Causes of illness Medieval Renaissance Early Modern Medieval

Causes of illness Medieval Renaissance / Early Modern Medieval life Great Plague • Dirty towns caused disease – little sanitation, dirty drinking water. • Poverty, famine and warfare added to problems. • Huge epidemics like the Black Death spread rapidly (killed between ½ and 2/3 rds of the population • • 19 th Century / Industrialisation • In reality, little change in causes of disease. Great Plague killed 100, 000 people in London. Some start to try stop the spread of plague. Dirty water, Industrial Revolution overpopulation andillnesses awful conditions of the poor cause huge problems in Industrial Revolution towns and cities. • Cholera (60, 000 in 1848) and typhoid are big killers. • Unsafe working conditions (chimney sweeps, factories, mining) cause further illness. 20 th Century • • 20 / 21 st Century Spanish Flu • Showed how bacterial illnesses could spread rapidly, especially after difficult times like war. An. HIV/AIDS example of a viral disease which has caused huge problems in the 20 th/21 st century. • AIDS is caused by having unprotected sex with someone who has the disease, sharing needles or contaminated blood transfusions. • AIDS attacks the immune system. Spanish Flu started in the trenches during WW 1 and killed 280, 000 in England.

Outline how causes of illness and disease have changed from c. 500 to the present day (16 +4) In the medieval time period, there was a huge amount of illness and disease. Life was hard for medieval people and towns were dirty and cramped. There were no rules about where waste should be thrown in towns which meant people were more likely to get ill. Furthermore, wars and famines were frequent which meant people were more likely to get infections from wounds or have weakened immune systems from lack of food. People did not know what caused disease so they could do little to help themselves. Huge epidemics like the Black Death killed around a half to two-thirds of the population and there was no cure. During the Renaissance, another epidemic hit with the Great Plague in 1665 -1666. It killed 100, 000 people in London and again there was very little that could be done to stop it. This showed that there had not been much progress since the medieval period. Despite the development of the scientific method, where doctors based their understanding on observation and analysis, the Church held back knowledge which didn’t agree with their beliefs. Therefore, most ideas were still based on the Church or superstition. There was a huge turning point in the Industrial Revolution as towns and cities increased in population. The poverty of people living so close to each other in pollution-filled cities meant diseases were quick to spread. Sewage systems could not cope with the huge amounts of people which meant that thousands of people died from diseases caught from contaminated water. In 1848, 60, 000 people died of cholera and Prince Albert was killed by typhoid. The government did nothing to try and improve conditions in the early 19 th century as they had a laissez-faire attitude. An example of this is that there were no regulations about work which meant young children worked as chimney sweeps and women worked in horrible conditions in match factories where they suffered from phossy jaw. By the 20 th century, the government had started to improve conditions in towns and cities with new laws like the Public Health Acts. These improved conditions and meant that serious diseases were caught less often from the towns. However, there were still serious epidemics like Spanish Flu after World War I. Spanish Flu started in the trenches and showed just how quickly disease could spread in difficult conditions like war. The conditions of World War I were the perfect breeding ground for the disease to spread and 280, 000 people died in England alone. People were said to be killed so quickly that they would be fine at breakfast and dead by teatime. Another huge disease of the 20 th century was HIV/AIDS is a viral disease which attacks the immune system and around 100, 000 people in the UK have the disease. However, around 25% of people do not know they have AIDS so it is very hard to stop. It is caused by having unprotected sex with someone who has AIDS, sharing contaminated needles or through contaminated blood transfusions. The causes of disease and illness have changed over time. During the medieval time period, disease was largely caused by the environment and because of a lack of knowledge about what causes illness. The Industrial Revolution was a huge turning point because of the huge population increase and the large number of deadly diseases that were caused. In the 20 th century, bacterial epidemics have been rare but viral diseases like AIDS show that the government still struggles to deal with epidemics today.