Medical discoveries and breakthroughs Notes

How Did Discoveries Transform Survival?

1. If you lived in the early 1800s, going to the doctor was risky. Painful surgery, dirty hospitals, and zero understanding of germs meant survival often came down to luck.
2. But during the nineteenth century, medicine shifted from tradition to science and survival changed dramatically.

Enlightenment Thinking: Medicine Challenges Old Ideas

1. Doctors began questioning ancient explanations from Galen.
   1. Galen was a Greek doctor who lived in the Roman Empire around AD 129–216.
   2. He wrote hundreds of medical texts, and for centuries they were seen as the ultimate authority on how the human body worked.
   3. He studied anatomy by dissecting animals (because Romans banned human dissection), which meant he sometimes came to the wrong conclusions about human anatomy.
2. Observation and experiments replaced blind trust in tradition.
3. Dissections became more common, improving knowledge of anatomy.
4. Microscopes revealed structures no one had seen before.
5. The Church’s control over medical education weakened.

The Industrial Revolution: Dirty Cities, Better Tools, Faster Ideas

1. Rapid urbanisation created overcrowding, pollution, and epidemics.
2. Governments slowly realised public health needed legal reform.
3. Industrial wealth funded laboratories and scientific research.
4. New technology improved microscopes, thermometers, and X-rays.
5. Railways and telegraphs spread discoveries quickly.

Germ Theory: Pasteur and Koch Explain Disease Properly

1. Before germ theory, people blamed “miasma” (bad air).
2. Louis Pasteur showed microorganisms cause disease and multiply.
3. Robert Koch isolated the bacteria behind TB, cholera, tetanus, and more.
4. Doctors finally had a scientific explanation for infection.
5. This breakthrough enabled antiseptics, vaccines, and sanitation reforms.

Infection Control: Semmelweis and Nightingale Lead the Charge

1. Nineteenth-century hospitals reused dirty tools and bandages.
2. Ignaz Semmelweis discovered doctors were spreading infection to mothers.
3. Hand-washing with chlorine dramatically reduced deaths.
4. His ideas were mocked because they challenged senior doctors.
5. Florence Nightingale used data to prove cleanliness saved soldiers’ lives.
6. Nightingale’s reforms reshaped hospital design and nursing.

Surgery: Overcoming Pain, Infection, and Blood Loss

1. Pre-1850 surgery was fast, painful, and frequently fatal.
2. Ether and chloroform allowed surgeons to perform longer, safer operations.
3. Joseph Lister introduced carbolic acid to sterilise tools and wounds.
4. Antiseptics dramatically reduced deaths after surgery.
5. Blood loss remained dangerous, but sterilised ligatures improved outcomes.

Vaccination: Jenner Takes Down Smallpox

1. Smallpox killed millions and left survivors disfigured.
2. Jenner noticed cowpox protected milkmaids from smallpox.
3. In 1796, he vaccinated James Phipps to prove the idea.
4. “Vaccination” comes from vacca (Latin: cow).
5. The method spread across Europe, the USA, and the Middle East.
6. Smallpox eventually became the first eradicated disease.

Penicillin: From Chance Observation to Medical Breakthrough

1. Penicillin is the first true antibiotic: a drug that kills bacteria inside the body.
2. The mould it comes from (Penicillium notatum) was first noticed in the nineteenth century, and Joseph Lister even used it on an infected wound, but he never documented the discovery.
3. In 1928, Alexander Fleming at St Mary’s Hospital in London rediscovered the mould by accident when it contaminated a Petri dish and killed the surrounding bacteria.
4. Fleming realised its potential but couldn’t purify or mass-produce it due to lack of funding and limited technology.
5. The breakthrough came during the Second World War, when Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford finally managed to extract, stabilise, and manufacture penicillin on a large scale.
6. By 1944–45, penicillin was being produced in huge quantities, dramatically reducing deaths from infected wounds, pneumonia, syphilis, and sepsis among soldiers and civilians.
7. Penicillin became known as a medical “miracle drug” and opened the door to the wider antibiotic revolution.

Women in Medicine: Pushing Through Barriers

1. Women were mostly midwives and caregivers, excluded from medical school.
2. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman doctor in the USA in 1849.
3. Florence Nightingale transformed nursing and hospital practice.
4. Mary Seacole set up her own medical facilities during the Crimean War.
5. Their work broadened who could contribute to medical progress.