Influential People Regarding Medicine Through Time

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Hippocrates

Hippocrates was a Greek doctor who came up with the theroy of the 4 HUMOURS.

  • He was the first doctor to observe people before making a diagnoses.
  • He created the Hippocratic Oath which was a document that all doctors had to sign. It stated that doctors had to keep the patients symptoms and treatments confidential, they were never allowed to use magic whilst treating patients and that making people healthy was in their best interest and they did not become a doctor to become wealthy.
  • He creates a series of books called the 'Hippocratic Collection of Books'. The books were a diary of all of the symptoms and treatments he had given so doctors in the future could learn from it.
  • He was the first doctor to encourage natural treatments instead of praying to God.
  • He also came up with the 4 Humours.
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The 4 Humours

The 4 Humours;

  • The four humours said that illness was caused by natural causes. This was the first theory that believed that illness were caused naturally.
  • The illness said that you became ill because of the unbalance of the 4 main bodily fluids.These were black bile, yellow bile, blood and phelgm.
  • The inbalance was affected by the seasons.  
  • The treatments included bleeding, making people throw up and go to the toilet.
  • If all of your fluids were in balance then you was healthy and had nothing wrong with you.
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Claudius Galen

Galen was a Roman doctor who developed the theory of the 4 Humours by using OPPOSITES.

  • The theory of Opposites was part of the treatments developed for the 4 humours. If a person had too much phlegm in their system then they were too cold and the opposite of cold is hot. Galen would use hot ingrediants such as chili to balance their humours.
  • Galen also had a big influence on ANATOMY AND DISSECTION. He was only able to carry out dessection in Alexandria because it was not allowed anywhere else in Italy.  He believed that physicians should try and learn as much as possible about the bodies structure.
  • Galen had to dissect animals instead of humans but he still proved alot about the workings of the body, He proved the brain, not the heart, controlled speech. He also proved that the ateries, not just the veins, carried blood around the body.
  • Although he did make some mistakes as humans and pigs bodies slightly differ, The biggest mistake was that the liver made new blood from food.
  • Galen also created a series of books, similar to Hippocrates.
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Andreas Versalius

Versalius was a doctor in the Rennaissance and he proved Galen could be WRONG!

  • No doctors had even questioned the finding of Galen until Versalius was around.
  • Some of his discoveries included that; the jaw had one bone, not two as Galen had described, the breast bone had 3 parts, not 7 and blood did not flow through the heart by invisible holes.
  • He angered the church by saying that men and women have the same number of ribs,
  • He was helped by the use of printers. This multiplied his bookks and findings. Without the printer his ideas and findings may not have had such an impact.
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WIlliam Harvey

Harvey was a doctor in the Renaissance period and worked on finding things about the BLOOD.

  • His main discovery was that the heart acted as a pump to pump blood around the body. He dissected cold blooded animals to see the heart in action and human hearts to see how the heart worked.
  • He calculated the amount of blood going into the arteries each hour. He discovered this was 3 times the weight of a man.
  • His idea was influenced by the mechancial water pumps in London and this gave hime the idea that the blood may be pumped around the body.
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Ambroise Pare

Pare was a doctor in the Renaissance period and discovered alot about WAR WOUNDS  and SURGERY.

  • His main discovery was using silk ligatures to seal wounds caused by amputations. Each thread sealed a blood vessel and this was a lot less painful than the previous treatment of cauterising.
  • He changed the treatment for gunshot wounds, He rubbed egg yolks, rose oil and turpentine on the wounds.
  • He started to create false limbs for soliders who had lost them in  the war.
  • The printing press meant that his discoveries spread much quicker than surgeons of the medival era,
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Edward Jenner

Jenner was a doctor in th 1800's and he was the person who discovered INNOCULATION and created the VACCINATION

  • His experimented on a boy called James Phippes. The boy was being experimented on to see if he would be able to become immune to small pox and this was widespread across the country in this era.
  • Jenner thought it was strange how all of the milkmaids never contracted the disease.
  • Jenner inserted some cowpox to an incision in Phippes arm and he was immune to small pox.
  • He proved that being innoculated with cowpox meant they was immune to small pox.
  • This treatment was very popular and Jenner created the innoculation.
  • He saved hundreds of lives by given them the small pox vaccine.
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Louis Pasteur

Pasteur developed the GERM THEORY but he didn't know the science behind it.

  • He first proved that beacteria was responsible for souring milk, wine and beer. He proved that you could remove the bacteria by boiling the substance and cooling it back down again. This process is called pausteriation.
  • He also came up with the Germ Theory.
  • He proved that germs attack the body from the outside.
  • This theory helped him to explain what caused many diseases and  this meant he was able to work out the treatments for them. These disease included; Thphoid, Tuberculosis, Diptheria and Tetanus.
  • He also created a vaccine for rabies. He gave it to a boy who had rabies and he survived.
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Robert Koch

Koch came up with the method of DIFFERENTIATING BACTERIA.

  • He created a method which included staining the bacteria to differentiate the bacteria.
  • He also developed a method to grow bacteria on potatoes.
  • He helped many scientists as they were now able to stain the bacteria and create treatements for this.
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Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain

Fleming was a 20th Century doctor who discovered PENICILLIN,

  • Fleming did this by accidently leaving a petri dish full of bacteria on the side and when he came back it had penicillin growing next to it killing the bacteria. However although he did further research he had to stop this ebcause he could not get the funding because of WW2.
  • 9 years later Florey and Chain started to develop penicillin. They grew it and tested it on a mouse. It was successful but the government only funded them £25.
  • After months of growing penicillin in containers Albert Alexander was dying of septicaemia. He gave them the pencillin and he was starting to get better but they run of bacteria and Albert died.
  • Later Florey and Chian recieved the funding to mass produce pencillin for WW2. On D-Day 1944 over 2.3 million does of pencillin were used.
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Edwin Chadwick

Chadwick heavily influenced the improvements of PUBLIC HEALTH

  • Firstly he published a report called 'Report on the Sanity Conditions of the Labouring Population' on how poor public health affected their life expectance.
  • He became a member of the National Board of Health in 1848
  • He also created the Publiv Heatch Act of 1848.

He said that;

1. Drainage and sewers should be improved

2. Waste should be removed from the street and houses.

3. The population should be provided with clean water

4. There should be appointed medical officers in each area to check these reforms.

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John Snow

Snow did a lot of experiments on how WATER AFFECTED PUBLIC HEALTH

  • He proved that Chloera was not spread through miasma (bad air) and proved that Chlorea was transferred through water.
  • He worked out that people who drank from the brewey did not die
  • People believed him but no laws were introduced to prevent dirty water diseases.
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Octavia Hill

Hill was highly involved in RENOVATING SLUMS

  • She brought lots of slums and rennovated them so that they were a lot cleaner
  • She campaigned and convined the government to pass the 1875 Artisans Dwelling Act
  • This act gave the councils power to knock down and rebuild the slums.
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Joseph Bazalgette

Bazalgette was involved in the building of the SEWERS

  • He built 83 miles of sewers after 'The Great Stink'
  • He built the sewers bigger as he thought that the human polpulation was going to grow so they would need the extra sewers.
  • We still use the same sewers today.
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