Need some help for friend's assignment....why is medical history important?

[hattyyellow]

Can anyone help? One of the mum's I know has started studying again and I've been helping her.

Her current assignment in medical history is looking at scientists such as Fleming and Pasteur and the importance of their discoveries.

But what we're struggling to get across is why these discoveries are important....and to summarise the importance in an interesting way...

At the moment the assignment just reads like a list of dates and names and discoveries. Are there any inspiring websites which really bring this topic alive that might be useful to look at?

Or is anyone passionate about medical history?

Would welcome any help as she's getting quite fed up and losing confidence over the whole thing.

Can she get information on the causes of deaths of people prior to the intriduction if vaccination and antibiotics, and the causes of deaths now?

What did an infection mean to people in the Victorian era, often amutation, culminating in death by septicemia. Noweverdays it means going to the doctor for soem antibiotis, if you friend wants should could also mention the effect of resistance to antibiotibs, the rise of MRSA and what this means to us

Average age of deaths before and after?

Imrportant to note that Flory and Chain were kep players in the development of penicillin as well as Fleming

Thanks martian those are some really good ideas. I particulary like the picture changing again with resistance to anti-b's and MRSA, that's a really interesting angle.

And average age gives a good benchmark to compare now and then . Thank you!

Science Museum website? They have a large medical collection

Might be something here. Haven't looked in detail, but sounds promising. Good luck!

how about a case study on the flu epidemic just after the first world war - and maybe contrast it with how they would treat something similar now.

here

I love medical history ! Does she know anyone in their eighties who might talk about their experience of being ill as a child ? My Dad was a child before antibs were widespread, and he was in hospital for 6 months after getting rheumatic fever, and this left him permanently affected - now it would be easily and quickly treated. An ear infection could easily be fatal (read old books and they talk about mastoids)

Also, before antibiotics, abdominal surgery could only be done in the most extreme cases , and a badly broken leg would have to be amputated.

I think that the story of the first people to be treated (there was a little boy and a policeman) are fascinating, as is the story of the development of commercial production of penicillin, and getting it to be a stable product.

Another interesting aspect is how it changed nursing, from something where people had to be nursed through a fever (and their prospect was almost entirely in the hands of the nurse), people were in hospital for very long periods and cleanliness was everything to stop an infection raging through an institution, to the modern scene where patients are very acutely ill, medicated intensively etc. I remember reading at the time of AIDS becoming a big issue, and before antiretrovirals, that this was going back to the preantibiotic era for nursing.

my grandad's brother died about age 14 of mastoiditis - must have been late 1920s or early 1930s.

Oh sorry I should have done link here has medical section

If you're near London, the Science Museum has a big History of Medicine section here

Worth a visit.

As we're on MN, what about women and childbirth? Puerperal Fever was transmitted from woman to woman by doctors not washing their hands between patients. Going to hospital to have a baby was tantamount to a death sentence prior to 20th C.

Pasteur - well, pasteurisation, application in food and drink industry. He also devised the rabies vaccine - I think that's what he's primarily remembered for in France rather than the word for the process that bears his name

Your friend probably doesn't have time to read it but Roy Porter's history of medicine is fascinating.

Wow, this is all great! Thank you all so much, just nipping out with DD's but will read through all ideas and send the link onto my mate. Cheers so much all!