Medicine 1800-1900 Flashcards
A Revolution in medicine (85 cards)
Previous ways to dull pain
alcohol religious (pray/sing hymns) mandrake, opium, hashish
problems with medieval painkillers
opium - difficult to judge an effective does from a lethal one alcohol - made the heart beat faster so bleeding became harder to control religious - did not work
When was nitrous oxide (laughing gas) discovered?
discovered in 1795 1800 - Humphry Davey published an account on its effects
what were the effects of Nitrous oxide?
made you laugh, feel giddy and relaxed
problems with nitrous oxide
it was difficult to find the right dose sometimes patients woke up in the middle of operations
first uses of ether
1842 - (william morton) made a public demonstration of ether 1842 - (crawford long) removed a neck growth from a patient 1846 - (robert liston) leg amputation
disadvantages of ether
difficult to inhale (administer) caused vomiting highly flammable (no electricity most used torch light)
discovery of chloroform
1847
who discovered chloroform
James Simpson (when he was testing out mixtures of chemicals and then spilt it causing him and his fiends to fall asleep/unconscious)
problems with chloroform
- it was hard to gain an exact does and it could be dangerous/lethal - the healthier the more likely you were to die because you inhaled more in - Hannah Greener died from an overdose in 1848 during an operation to remove her toenail
how anaesthetics made a contribution
- surgeons could do longer operation - 1850 - Queen Victoria successfully gave birth using chloroform which changed attitudes towards painkillers
how anaesthetics did not make a contribution
- army surgeons in the Crimean War (1853-56) thought that soldiers should put up with the pain - anaesthetics did not battle infections so death rates were still high - religious oppositions was that childbirth pain was a punishment from God - patients died from incorrect dosage
why did surgeons stop using chloroform/painkillers
- having no pain allowed for longer operations = more exposure to unclean environment = patients often got infections that would later kill them - death rates rose - surgeons stopped using painkillers in 1870s
Coca leaves
1850 - coca leaves from South America were used to produce cocaine as a local anaesthetic
why did cocaine become popular?
- only affected small regions of the body - safer doses and easier operation - 1891 - it could be chemically produced
louis pasteur background
- son of a sergeant major in the Napoleonic war - strong passion for his country, France - 1843 - became a research chemist
germ theory date
1859
germ theory explanaintion
disproved spontaneous generation but rather that infection/breakdown was due to microbes in the air (that could cause disease)
germ theory proof/experiment
- an open top flask and a specially designed swan neck flask, both had beetroot juice - left out for a few days - open flask gained an odor whereas the swan neck flask remained perfectly fresh
why did the swan neck flask work
the curve in the neck allowed for air to reach the juice but didn’t allow any dust particles through thus stopping bacterial growth
what did pasteur do in 1848?
- proved identical molecules can exist as mirror images but noticed living things created left-handed molecules - step forward in microbiology - underpins modern drug development
what did Napoleon III ask louis pasteur?
1863 - why wines would go off and how to prevent it - French economy was suffering due to the wine spoiling before reaching client countries
development of pasteurisation
spoiled wine contained microbes so pasteur tired killing microbes with heat - high temperature = bad taste -low temperature = not all the microbes killed
pasteurisation (finished process)
pastuer found that 55°C was high enough to kill microbes but low enough to not spoil the taste