AQA GCSE History Health and the people c1000 to present: a complete overview of a thousand years of medicine

What this option demands

Health and the people is the most popular AQA Paper 2 thematic study. It covers about a thousand years of medicine in Britain, from the medieval reliance on Galen to the modern NHS. Because it is a thematic study, the exam rewards an understanding of change and continuity and the factors that drove or held back progress (war, government, religion, science and technology, individuals and chance). This overview ties the four dot-point pages together.

Medieval medicine

Medieval medicine was dominated by Galen's four humours and by the Church, which preserved his ideas but forbade challenges to them. People also blamed God, miasma and the planets. Treatment mixed bleeding, purging, herbs and prayer; care came from monasteries, which also had the best public health. The Black Death of 1348 to 1349 killed about a third of the population, and people could only respond with prayer and quarantine because the cause was unknown.

The medical Renaissance

The Renaissance brought a new willingness to question Galen. Vesalius corrected his anatomy, Pare improved surgery, and Harvey proved the heart pumps blood in a one-way circulation. The printing press and the Royal Society spread these ideas. Yet treatment changed slowly: the Great Plague of 1665 met the same useless measures as 1348, because the cause of disease was still a mystery.

The revolution in medicine

The nineteenth century finally explained disease. Jenner developed vaccination against smallpox (1796), Pasteur published germ theory (1861), and Koch identified the specific microbes behind diseases. Surgery was transformed by anaesthetics (chloroform, 1847) and antiseptics (Lister's carbolic acid, 1865). Driven by cholera, Snow's water studies and Chadwick's report, the 1875 Public Health Act made clean water and sanitation compulsory.

Modern medicine and the NHS

The twentieth century brought magic bullets and antibiotics: Fleming discovered penicillin (1928), and Florey and Chain mass-produced it in the 1940s. Surgery advanced with transfusions, X-rays and transplants. In 1948 the NHS gave healthcare free at the point of use, funded by taxation, transforming access for the poor. Modern public health uses vaccination, screening, campaigns and laws to tackle lifestyle diseases.

Check your knowledge

A mix of recall questions covering the whole option. Attempt them, then check the solutions.

1. Name the theory that dominated medieval ideas about illness. (1 mark)
2. Roughly what fraction of the population did the Black Death kill? (1 mark)
3. What did Vesalius, Pare and Harvey each contribute? (3 marks)
4. Who published germ theory and in what year? (2 marks)
5. Name the surgeon who introduced antiseptics, and what he used. (2 marks)
6. What did the 1875 Public Health Act require? (1 mark)
7. Who discovered penicillin, and who mass-produced it? (2 marks)
8. When was the NHS founded, and what was its key feature? (2 marks)