What better medical care could you provide to Tudor-era England w/ modern knowledge alone?

Factual Questions
1

I remember seeing *the Tudors * miniseries, where Henry VIII has leg ulcers that the doctors can’t cure. It appears that to cure them, modern doctors would use oxygen chambers and other contemporary technology.

So, if a modern western-medicine trained doctor were to go back in time to Tudor England, or any of Europe in those days, but only took with him the clothes on his back, how much good would he be able to do in terms of medical care?

Would he quickly become the best doctor in Anglia, or would his lack of the technology of the present hamper his ability to heal to the point where he wouldn’t be able to fundamentally change Tudor-era medicine? Or worse, would he be burnt as a witch . . . or catholic spy . . .

2

Well, sterilisation for one thing would be a huge improvement; and then just cultivate some mold for antibiotics (though I’m not exactly sure how hard or easy that might be), and he’d probably be seen as a miracle healer in no time flat.

3

I think the most effective knowledge a modern doctor could provide to sixteenth-century Britain could be summed up in two phrases:

  1. Don't shit where you eat.

  2. Employees must wash hands before returning to work.

Oh, yeah. And bleeding as treatment for anything? Stop that.

4

You could start immunizing people against smallpox a la Edward Jenner, by using the cowpox virus. Elizabeth I almost died of smallpox.

5

It’s be unlikely that a 20th century doctor could create antibiotics and would probably have to rely of existing medicines (though he could, for instance use willow bark).

He certainly could insist on better hygiene and probably could dress wounds so they’re less likely to be infected. He also could deal with that sort of infection by draining and cleaning the wound.

Nutrition would also be useful, though it might be hard to get people to understand that they can eat vegetables.

People did know that shit was bad for their health; they just didn’t understand the mechanism. One of the reasons why Henry traveled around the country was so that people could “clean the drains” – the cesspools, which were designed for storage, but not to break down waste. When the castle was filled with people, they filled up fast.

6

Absolutely sanitation. One of the landmark advances in modern medicine was John Snow’s link between contaminated water and cholera. That was in 1854. Imagine the impact if it had taken place three centuries earlier.

Another big thing, and perfectly doable with the technology of the era, would be vaccinations for smallpox.

7

Impart one piece of information: Bubonic Plague is primarily spread by fleas from rats.

8

Except for hemachromatosis, but our time-traveling doctor probably wouldn’t be able to diagnose that.

The problem with a lot of the doctor’s knowledge would be that it’d depend on people believing him. He might be able to keep himself safe from plague by keeping cats around the house to control the rats, but can he convince enough other people to do likewise to prevent an epidemic? Likewise, could he get modern sanitation systems implemented on a large scale, or get people to wash up regularly?

9

Antiseptics, in particular, antiseptic surgery. He might be able to replicate something similar to the work of Joseph Lister, who promoted use of carbolic acid, derived from benzene. Benzoic acid is also an antiseptic, and benzoin resin, which may be used to produce it, was known to 15th century Europe (it was used in perfumes).

Regarding penicillin - use of moldy bread as a poultice was a folk remedy long before the discovery of penicillin, and probably had some efficacy because of the penicillin in the mold.

10

Cell pathology was unknown (or at least not widely acknowledged) until the mid-19th Century, and it dislodged the Four Bodily Humours as the dominant approach to medicine, which had been in place since ancient times. Just knowing that balancing out the humours will do nothing beneficial for a patient will put you a huge step ahead of the most brilliant minds if the era. Lancing and cleaning abscesses instead of amputating limbs will be a big plus. Bed rest instead of leeches will be another boon to the era. Palliative medicine, widely practiced in the Islamic world at the time, was scoffed at in the West. Doctors were church officials and surgeons were barbers. If you have a Boy Scout-level knowledge of first aid, you will be of greater benefit to any patient of this time or place than any practicing doctor.

11

Addendum concerning antiseptics: looking over the list of antiseptics in wiki, I might suggest that our doctor could also isolate iodine from seaweed using sulphuric acid, known to alchemists as vitriol, long before Elizabethan times. Tincture of iodine is another dandy antiseptic.

12

But cholera didn’t spread to Europe until the early 19th century, with the first pandemic in 1816-1826. It was restricted to India before that. Sanitation would help against other diseases spread via contaminated water, though.

Cook them first, though. It’s going to be at least as bad (probably worse) as going to a country where you shouldn’t drink the tap water today. On my trip to China this summer, I got reminded firsthand that you shouldn’t eat uncooked vegetables in such places. I’m better now, and it really wasn’t so bad as these things go, but I had access to modern antidiarrheal medicines and large amounts of clean (bottled) water, and I could have gotten antibiotics if things had gotten worse. You’d have access to none of those things in Tudor times.

