Medicine During the Scientific Revolution

Medicine Before the Scientific Revolution

• Medicine was largely based on Galen's teachings, which emphasized the importance of balancing the four humors and temperaments of the body.
• Galen's techniques were based on observation and experimentation, but his theories were widely accepted as fact without being tested.
• Primitive and detrimental procedures, such as bloodletting, were developed based on Galen's theories.
• Bloodletting, which involved draining moderate quantities of blood from the patient, was believed to cure illnesses caused by excess blood in the body.

Chemistry Before the Scientific Revolution

• Chemistry was prone to inaccuracies due to basic misunderstandings of nature and the elements.
• Most people believed in the Aristotelian model of the world, which stated that all substances were composed of combinations of four basic elements: fire, air, water, and earth.
• Alchemy, which aimed to turn baser metals into gold or silver, was a prevalent practice.

New Ideas: Paracelsus

• Paracelsus, a Swiss-born chemist, rejected common practices like bloodletting and Galen's theories.
• He favored experimentation as the key to understanding the world and claimed diseases were caused by 'bad seeds'.
• Paracelsus publicly burned copies of Galen's work.

New Ideas: Andreas Vesalius

• Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish contemporary of Paracelsus, made important discoveries about the human body through dissections.
• He correctly identified that the human heart had four chambers, contradicting Galen's claim that it had only two.
• Vesalius created the world's first medical textbook, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which included detailed illustrations of the human body.

New Ideas: Iatrochemists

• Iatrochemists focused on preparing substances and solutions in the purest way possible.
• They made extensive qualitative and quantitative notes on their mixtures and experiments to ensure consistency.
• Jean Beguin's 1610 work, Tyrocinium Chymicum, is considered one of the first modern chemistry textbooks.

New Ideas: Robert Boyle

• Robert Boyle, an Irish-born chemist, was an accomplished empiricist who believed only in what he had learned from experimentation.
• He is famous for discovering Boyle's Law, which states that the volume of a gas varies inversely with pressure.

New Ideas: William Harvey

• William Harvey, an English physician, discovered that blood was continuously pumped throughout the body by the heart and that the body contained a fixed amount of blood.
• His discovery contradicted Galen's teachings, which claimed that blood was continuously being regenerated by the heart.

Medicine and Chemistry Moving Forward

• The work of Paracelsus, Vesalius, and others laid the foundation for our modern understanding of the human body and the composition of substances.
• Achievements such as Edward Jenner's discovery of vaccination and the discovery of germ theory were largely based on the empiricism pioneered by these early physicians and chemists.