topic 2 (Attempts to prevent illness and disease)

• How did people try to stop the spread of the Black Death during the middle ages?

  Travellers had to spend up to a month outside town walls in quarantine

  Beggars were paid to take the dead to mass burial pits outside town walls

  People held scented flowers to their noses and held buckets over their heads to avoid miasmas

  People took potions like theriac as they believed it would kill off the plague

  Flagellants whipped themselves so God wouldn't punish them with the plague

  People disinfected their houses with herbs and burned clothes of victims
• What did King Edward 111 order to stop the plague?

  Have the streets of London cleared of filth because he argued the smell was causing the plague
• What was Alchemy?


  Came to Europe in late middle ages and was a mixture of science, philosophy and Mysticism
• What did Alchemists do in the middle ages?

  Produced hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, potash and sodium carbonate

  identified new elements such as arsenic

  Laid the foundation for the development of modern chemistry
• Physicians


  Trained at a university medical school in Italy or Paris

  Used urine charts and 'Zodiac man' to treat patients
• What did most people depend on during the middle ages?

  'Wise women or soothsayer who had built up knowledge of sickness and disease over several generations
• What did wise women and soothsayer's do during the middle ages?

  Collected plants, herbs and special stones and carried them in a willow basket

  They would make special charms to protect against evil
• When was the microscope developed?

  1590's
• What did William Withering's discover?

  Foxglove plants could be used to treat heart disease
• Smallpox (early modern era)


  Spread by coughing, sneezing and personal contact

  High death rate and no cure

  Those who survived were left deaf, Blind, brain damaged and physically disabled
• Inoculation


  Involved spreading matter from a smallpox scab onto an open cut on a healthy person's skin, giving them a mild does of the disease

  Wasn't completely safe

  Some people died from a fatal form of the disease
• Lady Mary Montagu


  Saw inoculation being used in Turkey and in 1721 introduced it to Britian
• Smallpox vaccination


  Safer method than inoculation

  Developed by Edward Jenner
• How did Edward Jenner develop the smallpox vaccination?


  He experimented to try and find out why milkmaids who had suffered from cowpox never caught smallpox

  In 1796, he infected James Phipps, with the pus from the sores of a milkmaid with cowpox.

  He developed cowpox and when he recovered he was given a small dose of smallpox but he didn't develop smallpox
• Impacts of the Smallpox vaccination

  Since 1977, there have been no recorded cases of smallpox

  In 1979, the world health organisation declared smallpox extinct
• In the modern era what diseases have been eliminated through vaccination programmes?

  Diphtheria (1940)

  Polio (1955)

  Whooping cough (1956)

  Measles (1963)
• What did Robert Koch begin to discover in the modern era?

  began to identify specific bacteria that caused specific diseases

  Realised antibodies could help to destroy bacteria and build immunity against the disease
• The MMR debate


  In 1998, Dr Wakefield published a paper in a British medical journal, where he suggested that there was a clear link between the MMR vaccination and autism
• For a vaccination to be successful, how much of the population needs to be vaccinated?

  95%
• What are the vaccination rates in the UK?

  93%
• When was there a major outbreak of measles?

  2012=2013