Warfare Warfare has had a major impact on the history of medicine.

Many important discoveries have been made during wars. These include Penicillin, the use of X-Rays and many others. Governments see wars as very important when they happen and they need healthy soldiers. This has led them to spend large amounts of money on medical programmes. There have been developments in surgery that have come about because armies have had to patch up their soldiers quickly and effectively. There have also been new technologies that have been developed during wars which have had a major impact on medicine. These have included mobile X-Rays and robotics. It is not just on the battle field that there have been developments. Sometimes governments needed an army and their populations were not healthy enough. This has led them to develop better public health as well. For example the British government introduced rationing to help people cope in the war and they also knew that it would create a better diet overall for their citizens and would give them healthier soldiers

Governments A government needs to get involved in the health of its people if they are to be truly healthy. They need to keep a clean environment, they need to provide sanitation, clean water and access to medical services. Throughout the past many governments have played a big role. In the Nineteenth Century the British Government passed laws which made towns and cities provide clean water, sewers and hospitals. In the Twentieth Century they set up the NHS which provides all sorts of medical care for the people of Britain. However, sometimes in the past governments have made things worse. For example in the Seventeenth Century the government did not know what was causing the large number of deaths from Plague in London and they made decisions that made the situation worse. Also before the Public Health Acts they allowed people to live in cities which had poor sanitation and no clean water, allowing diseases such as cholera and typhoid to spread.

Individuals Some of the greatest medical discoveries have come about as the result of efforts by governments and companies but many more are the work of individuals. These individuals have had an idea that they want to follow or they have been scientists experimenting with various things. They have then found or developed many wonderful discoveries. Florence Nightingale helped to develop medicine. Hippocrates was the first doctor to understand that we need to observe and investigate medical problems. William Harvey discovered how the blood circulated in the human body. Joseph Lister helped discover anaesthetics and made surgery much safer, as did James Simpson when he worked on antiseptics. Louis Pasteur discovered where disease comes from and people like Alexander Fleming discovered vitally important drugs.

Religion Religions have had a large impact on the development of medicine. This has been both positive and negative. Many people who have become doctors and nurses have done so because they thought that they had a mission from God to complete. Many of these people made a great difference, including Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. In the Middle Ages the only places in Britain that you could get free medical care was in the monasteries and convents which were run by monks and nuns. On the other hand religions have held back development as well. For example the church insisted that nobody was allowed to dissect the bodies of dead people up until the Sixteenth Century. This prevented a great deal of development. They also made sure that the teachings of Galen were used and these turned out to be wrong teachings and prevented doctors from discovering how the body worked.

Chance One of the factors that has had a major impact is luck and chance. Sometimes people discover things by accident and the history of medicine is very much like this. For example, if Pare had not run out of oil when he was on the battlefield once then he would not have developed what he did in relation to surgery. If Alexander Fleming had been a little bit tidier or had closed his window whilst experimenting then he may not have made what many people think was the most important medical discovery of the last 100 years; penicillin. It is important to note that there is no way that people can predict what will happen like this but we need to know just how important it is.

Factor Chance

Positive impact on medicine

Negative impact on medicine

Individuals

Religion

Governments

Warfare

Person Galen

Which factors can be seen in their work?

How important was their impact on medicine

Pare

Lister

Nightingale

Fleming

Galen Galen was born in AD 129 in greece. He started to study medicine when he was sixteen and travelled all over the world to improve his knowledge. He learned practical surgery at a school for gladiators where he dealt with all sorts of wounds and injuries By AD 162 he was in Rome and was a famous doctor who treated the emperor and was a teacher to other doctors. Just like the earliest doctors he believed in the Four Humours and in observing patients to see what their problems were. He was keen on dissection and wanted to see how bodies worked. However, he had to practice on animals and this meant that some of his ideas were wrong. He was famous and important because the books that he wrote were used by doctors all the way up to 1500 and beyond. His work was trusted by people and particularly by the church who said that he was the only one allowed to be used to teach other doctors.

