History of Medicine: Chapter 1 Summary

• Chapter 1

Hippocrates

• The father of medicine.
• Creator of the Hippocratic Oath.

Humours Theory

• Four humours: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile.

Symbol of Medicine

• Rod of Asclepius.

Galen

• Father of Roman medicine.
• Claimed blood is produced on demand in circulatory system.

Pneuma

• Air or breath.
• Vital spirit and soul of a person.

Areas of Church Control

• Education.
• Hospitals.
• Charity.
• Spiritual matters.
• Christianity took over heavily after the Roman Empire.

Faith and Healing

• Related to holiness, salvation, charity, healing, salubrity, cure, and care.
• The vocabulary mirrors the language of Christianity.

Monastic Healing

• Herbal treatments required going through the church.
• Digitalis (old heart medication) was put into tea.

Theriac

• A type of pharmaceutical.

Galen

• Made an antidote and was considered the miracle curable medication.

Leprosy

• Also known as Hansen's disease.
• Can be treated with 3 antibiotics.
• Can be contracted from armadillos.

Treatments of Leprosy

• Bathing in blood.
• Drinking blood.
• Blood letting.
• Ingesting gold.
• Scarification (scar the skin, cut open, and rub whatever cure is given).
• Castration.

Black Death

• Bubonic plague.

Causes of Bubonic Plague

• (Miasma) bad smells.
• Wrath of God.
• Wrath of Satan.
• Witches.
• Jews (tried to poison wealth to take over).

Treatments of Bubonic Plague

• Flagellants.
• Leeching.
• Cupping.
• Blood letting.

Plague Doctors

• Their beaks were filled with something smelly like flowers so they couldn't catch any bad smells from the patient.
• They were virtually blind with having a brown sack with oil.
• They did blood tests and when a person got knicked they were examined in a light, same with urine test.
• Chapter 2

Renaissance and Scientific Method

• Happened in the early modern era.
• Chapter 3

Art

• Donatello, Michelangelo, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini all created sculptures of David.
• Chapter 4

Leonardo da Vinci

• Was a vitruvian man.
• Known for his anatomy and improving medicine.

Andreas Vesalius

• Known for his anatomy.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

• Vesalius asked medical students what was wrong with the book and where he went wrong.

Ambroise Pare

• A French barber surgeon.
• Would leave wounds open for air and oxygen to get in for them to heal.
• Created prosthetics and other treatments for it (arms, legs, hands).
• The black drop was the first anesthesia, made of opium (16th century).

Bezoar

• Gut of a goat, hard pill of hair, and has healing properties.

Paracelsus

• The father of chemistry and pharmaceuticals.
• Came up with treatments for lesions with boiling oil and treatment for syphilis with mercury.
• Killing cells or the disease would kill the patient if using too much mercury.

Alchemy

• Mixtures of symbols and chemical compounds when done right produced the philosopher's stone.

William Harvey

• Figured out the circulatory system with a finite amount of blood.
• Could harm a patient if bloodletting occurred in some cases and gives a better understanding of how blood works around the body (oxygenation).
• RCP (Royal College of Physicians) 1500s.
• Dissecting in the cold is better so the body lasts longer.
• Went against Galen about the circulation of the blood.

Et Sangvinis in Animalibus

• Refers to the motion of the heart and blood.

Jean-Baptiste Denis

• Transfused blood.
• The first transfusion was on a dog.
• Transfusing people with animal blood would change their personality.

The Ship of Fools

• People with mental health issues were put on a ship and sent out.

Madness Stone

• A supposed stone forming in the brain that creates madness, which people tried to extract to cure it.

Trepanation

• Cutting boar-holes into the skull, like a clamp with a small drill.

"Surgery" William Hogarth

• If you looked at how surgery was done back then, you wouldn't trust it; it looked like torture.
• Chapter 5

Aristotle

• Developed the shape of the universe, with the earth at the center surrounded by crystal balls.
• Believed that 4 elements (earth, water, air, fire) make up universe in differing proportions.
• Claimed that the center of the earth is filled with a giant ball of water.
• Geocentric
• Crystalline spheres
• Prime mover
• Physics

Reasons for Scientific Change

• Questioning nature of renaissance.
• Invention of the printing press (Johannes Gutenberg 1450).
• Acceptance of reformation ideas.

Nicholas Copernicus

• A Polish astronomer.
• Heliocentrism (sun-centered).

Aristarchus

• Advocated a sun-centered universe.

Ptolemy

• Believed there were epicycles, which are orbits within orbits.

Copernican Universe

• Heliocentric
• Epicycles
• Fixed stars
• Aristotelian physics
• No gravity

Francis Bacon

• Created the scientific method and turned it into provable law in nature.

Giordano Bruno

• Theorized that all the stars are other suns.

Giordano Bruno

• Was a Dominican friar.
• Believed stars equaled suns, there were many planets, God was in everything, and was pantheistic.
• Burned as a heretic.

Tycho Brahe

• Lost his nose and wore a prosthetic silver nose.
• Believed the earth orbited around the sun, was both geocentric and heliocentric.

Johannes Kepler

• A serious mathematician.
• Came up with the laws of planetary motion.

William Gilbert

• Magnetic strength depends on mass.

Galileo Galilei

• Created laws of falling bodies, concept of inertia, dialogue on the two great systems of the world.

Galileo's Telescope

• Showed mountains on the moon, rings of Saturn, moons of Jupiter, and sunspots.

Isaac Newton

• Brought the scientific revolution to a close.
• Proved and verified everything about the universe.
• Invented fluxions (calculus)
• Wrote "Opticks" (the nature of light)
• Invented the cat flap
• Was also secretly an alchemist
• Wrote "Principia Mathematica" (built on natural laws, mathematical universe)