prevention Flashcards
(242 cards)
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Theme Two: How have attempts to prevent illness and dise
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prevention - action to stop something from habnening
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changed over time?
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2.1 Medieval and Early Modern period
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Dissections - cutting open a body to study its internal parts
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Why was it so difficult to develop measures to prevent disease?
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a) Old ideas of Hippocrates and Galen: Students were taught based on the texts of
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Hippocrates and Galen rather than practical experience. Their books had been preserved by
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Arabic scholars and by the Middle Ages Latin translations were available. These texts were
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copied and recorded by monks who passed them onto medical schools and universities. Galen
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had written that the body was clearly designed for a purpose - different parts of the body
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were designed to work togetherand he said this could only have been done by a creator
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he
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also believed in the idea of a soul. This fitted in with the ideas of the Church.
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b) Religion- The Church: The Church did not like change and wanted to keep things the
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way they were. Books were produced in monasteries
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and libraries were maintained by the
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Church
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so they controlled which books were copied and distributed. The Church’ also
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controlled learning in universities too. The Four Humours Theory fitted in with their teachings
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so it promoted this theory. The Church taught that any physical illness was as a result of
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“spiritual illness”. Medieval people had a strong belief in God and did not want to risk going to
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Hell by criticising the Church. Everyone knew a ‘good’ physician would follow the theory of
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the Four Humours - those who didn’t follow this would not get work.
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c) Lack of scientific knowledge and technology: There was a lack of scientific evidence
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to support any other ideas about the causes of and how to prevent disease. Dissections were
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illegal as the Church taught that the body needed to be buried whole for the soul to go to
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Prevention against Black Death in the medieval period
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People came up with many ideas to prevent the Black Death
but many of these were
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contradictory. Some said bathing would open the pores and let disease into the body
while
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others said washing would remove the disease.
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Other ideas included:
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Drinking vinegar or wine
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Drinking urine once a day or bathing in urine three times a day
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Bleeding to let out evil spirits
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Killing cats and dogs that carried the disease
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• Carrying herbs and flowers to prevent bad smells entering the body
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While these were all ineffective
some ideas did help prevent the Black Death
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fully understood why it worked.
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• Edward III ordered the streets of London to be cleaned.
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Many advised not having contact with those infected.
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• Houses of those infected were blocked and a large red cross was painted on
warning
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others to keep away.
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But without scientific knowledge of causes
any attempts to prevent illness were unlikely to
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Questions
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1. Why were there so few ideas about preventing illness and disease in the medieval
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period?
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2. There were some ideas that did prevent the Black Death - why were they effective?
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3. Why were most ideas not effective at preventing the Black Death?
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How did people try to prevent illness in the medieval and Early Modern Era?
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There was no understanding of the causes of disease
no professionally trained doctors with
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sound medical training. Therefore
in both the Medieval and Early Modern eras
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were options.
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Alchemists
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a form of chemist in the Middle Ages and Early Modern era
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concerned with discovering methods for turning metals into gold and
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with finding an 'elixir of life' i.e. keeping you young forever.
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Soothsayers
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Monks
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Apothecaries
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Barber surgeons
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Physicians
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'Quack'
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Women
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a person supposed to be able to foresee the future. Would provide
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charms to be worn or carried around to word off disease and illness
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caused by evil spirits. An example was Old Mother Shipton.
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Monks would pray for you and sometimes provide herbs to prevent
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Would use herbal remedies to treat and prevent disease (present day
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pharmacist) They mainly mixed herbal remedies and had a good
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amount of knowledge
usually passed down through family. They
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mixed medicines prescribed by physicians. Lots of people would see
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an apothecary as they were cheaper than a doctor. Some also
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provided amulets (a piece of jewellery believed to protect the wearer
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from harm) and charms.
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Barbers and hairdressers who would blood let by using leeches to
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Keep 4 humours balanced
extract teeth
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Trained doctor but with very little understanding of the body
how it
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worked or the causes and prevention of disease. New universities
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were set up across Europe making medicine more professional. A
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degree took 7-10 vears to complete Medieval doctors rarely actuallv
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treated the patients themselves. The physician would take a sample
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of urine
faeces and blood. He would then consult the astrological
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charts. They were expensive as there weren't many of them because
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training took so long. Some were highly trained
in Europe some
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doctors were surgically trained alongside medicine.
