Author: Rachel Harvey

Key Question 3. Attempts to treat illness and disease c.500-present day

Medieval / (Up to 1500ish)	Early Modern / 1500-1800 ish!	Modern / 1800 to the present day
Herbal medicines, sometimes written down in books, sometimes included prayers to say while picking the herbs, sometimes closely guarded family secrets passed down from mother to daughter, etc. / FOR DOCTORS: / Bleeding and purging (Four Humours) / Urine diagnosis (Vademecum, ‘Carry with Me’, a urine chart for medieval doctors (smell it, look at colour, taste it!) / Zodiac chart: showed which parts of the body were connected to different star signs, when was the best time to use surgery or treat the patient. / Only rich people could afford to consult a trained doctor (also called a ‘physician’) / OTHERS: / ‘Quacks’ or unlicensed doctors selling ‘cures’ to make money. / Barber-surgeons: apprenticed and learnt on the job. Pull teeth, set broken bones, use leeches / Apothecaries: made medicines	Much continued the same from Medieval times. / Some doctors wrote in English not Latin in this period in an attempt to pass on more knowledge. / Astronomy still used / New ingredients which were discovered and supposed to heal were rhubarb and tobacco! (Some thought smoking a pipe of tobacco kept the plague away) / More scientific approach to medicine, careful observation of patients. / New studies of mental illness: ‘melancholy’ and midwifery. Greater belief in prevention and therefore not having to consult a doctor.	Simpson and chloroform: Addressed the problem of pain in surgery, 1847 (Laughing gas 1799 and Ether 1846 tried prior to this) / Queen Victoria used chloroform 1853 and it became acceptable. / Black Period in Surgery 1847-1865 as doctors became more adventurous with operations leading to more deaths due to infection and blood loss. / Joseph Lister, 1865, Antiseptic Surgery. Deaths related to infection dropped from nearly a half of all operations to one sixth. / Aseptic Surgery (killing the germs before a patient is operated on) from late 19th century: steam sterilisers, protective clothing and rubber gloves. / Marie Curie: worked on radiation and paved the way for treatments for cancer as well as mobile X-Ray machines in WW1. / First ‘Magic Bullet’ Salvarsan 606, Paul Ehrlich, 1910, to treat syphilis, a serious STD / Fleming (1928) and Florey and Chain (1940s) worked on penicillin, the first antibiotic. / Christian Barnard: First successful heart transplant, 1967, paved the way for more transplant surgery. / 20th century: chemotherapy: another treatment for cancer.

Dr Joseph Lister….Antiseptic Surgery...Modern Era 1865)