PHAR1101 WEEKS 1–4 UPDATED ACTUAL QUESTIONS AND CORRECT ANSWERS

PHAR1101 WEEKS 1–4 UPDATED ACTUAL QUESTIONS
AND CORRECT ANSWERS

Question:
1. How much do we know about prehistoric medicine/pharmacology?
Answer:
Almost nothing.

Question:
2. List sources of evidence for ancient medicine + examples.
Answer:
•Cave paintings (12000 BCE 'The Sorcerer')
•Bones (7000 year old skull with hole bored in it)
•Tools
•Bog bodies 'icemen' (e.g. Tollund man, 4th century BCE, infested with parasites; Otzi, murdered)

Question:
3. What evidence do we have for prehistoric drug use?
Answer:
No conclusive evidence.

Question:
4. Why is recorded history not reliable?
Answer:
•Fragmented (missing millennia)
•May only refer to noble classes of society
•Only broad generalisations

Question:
5. Did ancient medicine use the scientific method? What did it use?
Answer:
•No
•Used observation, measurement, practical skills and technology (not scientific method)

Question:
6. What is the scientific method?
Answer:
•Observation => questions => hypotheses => testable prediction => gather data (refine/reject) => general
theories

Question:
7. List the strengths of the scientific method.

,Answer:
•Organised discovery
•Prevents repetition
•Encourages correction in face of evidence
•Clear audit trail
•Communicable and replicable results

Question:
8. What was the Hippocratic approach?
Answer:
Based on 'healing power of nature', did not use scientific method,

Question:
9. Describe humoral theory.
Answer:
•Human body thought to contain 4 principle humors matching 4 elements of earth (blood, phlegm, yellow,
black bile)
•Illness caused by imbalance/excess of humor

Question:
10. What was humoral theory's legacy?
Answer:
•Single most enduring idea in Western medicine even though never tested by scientific method
•Those who questioned it were denounced
•Persevered into 18th century

Question:
11. When did medicine become 'scientific'?
Answer:
•We recognise 'science' around early Middle Ages (1200s CE)
•However scientific medicine didn't flourish until 19th century

Question:
12. Rationalism.
Answer:
Acquiring of knowledge through reason rather than ideas.

Question:
13. Inductivism.
Answer:
We observe nature and develop laws which can be tested and confirmed.

Question:
14. Empiricism.
Answer:
Descriptions of things indicate that a phenomenon is testable.

, Question:
15. What are the 3 building blocks of the scientific method?
Answer:
Rationalism, inductivism, empiricism.

Question:
16. Johann Christian Reil.
Answer:
German psychiatrist, called for scientific method approach to modern pharmacology.

Question:
17. How did the Industrial Revolution (18th century) catalyse the transition from guesswork to science?
Answer:
•Scientific equipment (microscopes, moulds etc.)
•Isolation of elements
•Standardised doses
•Mass production of cheap remedies
•Mass advertising
•International community of medical and drug researchers
•Industrial processes accidentally created new drugs - birth of 'Big Pharma'

Question:
18. How do historians measure the success of a drug? What is the limitation to these measures?
Answer:
•Reduction in deaths from disease, number of hospitals closed
•Doesn't capture full picture e.g. quality of life, confounding factors

Question:
19. What was found in the Pozzino shipwreck cargo in Tuscany, 2000 years ago?
Answer:
Doctor's 'medicine chest' containing vials, tablets of zinc/hydrozincite and ingredients such as beeswax,
pine resin and pollen.

Question:
20. What was significant about Bald's Leechbook remedy against MRSA?
Answer:
•In 2015 scientists recreated it and successfully killed methicillin-staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
•But, recipe only worked when followed exactly

Question:
21. Name 5 categories (with examples) of common natural drug sources.
Answer:
•Plants (tobacco, flowers)
•Psychoactive plants (opium poppy, mushrooms)
•Minerals (clay, chalk, mercury)
•Alcohol (beer, spirits, antiseptic properties)
•Other sources (raw honey, animal tissues)