Ambroise Pare Ambroise Pare was born in France in 1510 and was apprentice to his brother who was a barber surgeon. In 1536 he became an army surgeon and spent twenty years fighting in various wars treating gunshot wounds and sword cuts. Surgeons at the time treated wounds with hot oil to cauterise them to stop infection. However, in his first battle Pare ran out of oil and made his own mixture which he had known about for a few years. Later that night the soldiers whom he had treated with his own mixture were not in pain and were not showing signs of infection. Later he developed ligatures to stop bleeding instead of placing a hot iron on a wound. This was also much more effective and much less painful.

Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale was a nurse in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. In 1850 hospitals were dirty and unhealthy. Nurses had no training in how to handle wounds or patients and they sometimes made things much worse. Florence went out to the Crimea to help soldiers wounded in the Crimean War. In her hospitals the death rate amongst patients went down from 42% to just 2%. In 1859 in Britain she published Notes for Nursing and opened the first school to train nurses and by 1901 there were over 68,000 trained nurses making sure that wounds were tended properly and wards were clean in hospitals. Florence Nightingale even had a say in how hospitals were designed making sure that they were always clean, spacious and with lots of fresh air.

Joseph Lister Joseph Lister was a surgeon in Glasgow. He worked hard in his operations but faced a good deal of difficulty. He tackled the problem of patients dying from infection after he read about the work that Louis Pasteur had done. He began to spray all his equipment with an anti-septic. The rate of deaths from infection fell from 46% to 15% in Joseph Listers surgery. He is important because his work was taken on by other doctors and forms the base of all modern surgical procedures. Without his work we would still see more people dying from infections. Also, we can now have much longer and more complicated operations because surgeons are able to take their time over operations.

Alexander Fleming Even though Joseph Lister had reduced the amounts of infections from surgery there were still other infections that caused great difficulty. A treatment needed to be found that would cure these. In 1928 Alexander Fleming was working on how to kill bacteria when he accidentally left a dish of bacteria on an open windowsill. He noted later that all of the dangerous bacteria had been killed by another bacterium called penicillin. Although this had been used before, Fleming was able, thanks to this accident research it scientifically and try to work out how to mass produce it. It was not until the Second World War though that Penicillin became a wonder drug. It was very hard to produce and the armies of the UK and the USA had a lot of infected men and two scientists called Florey and Chain tried to get enough Penicillin. They needed huge amounts of government money and help to do it.

The most important factor in helping medicine to develop over time is the work of individuals. To what extent is this true? You need to think about: individuals and their influence, the influence of governments, how religion affects medicine and the impact of war

The most important factor in helping medicine to develop over time is the work of individuals. To what extent is this true? You need to think about: individuals and their influence, the influence of governments, how religion affects medicine and the impact of war

The most important factor in helping medicine to develop over time is the work of individuals. To what extent is this true? You need to think about: individuals and their influence, the influence of governments, how religion affects medicine and the impact of war

Which of these inventions would you say is the most important? The Computer, The Printing Press, The Internet, Television, The Wheel, Fire, The Car, The Telephone. Which of these inventions would you say is the most important? The Computer, The Printing Press, The Internet, Television, The Wheel, Fire, The Car, The Telephone. Which of these inventions would you say is the most important? The Computer, The Printing Press, The Internet, Television, The Wheel, Fire, The Car, The Telephone. Which of these inventions would you say is the most important? The Computer, The Printing Press, The Internet, Television, The Wheel, Fire, The Car, The Telephone. Which of these inventions would you say is the most important? The Computer, The Printing Press, The Internet, Television, The Wheel, Fire, The Car, The Telephone. Which of these inventions would you say is the most important? The Computer, The Printing Press, The Internet, Television, The Wheel, Fire, The Car, The Telephone. Which of these inventions would you say is the most important? The Computer, The Printing Press, The Internet, Television, The Wheel, Fire, The Car, The Telephone.