Summary AQA GCSE History:Medicine- Modern Medicine
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A full in depth notes summary of AQA GCSE Medicine: Modern medicine. These notes managed to get me a grade 8 on my AQA History GCSE in 2022. All notes have been made using class notes, teacher notes and AQA History guides. All notes that i have made are Dyslexia friendly, are colourful and easy to ...
Modern Medicine
Prevention and cure
During the 1800s, knowledge about disease increased greatly. Doctors and
scientists discovered which bacteria causes which diseases. A search began to find
ways of preventing people from getting the diseases, and also curing people who
already had these diseases.
Magic bullets
- Robert Koch assistant, Paul Ehrlich, found chemicals that would only stain a
specific type of bacteria, but kill it too.
- Ehrlich discovered a chemical cure for syphilis in 1909.
- The chemical cure was known as ‘magic bullets’.
- Prontosil, a red chemical, worked against germs that caused blood poisoning.
- More magic bullets or ‘sulpha drugs’ were developed to cure or control
meningitis, pneumonia and scarlet fever.
The first antibiotic
- By the 1920’s, the highly-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria (which could
cause food and blood poisoning) remained undefeated by any magic bullet.
- During WW1, the bacteriologist Alexander Flemming had seen how soldiers
were suffering from the ill effects of the Staphylococcus germ.
- Flemming became determined to find a better way to treat infected wounds
and conducted detailed experiments.
- In 1928, Flemming went on holiday and left several plates of Staphylococcus
germs on a bench in his laboratory; when he came home, he noticed a large
blob of mould in one of the dishes.
- Upon investigation, he noticed that the Staphylococcus germs next to the
mould had been killed.
- Flemming took a sample of the mould, and found it to be the penicillin mould;
it appeared that a spore from thos mould, grown in a room below Flemming’s,
had floated up the stairs and into his lab.
Flemming realised the germ-killing capabilities of penicillin and published his findings
that year. Even though we know today that penicillin is an antibiotic, Flemming did
not realise this and concluded that it was a natural antiseptic.
Flemming didn’t inject penicillin into an infected animal, which would have shown
that it could be used to kill injections. This would likely have sparked great interest in
penicillin and could have advanced its development.
As a result, few people regarded Flemming’s work as a major breakthrough and
gradually even Flemming himself lost interest in.
, The development of penicillin
We know today that penicillin is an antibiotic, but Flemming didn’t realise this at the
time and thought it was a natural antiseptic.
- In the 1930’s, researchers at Oxford University read about penicillins' ability to
kill germs.
- Scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain successfully tested penicillin on 8
mice.
- Their next move was to test it on humans and over a period of months, they
produced enough penicillin to use on a patient with a bad infection.
- When the patient was injected with penicillin, the infection began to clear up.
However, the patient died when the penicillin ran out. The next step was to try
to work out how to produce masses of it.
How was penicillin mass produced?
- Ww2 was a major factor in transforming the supply of penicillin because a
steady supply of it was vital in treating soldiers with infected wounds.
- In june 1941, Florey met with the US government who agreed to pay several
huge chemical companies to make millions of gallons in it.
- By the end of the war in 1945, Britain and the USA were working closely
together and 250,000 soldiers were being treated. Drug companies began
using their production methods to make penicillin for public use as soon as
the war ended.
The development of the pharmaceutical industry.
- Towards the end of the 19th century, some of the larger companies we now
know today (GlaxoSmithKline, Beecham, Hoffmann-La Roche and Pfizer) had
all been formed: they started out as chemists and pill-makers, or producers of
chemicals used by scientists.
- The discovery of penicillin led to huge government-sponsored programs to
develop and produce it; this meant that the pharmaceutical industry had both
the finance and the technology to research and develop medicine for all sorts
of diseases.
- Today, the pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest in the world, worth an
estimated £200 billion to £300 billion and employing nearly 80,000 people in
the UK alone.
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