13

In fact, in general, a chemist may be who you actually want to send back. Systematic isolation of many useful chemical compounds happened in the 19th century. In many cases, the actual processes may have been able to have been carried out centuries earlier if they had the knowledge.

14

If you were the MacGyver of medicine, but were limited solely to what technology was available to you in the mid-sixteenth century? (Let’s say cost is little object):
A lot would depend on just how good an amateur chemist you were, and what you could produce given the equipment available to a contemporary alchemist.

If you could locate some coca in the newly discovered New World, and could process it into a rudimentary cocaine, the ability to perform painless dentistry would secure you the patronage of kings and dukes. Similarly, with the ability to produce even makeshift nitrous oxide or diethyl ether, you could perform surgery no one else could.

With some knowledge of oral rehydration, you could drastically cut the fatality rate of dysentery.

Knowing about blood groups and being able to test for compatability would allow for blood transfusions (on a “we have nothing to lose” basis) to suceed at least some of the time.

Knowing that scurvy can be prevented by vitamin-C containing foods might allow the sailors of your country to have a lower mortality rate than those of rival nations. That is, if you could overcome the conservatism that delayed introduction of the practice even after people know scurvy was preventable (“know-it-all landlubbers thinking they can tell a sailor his business”)

Lenses adequate for a microscope were available. These would help in diagnosis, such as the following.

Syphillis could be treated by the drastic remedy of using mercury compounds. A modern appreciation of the toxicity of mercury and being able to microscopically examine seminal fluid for the presence of spirochetes would allow considerably more refined treatment.

15

An OB could easily reduce mortality rates among childbearing women just by making sure that all involved in the birthing washed their hands with hot water.

16

Queen Elizabeth would definitely have been interested in this. Lots of other European nobles and royals probably would, too, as sugar was becoming more readily available for them around this time and not having a good effect on their teeth.

17

This is essentially two questions:

  1. Can a doctor use modern skills without equipment in 16th century England?

  2. Can this person be successful in society?

I think the answer to number one is clearly yes. Just germ theory alone and understanding some basics of antiseptics will save lives. The answer to the second one is more complex. How was this society in handling odd foreigners with crazy ideas? Was this society any kind of meritocracy? An immigrant who can barely speak the language may have zero opportunities for class mobility.

The idea that we can become rich and famous with good ideas and good implementations is really something thats very modern and very recent. Without capitalism, class mobility, social acceptance, etc, its not going to happen. He’ll never get the movie-cliche of an audience with the king or anything. He would most likely be stuck in the ghetto for the rest of his days or sold into slavery. That is, if his body can survive a whole lot of parasites and germs his immune system has never encountered before.

18

I’m going to assume that the physician has a normal med school education, and has miraculously landed in a position where he or she can practise in the past, and further that his or her accomplishments gradually allow greater scope, due to the patronage of the powerful.

Surgery: sterilization and clean operating rooms, as discussed above.

OB/GYN: Prenatal care (stop drinking), clean deliveries, obstetrical forceps and the end of childbed fever

Oncology: Cut early. Cut as far away from the lump as possible.

Radiology: Nothing.

Nuclear Medicine: Nothing

Psychiatry: It’s not demons - just disease. Get patients someplace clean and compassionate. Invent psychology until you have time to invent pharmacology.

Neurology: Same as psychiatry.

Internal Medicine: Mostly you’re gonna have to work on lifestyle, surgery and inventing pharmacology.

Community Medicine: Clean air / water / drainage / sewage / eradication of disease vectors. Invent socialized medicine, statistics and the scientific method while you’re at it.

Genetics: The entire field of genetics is there to be invented, and some efforts encouraging outcrossing would go a long way, not least among the royal families of europe.

Microbiology: If you can encourage the invention of the microscope, as well as the concept of disease being caused by microscopic animalcules, you’ll have done a lot. In the meantime, make people do things because you say so.

Diet: Good luck with this one. That scurvy thing may help our patron and his navy become strong and powerful though.

19

Quoth yabob:

Why make things more complicated than you have to? Alcohol is already a perfectly good antiseptic. And if you’re before the time of the widespread knowledge of distilling, so much the better, since our time traveler can probably set up a still and secure himself financially while he’s working on his medical reputation.

20

Does the average doctor have enough general science background to be able to produce electricity? If so, that’s probably the biggest change that can be made with the technology of the day.