GCSE > History > AQA > GCSE History: Medicine and Health in Britain (1000-Present) Topic Summaries > Renaissance medicine > Renaissance cures and prevention
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Summary table
  • Many old methods continued: bloodletting, purging, herbal remedies, regimen sanitatis, and miasma prevention.
  • Medical treatments still depended on what people could afford.
  • Discoveries of new lands brought back new, natural medicines such as lemons and limes to treat scurvy, and opium from Turkey as an anaesthetic. Tobacco from North America was also initially thought to cure disease.
  • Local and national governments started to take more responsibility for public health through urban improvements like paving streets, improving drainage, and removing waste, thus reducing ‘miasma’ and improving air quality.

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