1. History of Medicine Factual Knowledge sheet
HEALTH WARNING: this is the basics. If you want better marks, you need to go further than this!
Industrial medicine (1700-1900)
What people believed caused illness
1. Miasmas. Poisoned air breathed in, created by the filth in the cities. Particularly made sense as
industrialisation polluted the air a great deal and they could see ‘bad’ air.
2. Spontaneous generation. Germs appeared on things spontaneously and made them rot/go bad.
People got ill when this happened to them.
3. Germ Theory (1861/1864). Pasteur’s proof that germs were carried in the air and upon entering
the blood stream made people ill. Spontaneous generation abandoned soon after, miasmas took
longer to be abandoned.
What treatments people used
1. Herbal remedies passed through the generations.
2. Patent medicines. Companies creating concoctions to ‘cure all’.
3. Some prayer and magic still lingering.
4. At end of 19th
century, aspirin had been invented.
Doctors, nurses and hospitals
1. Doctors becoming more professional. University training included dissections, shadowing doctors
in hospital, new books and findings by leading doctors like John Hunter. Had to be registered so
people knew they could be trusted. Expensive. Women were allowed by law to be doctors after
1876.
2. Nurses had emerged due to Florence Nightingale’s training schools and books. Capable and
committed to cleanliness. Worked in hospitals.
3. Hospitals had been changed dramatically. Nightingale had rewritten the rules: hospitals were
large, well aired, spotless, staffed by nurses, efficient. Run by local councils, charities and therefore
were built randomly.
Key people to know about
1. Edward Jenner. English doctor who created vaccination (1796) after observing dairy maids with
cowpox didn’t get small pox. Opposition to vaccination for years afterwards as it clashed with so
many prevailing social attitudes and couldn’t be explained.
2. Louis Pasteur. French chemist and discoverer of Germ Theory (1861) which transformed
understanding of illness. Also explained how vaccination worked (1880) and developed
vaccinations for anthrax and rabies.
3. Robert Koch. German doctor who discovered how to identify individual germs. Great rivalry with
Pasteur.
4. Florence Nightingale. Worked as nurse in Crimean War and then undertook to transform nursing
and hospitals in the UK. Wrote Notes on Nursing (1859) and Notes on Hospitals (1863) and set up a
training school for nurses at St Thomas’s in London (1860).

2. 5. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. First female doctor in the UK. Took on the system and got
government to pass law allowing women to be doctors in 1876. Set up hospital for women run by
women: New Hospital, London (1872).
Factors pushing medicine on or holding it back
1. Genius. Jenner, Pasteur, Koch.
2. Scientific knowledge. Germ theory, identification of germs.
3. Social attitudes. People more open to scientific ideas and less cautious about accepting GT.
4. Luck. Vaccination, explaining how vaccination works.
5. Communication. Books, telephone, telegram.
6. Competition. Pasteur vs. Koch.
7. Teamwork. Both P and K had large teams helping them with their work.
8. Government. Grant to Jenner to develop vaccination, funding for P and K to develop their work.
Exam board specifications highlight:
Work of Pasteur and Koch, Germ Theory, importance of research teams, smallpox, Jenner and
vaccination, improvements in hospitals, professionalization of doctors/nurses/midwives, Florence
Nightingale, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, patent medicines, improved communications and
technology helping medical research.