on this cheat sheet
Everything on the GCSE History Hospitals, Surgery and John Hunter, c1700-1830s poster is written out below, section by section. Use it to search the sheet, copy parts into your own notes, or check a fact quickly.
Hospitals start to cure, and surgery becomes a profession
Hospitals shifted from offering religious care to actively treating patients, and surgery began to turn from a low trade into a respected, scientific profession.
Hospitals shift to treatment
- Medieval hospitals had offered mainly rest, food and prayer, but in the 1700s new hospitals set out to diagnose and cure.
- The change was driven by the Enlightenment's more scientific, secular outlook and by the Industrial Revolution, which packed people into cities and raised the demand for treatment.
- Voluntary hospitals, paid for by wealthy donors, gave free treatment to the poor, though they took only the "deserving poor" and turned away infectious cases, and Guy's Hospital in London opened this way in 1721.
- Dispensaries, from the 1720s, handed out medicines and advice to people who did not need a hospital bed.
Training moves to the bedside
- Doctors were increasingly trained inside hospitals rather than only from books.
- In teaching hospitals, students followed experienced doctors on ward rounds and learned at the patient's bedside.
- Anatomy theatres let students watch and take part in dissections, giving a far better knowledge of the body, though a legal supply of corpses to dissect only came with the Anatomy Act of 1832.
Surgery becomes a profession
- Surgery had been a low-status trade done by barber-surgeons, but it now grew into a respected profession.
- The Company of Surgeons was set up in 1745, separating surgeons from barbers for the first time.
- It became the Royal College of Surgeons in 1800, which set examinations and licensed surgeons, shutting out the untrained.
John Hunter, scientific surgeon
- John Hunter turned surgery into a science by insisting on experiment, observation and careful recording rather than tradition.
- He built a collection of over 14,000 specimens to teach anatomy and disease, which became the basis of the Hunterian Museum.
- As surgeon at St George's Hospital from 1768 he trained many leading surgeons, including Edward Jenner.
- He treated aneurysms, dangerous swellings in an artery, by tying off the vessel above the swelling rather than amputating the limb, a less drastic method drawn from his experiments on blood supply.
- He worked before germs were understood, so infection still limited what surgery could safely attempt.