Dealing with Disease Flashcards
All 20 cards in this deck
Who was Thomas Sydenham?
A 17th-century English physician who took a scientific approach, observing patients closely and classifying diseases; he showed scarlet fever and measles were different diseases.
True or false? By 1665 most people had given up the idea that disease had a religious cause.
False. Religious explanations were still common alongside miasma, shown by fasting and prayer being used against the plague.
What idea were most treatments still based on c1500–c1700?
Balancing the Four Humours — bloodletting, purging and Galen's Theory of Opposites were still used as late as 1700.
What new treatment did Sydenham encourage for ague and malaria?
Cinchona bark (quinine), recently brought from the Americas; it was successful.
What did people in 1665 think caused the Great Plague in London?
Divine action, miasma or astrological influences — the real cause was unknown.
Why were barrels of tar burned in London's streets in 1665?
To purify the air, because people believed the plague was caused by miasma.
What did the Lord Mayor of London order to stop people gathering during the Great Plague?
Theatres were closed (and large gatherings such as fairs banned).
What happened to houses in London where someone caught the plague in 1665?
They were shut up and quarantined for 28 days, marked with a red cross, with a watchman on guard.
What effect did the dissolution of the monasteries (from 1536) have on hospitals in England?
Most hospitals, many of them run by the Church, were shut. Some charity-funded hospitals opened, but numbers stayed below their earlier level until the eighteenth century.
What was a pest house?
A separate building where people with an infectious disease, such as plague, were sent to be cared for away from the healthy.
How were surgeons and apothecaries trained c1500–c1700?
They trained through guilds, rising from apprentice to journeyman to master, and needed a licence to practise once trained.
What was quackery?
The selling of medicines and treatments that had no scientific basis, by untrained 'quack' doctors who were often more interested in profit than the patient's health.
True or false? By c1800 doctors agreed on one proven method of treating each disease.
False. There was no agreed, scientific approach: a patient could get several different opinions, some treatments were proven (e.g. opium for pain), others were tradition (bleeding) or quackery.
Who was John Hunter?
An eighteenth-century surgeon who insisted on careful observation and experiment, raising surgery's status as a science; he trained many surgeons, including Edward Jenner.
How were eighteenth-century hospitals used to train doctors?
Medical schools were attached to hospitals with specialist wards for different diseases, and students followed a medical professor round the wards.
Roughly how many people died in London in the Great Plague of 1665?
About 100,000, roughly one Londoner in every four.
True or false? The Great Fire of London in 1666 ended the plague.
False. The fire burned the City inside the walls, but most plague deaths were in the poor districts outside them, which did not burn; plague was already declining.
What was the 'royal touch'?
The traditional belief that being touched by the monarch could cure scrofula, a disease of the glands known as 'the king's evil'. Charles II touched many thousands of sufferers.
How were the new hospitals of the eighteenth century paid for?
By wealthy donors (Thomas Guy's fortune paid for Guy's Hospital in London, which opened in 1726) or by subscription, with many local supporters paying regular sums, as at the Westminster Infirmary (1719).
What did John Hunter do in 1785 instead of amputating a patient's leg?
He treated a swollen artery behind the knee (an aneurysm) by tying off the artery higher up, so blood found another route and the leg was saved.