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Con-man who travelled around
set up a stall and sold potions to
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supposedly cure or prevent illness and disease.
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Most people were treated by women at home; this involved making
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the patient comfortable
preparing food and mixing herbal remedies.
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Women would also grow plants known for their healing properties.
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There is some evidence that they also carried out minor surgery and
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bleeding
but the records are patchy.
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Questions
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1. Which of the above people would have been most effective at preventing illness and
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disease? Why?
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2. Which of the above people would have been least effective at preventing illness and
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disease? Why?
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Prevention of illness and disease in the Industrial Era
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2.2 The Dawn of Science and Scientific Method
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In the eighteenth century
many people were influenced by the ancient beliefs in fresh air
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diet and exercise as a way of preventing illness. Walks in the fresh air and vegetarianism
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became fashionable. Cold water treatments in fashionable resorts became fashionable with
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the wealthy
with Bath being the most famous of these.
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A series of important inventions at this time accelerated understanding
and therefore ideas
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about prevention. One was the microscope
which later allowed scientists to see tiny
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organisms like bacteria. Another was the stethoscope
for listening to breathing and the
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heart. Many people wrote about their discoveries
including James Lind's discovery that
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scurvy was caused by a lack of fresh fruit
so could be prevented with injections of lime juice.
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Some scientific understanding was being used to prevent illness. Alexander Gordon
a
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Scottish doctor
realised that women who delivered babies in hospital often suffered from
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"childbed fever" which caused death but this didn't happen as often to women in villages.
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He realised that in villages
women had one midwife who stayed with them
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doctors and nurses would move from patient to patient. He recognised that this was likely
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the source of the infection
and proposed medical practitioners was their hands in chlorinated
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water. His ideas were largely ignored.
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Questions
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1. What changes have occurred in the ways people thought about preventing illness from
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the medieval and Early Modern era?
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2. What inventions have helped create this change?
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3. Explain which factors would help prevent illness and disease.
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2.3 Preventing disease through vaccination - smallpox and Jenner
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Smallpox was known to be a killer
with between 30-60% of patients dying
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survived being left blind or disfigured by scars. People thought it was caused by bad air
and
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an epidemic had broken out in 1796
killing at least 35
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People had used inoculation
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(deliberately infecting someone with a pathogen) to prevent smallpox
but it wasn't widely
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Edward Jenner
a country doctor
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experiences made him determined to find another way to prevent this disease. He gathered
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evidence about where the inoculation had failed (over 1
000 cases). Jenner noticed that
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milkmaids who got cowpox (a weaker version of smallpox causing blisters on the hands) did
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not go onto to develop smallpox and thought that the two must be connected.
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A local milkmaid
Sarah Nelmes
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matter to inoculate eight-year-old James Phipps. Six weeks later he inoculated James with
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smallpox but James did not catch it. He repeated this experiment several times on both
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James and local people
including his 11-month-old son. He called his discovery "vaccination"
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coming from the Latin for cow.
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Despite sending his research to the Royal Society
he was largely ridiculed. The Royal Society
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refused to publish his research
because he couldn't explain why it worked. He couldn't see
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that smallpox and cow pox are almost identical illnesses
so he had "trained" the body to
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respond quicker to fight off the illness. Many were sceptical because they couldn't get it to
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work for other illnesses (which weren't linked as cow pox and smallpox are). Others said it
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didn't work
as their patients ended up with smallpox
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being careful enough. The church said that using animal matter to protect against human
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diseases was against God's will.
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However
from the 1800s onwards the British government supported this method of
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vaccination. It was safer
more reliable and cheaper. After 1872 the government enforced
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compulsory vaccination. In 1979 the World Health Organisation announced that the disease
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had been completely wiped out.
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1. Why did Jenner's experiment work?
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2. What was hindering a change in attitudes towards illness and disease?
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3. What helped change attitudes?
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2.3 John Snow and cholera
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The greatest example of scientific method was used by John Snow in 1854 during an
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outbreak of cholera in London
which caused the death of over 500 people. He suggested that
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-holera could not be transmitted by miasma as it affected the gut
not the lungs and that it
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was spread through dirty water. However
he had no evidence to support this.
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Snow used a street plan of Broad Street to plot the cholera cases
and discovered they were
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all centred around one water pump. None of the brewery workers who worked nearby had
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the disease
because they didn't drink the water. He concluded the pump was contaminated
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and removed the handle. The disease went into decline
proving the scientific method of
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"observe, hypothesise, experiment and analyse" to be effective. This proved his theory
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correct and was the start of greater emphasis on science.
