thousand years.
Medieval doctors
In medieval universities, books were rare and handwritten. Most universities would
only have one copy.
Doctors were trained by the Church in the teachings of Galen. They thought that
Galen had found out all there was to know about anatomy.
The leading medical school in Western Europe was at Montpellier University.
Teaching consisted of readings from the works of Galen.
Students wrote down word for word as the reader went through the book.
Medical knowledge derived from ancient times was largely confined to monasteries
and the highly educated.
For ordinary people, especially those outside towns, it would have been difficult to
access professional practitioners.
Those in need of medical assistance might instead turn to local people who had
medical knowledge, derived from folk traditions and practical experience.
Physicians were seen as skilled people but their work was based on a very poor
knowledge of the human anatomy.
Physicians charged for their services and only the rich could afford them.
Their cures could be bizarre though some cures, including bleeding and the use of
herbs, had some logic to them even if it was very much a hit-or-miss approach.
One of the main ways in which a physician would diagnose illness was by examining
stools, blood and especially urine.
Many Medieval doctors carried with them a vademecum (meaning 'Go-with-me')
book of diagnoses and a urine chart.
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