The work of Vesalius, Pare and Harvey, the challenge to Galen, the impact of the printing press and the Royal Society, and continued problems in treating disease.

What this dot point is asking

This period of the Health and the people thematic study asks how medical knowledge advanced during the Renaissance through Vesalius, Pare and Harvey, how they challenged Galen, what helped their ideas spread, and why these advances did not yet improve everyday treatment. As a thematic study, it is examined by significance and difference questions and a 16-mark factor essay.

Vesalius, Pare and Harvey

Each made real discoveries, but their wider importance was the method: careful observation and dissection, and the willingness to correct the ancients.

The challenge to Galen

What helped ideas spread

Two factors helped the new ideas spread far faster than before. The printing press (in use across Europe from the late fifteenth century) allowed accurate texts and detailed anatomical diagrams, such as Vesalius's, to be reproduced exactly and circulated widely, rather than copied by hand with errors. Later, the Royal Society (founded 1660), supported by royal patronage, encouraged careful experiment, observation and the sharing of findings, publishing scientific work and giving new ideas a respected platform.

Continued problems in treatment

This gap between new knowledge and unchanged treatment is a vital point for the factor essay: discovery alone does not improve health without understanding the cause of disease, which came only with germ theory in the nineteenth century.

Try this

Q1. What did William Harvey discover? [Knowledge recall]

• Cue. That the heart pumps blood around the body in a one-way circulation.

Q2. Explain why the discoveries of the Renaissance did little to improve everyday treatment. [Short explanation]

• Cue. Doctors still used the four humours and the true cause of disease was unknown, so the Great Plague of 1665 was met with the same useless measures as in 1348.