Medicine in Britain, c1250-PRESENT | Edexcel GCSE History (1HI0)

Medicine in Britain, c1250-PRESENT

159 questions
13 subtopics
Paper 1
Paper 1

Medicine in Britain, c1250–present is examined in Paper 1, Thematic study and historic environment.

It covers factors driving change in medicine, c1250–present, ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1250–c1500, Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1250–c1500, case study: the Black Death, 1348–49, ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1500–c1700, Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1500–c1700, case studies: William Harvey and the Great Plague of 1665, ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1700–c1900, Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1700–c1900, case studies: Jenner’s vaccination and the 1854 cholera outbreak, ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1900–present, Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1900–present and case studies: penicillin and the fight against lung cancer.

Sample questions from Medicine in Britain, c1250-PRESENT

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Factors driving change in medicine, c1250–present

Name two inventions that made new medical knowledge possible.

Show the answer
The microscope, which made microbes visible, and the printing press, which spread new findings accurately.
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1250–c1500

What was Galen’s Theory of Opposites?

Show the answer
An imbalance should be corrected with something of the opposite quality, so a patient hot with fever was given cooling foods such as cucumber.
Case study: the Black Death, 1348–49

Which symptoms did people recognise in a victim of the Black Death?

Show the answer
Painful dark swellings called buboes in the armpits and groin, with fever and vomiting; some victims coughed blood and died within days.
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1500–c1700

How did printing weaken the Church’s grip on medical knowledge?

Show the answer
Books could be printed without Church approval, so writers were able to contradict Galen openly and be read.
Case studies: William Harvey and the Great Plague of 1665

What did the valves in the veins tell Harvey?

Show the answer
That blood in the veins could flow only one way, back towards the heart.
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1700–c1900

Which methods allowed Koch’s team to isolate and study individual microbes?

Show the answer
Growing them on solid agar jelly, staining them with dyes so they stood out, and photographing them through a microscope.
Case studies: Jenner’s vaccination and the 1854 cholera outbreak

Why was Jenner’s work opposed at first?

Show the answer
He could not explain why it worked, doctors were making money from the older method of inoculation, and some thought using matter from an animal was wrong.
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1900–present

Name two kinds of scan used in hospitals today and say what each is good for.

Show the answer
Ultrasound, which is safe for checking a baby in the womb, and MRI, which gives detailed images of soft tissue.

The 13 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Factors driving change in medicine, c1250–present	The three factors behind change, turning points and Germ Theory, the medieval Church as brake and support, government's growing role, the microscope and printing press, slow acceptance of proven discoveries, continuity and the Four Humours, the Royal Society, towns and trade, the Renaissance, industrial ill health, war, factors combining for penicillin and the 1875 Act, faster progress after 1850 and three epidemics compared.	20
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1250–c1500	Illness as God's punishment or test, the Devil, astrology in diagnosis, supernatural and rational explanations, the Theory of the Four Humours and Hippocrates, Galen's Theory of Opposites, miasma, and why Galen's authority lasted so long.	10
Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1250–c1500	Religious actions and the flagellants, bloodletting and purging, purifying the air against miasma, the regimen sanitatis, how treatments matched explanations, the training and methods of physicians, apothecaries and barber surgeons, Church-run hospitals and whom they turned away, care at home and herbal remedies.	18
Case study: the Black Death, 1348–49	The years of the outbreak, God's punishment and the planets, buboes and other symptoms, bleeding, purging and lancing, religious responses, shutting up households, Gloucester's gates, street cleaning and the death toll.	10
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1500–c1700	Miasma and the humours after 1500, the decline of supernatural explanations, Thomas Sydenham's observation of patients, scarlet fever, Observationes Medicae, the printing press, and the Royal Society and Philosophical Transactions.	12
Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1500–c1700	Medieval treatments that lasted after 1500, the loss of monastery hospitals and what replaced them, transference, new remedies from the New World, the Royal College of Physicians of 1518, changes in training, and Vesalius: The Fabric of the Human Body of 1543, the errors of Galen he corrected and his influence in England.	10
Case studies: William Harvey and the Great Plague of 1665	Galen on blood, Harvey's proof of circulation in 1628, the heart's output and the valves, why treatment was slow to change, then the plague of 1665, shut-up houses, searchers of the dead, bans and posies.	10
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1700–c1900	Miasma in the early nineteenth century, spontaneous generation, Pasteur's souring liquids and swan-necked flask, Germ Theory in 1861 and its slow reception, Koch's methods and the microbes he identified, and Lister's carbolic acid.	10
Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1700–c1900	Eighteenth-century hospitals, Nightingale at Scutari, her wards, Notes on Nursing and her school, surgery before anaesthetics, chloroform and Queen Victoria, Lister's carbolic acid, deaths after anaesthetics, compulsory vaccination, Pasteur's vaccines and the 1875 Act.	14
Case studies: Jenner’s vaccination and the 1854 cholera outbreak	Jenner's milkmaids, the test on James Phipps, the word vaccination, opposition and Parliament's grant, then Snow's map of Broad Street, the pump handle, the leaking cesspit and why his conclusion was doubted.	10
Ideas about the cause of disease and illness, c1900–present	Watson and Crick's double helix of 1953, the Human Genome Project, inherited conditions and genetic testing, lifestyle factors behind the main causes of death, and modern diagnosis through blood tests, X-rays, scans, endoscopes and home monitors.	10
Approaches to prevention and treatment, c1900–present	The NHS of 1948 under Bevan, the Beveridge Report, free treatment at the point of use, doctors' opposition and wider access to care, magic bullets from Salvarsan 606 to Prontosil, antibiotics and resistance, high-tech treatment, mass vaccination and the eradication of smallpox, and government campaigns to change how people live.	15
Case studies: penicillin and the fight against lung cancer	Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928, Florey and Chain's work at Oxford, the first patient Albert Alexander, American mass production, then the diagnosis of lung cancer, surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and targeted treatment, the smoking ban of 2007, tobacco tax and plain packaging.	10

Medicine in Britain, c1250-PRESENT is 159 of the 2,881 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £7

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.