Author: Rachel Harvey

Key Question 1: Causes of illness and disease c.500-present day

Medieval / (Up to 1500)	Early Modern / 1500-1800 ish!	Modern / 1800 to the present day
Four Main Causes / Poverty Warfare / Famine Accidental death / What did medieval people believe caused illness? / God / Bad smells / Supernatural / Four Humours, out of balance / Everyday life: childbirth, infant mortality, illness and early death viewed as inevitable / Lack of hygiene, lack of clean water and sanitation in towns, no refuse collection. / BLACK DEATH 1348, Bubonic and Pneumonic plague	Lack of hygiene, lack of clean water and sanitation in towns, no refuse collection. / Regular outbreaks of plague; Great Plague of 1665 was a particularly big outbreak. / Beginning to make the link between dirt and disease. / More measures to keep people segregated with the plague, belief it was caused by cats and dogs / Plague doctor outfit: beak: bad smells (miasma) caused plague and the waxy cloak was to make the ‘venomous atoms’ slide off. They were talking about germs but without knowing what they were or being able to see them...some improvement from believing it was God doing it...but many people still believed in Four Humours and God…	New industrial towns were grim places to live, dominated by overcrowding and lack of clean water and sanitation. Industrialisation / Contagious diseases spread due to overcrowding (typhoid, typhus, scarlet fever, tuberculosis) / (Typhus caused by lice and ticks) / New industrial hazards: Phossy jaw in match factories, machinery highly dangerous and caused injuries. / Cholera: First big outbreak 1831. Waterborne disease, originated in India and spread along trade routes like the Black Death did. / Typhoid: spread by contaminated water, food and faeces (poo!) Even Prince Albert died of it in 1861. / 20th Century: / Spanish flu after WW1; 20-40 million people worldwide died, 280,000 in the UK mostly young men and women / AIDS: First identified 1981, caused by a virus. By 2014 est. 40 million died of it, 40 million living with it (Spread by: unprotected sex, hypodermic needles, contaminated blood)

The Four Humours