Medical Treatments in Renaissance Britain (Edexcel GCSE History): Revision Note

Treatments in the Renaissance - Timeline & Summary

• The Renaissance saw improvements in treatment due to:

  • An interest in alchemy

  • Better regulation of medical professionals through better training and guild systems

  • Better understanding of anatomy due to an increase in human dissection

    • The discoveries of Vesalius and Harvey proved, beyond doubt, that Galen was wrong

• Whilst the logic behind Renaissance treatments was generally correct, the cures themselves proved ineffective

  • Transference is a key example of this

• Surgery and hospital care improved slightly

  • However, problems like infection, blood loss, and lack of pain relief continued

• The public distrusted the new treatments available and continued using humoural treatments like blood-letting and purging

Scientific treatments in the Renaissance

Transference

• The belief that disease could be passed to another object or animal

• Physicians prescribed the following treatments:

  • Rubbing onions on a wart

  • Strapping a live chicken to a plague bubo

  • Having a patient with a fever sleep next to a sheep

• These did not work, but were early steps toward understanding disease spread

latrochemistry

• Iatrochemistry was a form of early chemistry that used metals and minerals to create cures

• The Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1618) listed over 2,000 chemical remedies

• Antimony was a popular chemical cure

  • In small doses, it caused a patient to sweat

  • In large doses, it causes vomiting

  • Too much pure antimony was poisonous

• Scientists focused on creating a chemical cure for syphilis

  • They experimented with guaiac wood and mercury

  • No chemical cures proved to be effective and it remained dangerous to public health

Apothecaries & surgeons

• The medics from the medieval period continued to care for the sick in the Renaissance

Apothecaries

• Apothecaries had guild systems

  • This improved service to customers

• Apothecaries continued to provide herbal remedies

  • latrochemistry provided more chemical cures

• The education of apothecaries improved

  • It took multiple years of practice as a journeyman to become a master in the profession

• Apothecaries required a license to practice their craft

• Apothecaries continued to be affordable but remedies remained unsafe

Surgeons

• Treated more complex injuries from new weapons in warfare

• Trained through apprenticeships and needed a license

• Surgeons continued to operate on those who could not afford a physician 

• The survival rate for surgery was still poor

  • Patients still did not have access to pain relief, which meant they could die from shock

  • Losing too much blood during the procedure resulted in death

    • Surgeons did not know how to replace blood during surgery

  • Surgeons continued to use dirty equipment

    • This meant many people died post-operation from infection

AWAITING IMAGE

A diagram showing the continuity and change of treatments in the Renaissance period

Physicians

• Physicians' university training improved

  • New ideas were slowly added to their course

  • The development of the printing press led to a wider selection of textbooks on topics such as anatomy and iatrochemistry

  • If students could not afford a whole book, fugitive sheets were available

• Training continued to be mostly theoretical rather than hands-on experience in treating patients

• Dissections became more common, but access to fresh corpses was difficult

  • In the 18th century, medical students began ‘body-snatching’

    • Students or criminals would illegally dig up bodies to perform dissection

Andreas Vesalius

• Andreas Vesalius was a famous anatomist who trained in Paris in 1533 and lectured in Padua, Italy

• Wrote On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543)

  • Corrected over 300 of Galen’s mistakes, such as:

    • The lower jaw is in one part, not two

    • Veins in the heart did not lead to the liver

    • Men and women have the same number of ribs

Impact of Vesalius

• He encouraged physicians to focus on dissection rather than believing old theories

  • Physicians later went on to correct Vesalius’ mistakes

• He encouraged physicians, rather than surgeons, to perform dissections

• He inspired future anatomists like William Harvey

• He created anger among traditional physicians who believed in Galen’s work

William Harvey

• Harvey was an English physician who, by 1618, was doctor to King James I

• Harvey was taught Vesalius’ theory

• He carried out public dissections as a lecturer of anatomy

• Wrote An Anatomical Account of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals in 1628 discovered that the heart worked like a mechanical fire pump

• The heart pushes the blood around the body through arteries and veins, linked together in the circulation system

• He disproved Galen’s theory that the liver created blood

Impact of Harvey

• Harvey's book on the human heart was a breakthrough in anatomy

• His work encouraged scientists to investigate other anatomical questions, such as how was blood made?

• Renaissance physicians ignored his work as it had limited use in medical treatment

  • Universities only began to use medical textbooks which contained his work from 1673

Hospitals & pest houses in Renaissance Britain

Hospitals

• After the dissolution of the monasteries (1536), many hospitals closed

  • It took a long time for hospital levels to return to the amount there had been in medieval England

• Smaller, charity-run hospitals replaced the previous Church-owned facilities

  • These had a focus on curing, not just caring

• Some had physicians on contract and apothecaries on site

• More patients were discharged, showing improved success rates

Pest houses

• Based on medieval lazar houses

• Treated people with infectious diseases like plague or pox

• Separate from general hospitals to avoid wider infections

  • This showed growing awareness that illness could spread from person to person

Care in the home

• Wise women still treated patients with herbal remedies

• The London College of Physicians punished women for practising medicine without a license

  • Women were not allowed to attend university or become physicians

• Many people continued to trust women’s care more than official medics, especially in poorer households

AWAITING IMAGE

A diagram showing the continuity and change of hospitals in the Renaissance period