Treatment Flashcards
Herbal remedies (medieval)
Honey and plants
Recipes Written down in books called herbals
Pictures and exact quantities
Often closely guarded family secrets
Bleeding (medieval)
Bleeding to balance 4 humours
Cupping (incision in the arm, blood dripping into cup) or leeches
Monks bled up to 8 times per year
Purging rid the body of excess liquid and impurities
Urine and zodiac (medieval)
Urine would be smelt, tasted and looked at and compared to a urine chart
Used zodiacs to decide treatment and when herbs are picked based on star signs
Quacks, barber surgeons, apothecary (medieval)
Unlicensed traders that roamed the country offering treatments
Surgeons with little training, pull teeth, mend broken limbs, bled and cut hair
Apothecaries produced herbal remedies, affordable medical professionals
Early modern treatments
Wrote in English rather than Latin
Rhubarb came from Asia - hailed as “wonder drug”
Doctrine of signatures (things that looked like body parts treated them)
Tobacco was a popular remedy, smoked
Fresh air and improved diet
“Melancholy” was a first recognition of depression
Early 19th century surgery
No effective anaesthetics, patients died from pain
Only removed growths and amputations
Speed was more important
Battle of Borodin 1872- Napoleon’s surgeons amputated 200 limbs in 24 hours
Robert Liston amputated a leg in 2”5 minutes but cut off testicles
Anaesthetics (19th century)
Davy and Liston used nitrous oxide
Used cocaine for a long period
James Simpson used chloroform in 1847- dizziness and sleepiness
Queen Victoria used chloroform
There was a “black period” between anaesthetic and antiseptic- lots of infection
Antiseptics (19th century)
Semmelweis cut mortality from 35% to less than 1 by surgeons washing hands in calcium chloride
Durham sewers were washed in carbolic acid, lister realised they were cleaner than his operating room.
He soaked instruments in carbolic acid. 1871 invented a machine to spray carbolic acid
Aseptic surgery (19th century)
1881- chamberlain invented a steam steriliser for medical equipment
Halstead used gloves as a nurse reacted to carbolic acid
Moyniham used gloves and gowns
Marie Curie (20th century)
She and her husband discover and isolate radium and polonium- 1903, They destroy tissue to treat cancer
1911 discovered how to measure radiation, developed x-ray machines in WW1
Won Nobel prizes in 1903 and 1911
Penicillin (20th century)
1872- discovered by lister, used on a nurse in 1884, never published it
WW1- patients died from septicaemia
1928- Fleming left dirty petri dishes when he went on holiday and the bacteria had been killed, 1929 he publishes but couldn’t raise funds
Florey and chain penicillin (20th century)
Florey and chain used government fundings in 1941 to test antibiotics on mice and a human, they died when they ran out of penicillin
USA funded production after WWII entry, enough for whole British army after D-Day in 1944
Received Nobel prizes in 1945
Surgery advances (20th century)
Robotic operations in USA First heart transplant in 1967- survived 18 days as it was rejected 1952- first kidney transplant 1972- hip transplants Keyhole surgery First British pacemaker in 1961 Scanning techniques to diagnose cancer
Alternative treatments (20th century)
Lots of people still look to holistic treatments
Hydrotherapy, aromatherapy, hypnosis, acupuncture, designed to work in harmony with the body, not with chemicals
Lots of health shops today
Prince Charles is an advocate