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Questions
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1. How have ideas on how to prevent illness and disease changed?
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2. What has the impact of science been?
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2.4 Louis Pasteur and germ theory and Robert Koch and bacterioloax
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By the 18th century
people were less likely to blame disease on sunernatural causes or
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unbalanced humours.
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People had always been aware that diseases spread auicklv in dirty smelly and unhvaienic
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conditions
and so the search for a new explanation of illness now developed into two main
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theories:
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Bad air (miasma)
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People could see rotting food and waste in the streets and knew they smelt terrible. They
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assumed it must be the smell that caused disease
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Spontaneous Generation
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The microscopes picked up bacteria on decaying matter.Scientists thought that the germs
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were spontaneously (automatically) generated (created) by the decay and then spread the
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disease further.
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Spontaneous Generation!
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Louis Pasteur: The first scientist to identify microbes and their role in disease
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In the 1850s Louis Pasteur
a French chemist
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in the brewing and vinegar industries. More powerful microscopes had recently become
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available
which meant that Pasteur could observe the growth of unwanted small organisms
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in the liquids. He discovered that heating the liquid killed the bacteria and stopped liquid
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going sour. This was called pasteurisation.
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In 1861 Pasteur published his germ theory
showing that there were microbes in the air
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and that they caused decay and illness. His work proved the idea of spontaneous
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generation was wrong because no decay happened if matter was placed in a sealed
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contained. This showed the microbes causing decay were not produced from the matter itself
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but from the air around it. It also disproved miasma theory.
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Pasteur created vaccines for Cholera
Anthrax
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Robert Koch - father of bacteriology
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Bacteriology - Idea that different bacteria caused different diseases
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In 1882 Koch discovered the bacteria causing Tuberculosis (TB). In 1883 he discovered the
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bacteria causing cholera and proved it was spread through water
confirming the work done
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by John Snow. He was also important for developing techniques in growing bacteria using
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agar jelly. He also developed methods of staining bacteria to make them easier to see. He
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inspired other scientists to find microbes for other diseases.
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Koch's work on identifying bacteria was very important in this - in 1890 vaccines were
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developed against tetanus and diphtheria.
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By 1900 scientists all over the world were isolating microbes and developing vaccines thanks
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to the work of Pasteur and Koch.
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Questions
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1. How did the work of Pasteur and Koch help prevent illness and disease?
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2. How have attitudes towards prevention changed as a result of science?
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2.5 Preventing disease in the 20th century
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Since the beginning of the 20th century
the government has taken significant action to
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improve the public's health. As understanding of the causes of diseases developed
the
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government recognised that they can change things.
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With an understanding of the causes. new methods of prevention could be introduced.
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has led a campaign to eliminate diseases such as polio
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measles
diphtheria and whoopina couah throughout the world throuah effective vaccination
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programmes. In 1979 the World Health Organisation announced that smallpox had been
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completely wiped out in the world. In Britain the government has been improving its
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vaccination programmes throughout the C20th and introduced vaccines to eliminates
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childhood illnesses in the following years;
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1950 Polio and whooping cough: in the early 1950s there were around 8
000 cases
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a year in Britain. It causes paralysis; once the vaccination was introduced it decreased
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rapidly and the last UK case was 1984.
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• 1961 Tetanus
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• 1968 Measles
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• 1970 Rubella (German measles): particularly dangerous for pregnant women
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The Anti-Vaccination Movement
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In 1998
Andrew Wakefield published a paper claiming to have found a link between the MMR
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(Measles
Mumps and Rubella) vaccine and the development of autism. In the time it took to
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show his article was misleading and unscientific
it had made people question the side effects
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of vaccination. It led to a reduction in vaccination
meaning the population does not have the
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level of immunisation needed to protect against outbreaks. Consequently
major outbreaks of
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measles have occurred in London and the West Midlands. Today some people do not believe
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that vaccination is a method of preventing COVID.
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Questions
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• 1. Explain how
by the modern era
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of illness and disease.
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2. Why do you think most people today don't see measles as a serious issue?
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3. What has the long-term impact of the Wakefield scandal been?
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4. How have attitudes towards preventing illness and disease changed since the medieval
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period?
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Theme Three: How have attempts to treat illness and diseaco
