Paper 1 — Thematic: Medicine in Britain, c1250–present
Edexcel GCSE History revision on Paper 1 — Thematic: Medicine in Britain, c1250–present. Aligned to the Pearson Edexcel GCSE History 1HI0 specification. This bank has 80 practice questions on this topic.
Sample questions (3 of 80)
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Question 1
Galen's 'Theory of the Four Humours' was the main medical theory until challenged in which century?
- A) 13th
- B) 16th-17th
- C) 19th
- D) 20th
Show answer
Answer: 16th-17th
Galen (c.130-210 AD) argued the body had four humours (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile) that needed balancing. His ideas dominated medicine for 1,400+ years — partly because the Church endorsed them. Vesalius corrected Galen's anatomy (1543) and Harvey proved the heart pumps blood in a circuit (1628).
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Question 2
Edward Jenner is best known for developing the first vaccine against which disease?
- A) Bubonic plague
- B) Smallpox
- C) Tuberculosis
- D) Cholera
Show answer
Answer: Smallpox
Jenner noticed milkmaids who had caught the mild cowpox didn't get smallpox. In 1796 he deliberately infected a boy with cowpox, then exposed him to smallpox — and he survived. The word 'vaccine' comes from vacca = Latin for cow. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980 — the only human disease ever to be.
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Question 3
During the medieval Black Death (1348-50), people commonly believed it was caused by...
- A) Bacteria
- B) Bad smells, sin, and the alignment of planets
- C) Cold weather
- D) Rats
Show answer
Answer: Bad smells, sin, and the alignment of planets
Treatments included: praying, flagellation (self-whipping), bleeding, fleeing the city. The actual cause — Yersinia pestis bacteria spread by fleas on rats — wasn't identified until 1894. ~1/3 of Europe's population died in the first wave. Population didn't recover until ~1500.
Want to test yourself on the remaining cards for this topic?
77 more questions on Paper 1 — Thematic: Medicine in Britain, c1250–present — plus mistakes tracking and spaced repetition across the whole History spec.
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