Paper 2 Section A/A: Britain: Health and the people:

June 2024

Q1: How useful is Source A to an historian studying the Welfare State?

Explain your answer using Source A and your contextual knowledge.

Answer:

In analysing and evaluating sources, students will draw on their contextual example, the context of the time in which the source was created, place, purpose and audience). For example, the cartoon is useful because it shows the government’s attitude to the Beveridge Report in 1942. Churchill has turned his back on the Report in the cartoon and the country looks at him for a positive response to it because it was so popular. The Labour Party promised to follow Beveridge’s advice but the Conservative Party, led by Churchill, refused to make that promise. After the war, the Labour Party won the election easily and brought in the Welfare State with the NHS. Churchill was replaced as Prime Minister. enquiry point and the broader context of the thematic study. This may evaluate For example, the source is useful because it shows that lots of people are looking at and expecting the government to pay attention to the Beveridge Report but the government has turned its back on the Report and is thinking about it. The Beveridge Report was a bestseller selling over a hundred thousand copies in its first month of publication. It dealt with the ‘Five Giants’ ruining people’s lives in Britain. If followed, Beveridge’s Report would go a long way to deal with the ‘Five Giants’, and tackle poverty and disease by founding the Welfare State in Britain. For example, the source is useful because it shows that many people thought that the Beveridge Report was a good thing because it suggested ways to improve the quality of British life from ‘the cradle to the grave’. It was a good way to get rid of the things like disease and squalor and want which were ruining people’s lives. Answers may show understanding/support for the source, but the case is made by assertion/basic inference For example, the source is useful because it shows squalor, want, disease, ignorance, and idleness are going to be blown up by the Beveridge Report.

Q2: Explain the significance of the Renaissance for medicine in Britain.

Answer:

explaining the relationship between aspects of significance, for example over For example, significance of the Renaissance for medicine in Britain was that it showed the importance of printing to spread ideas. The ideas of being critical and not accepting old ideas without evidence were important for the work of Vesalius, Paré and Harvey. They all produced books which spread their ideas and discoveries to Britain. They all opened the way for further discoveries and a scientific approach to medical progress. For example, the Renaissance was significant because the discoveries of people like Paré in France about the treatment of amputations and wounds improved the treatment in Britain. Paré’s work was admired by William Clowes, surgeon to Queen Elizabeth I and written about in his book, ‘Proved Practice’, For example, the significance of the Renaissance for medicine in Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was to base learning on a much more scientific approach to studying the human body. Vesalius’s book, ‘The Fabric of the Human Body’ was published in 1543 and soon copied. The ‘Compendiosa’, compiled by Geminus, used all of Vesalius’s drawings and it became a manual for barber surgeons in London. For example, in the Renaissance William Harvey discovered that the blood circulated. He dissected and studied how the heart worked in cold-blooded animals. He pumped blood the wrong way through valves in the veins and used mathematics to prove that Galen was wrong to say it was a fuel for the For example, in the Renaissance Vesalius did careful observations and dissections and proved that Galen had dissected many animals.

Q3: Explain two ways in which plague in the Middle Ages and the Cholera epidemics of

the 19th century were similar.

Answer:

throughout the four levels of the mark scheme. For example, both epidemics were similar because both the Black Death and Cholera had consequences for society and those in power. In the late medieval period, the landowning classes had to concede better wages to the labouring class and more freedom because their manual work was in demand. In the 19th century the aristocracy and middle classes had to improve public health for the working class through legislation. For example, they were similar because both the Black Death and Cholera led to changes in the lives of those people who survived it. Cholera drew attention to the conditions in which many lived and in the Middle Ages the wages of labourers increased in the decades following the Black Death. For example, they were similar because in both times and epidemics people did not know the real cause of the disease and had many theories. The Black Death was thought to be a punishment from God or the result of Jewish poisoning. Cholera was either caused by poison in the air – miasma or contagion – spread by touch. None of these theories were correct. for example, one of the identified similarities. For example, no one knew what caused either epidemic. In Medieval times people thought that plague was a punishment from God, in the 19th century people thought that Cholera was in the air. For example, in the Plague and the Cholera thousands of people died. should demonstrate their ability to construct and develop a sustained line of reasoning which is coherent, relevant, substantiated and logically structured.

Q4: Has the role of the individual been the main factor in understanding the causes of

disease in Britain? Explain your answer with reference to the role of the individual and other factors. Use a range of examples from across your study of Health and the people: c1000 to the present day. [SPaG 4 marks] and AQA will be happy to rectify any omissions of acknowledgements. If you have any queries please contact the Copyright Team.

Answer:

For example, in the Middle Ages religion controlled the Universities where the physicians were taught and Christianity approved of the explanations of disease given by the Greeks and Romans. A lot of common everyday medicine for those who could not afford physicians was based upon trial and error. Many things that worked were not understood, such as Jenner’s use of cowpox to prevent smallpox in 1798. The role of the individual is vital and Pasteur made the important proof that germs did not result from but caused disease. Other people, like Lister and Tindall, proved that the germs did not occur spontaneously. Other individuals, like Robert Koch, then used germ theory to explain human disease. However, all of these men were scientists using scientific methods that could be proven and repeated. In the twentieth century Science has improved our knowledge of DNA and the inherited causes of disease. So, individuals like Pasteur or Crick and Watson can be singled out but they work within the field of science which is paid for by Governments or Answers may suggest that one factor has greater merit. related, for example, to the identified consequences. For example, the causes of disease were for hundreds of years explained by religion using the knowledge of ancient writers like Hippocrates and Galen. The Christian church believed in the power of prayer and explained disease as an imbalance in the 4 humours. If the humours were not balanced then disease resulted and it was the physician’s job to rebalance them by, for example, bloodletting or changes to diet. Religion also recognised the work of Islamic doctors to improve the understanding of disease such as Al-Razi who distinguished between measles and smallpox for the first time. For example, individuals like Louis Pasteur were very important in proving that germs caused disease rather than were the result of it. Pasteur did a famous experiment with a swan-necked flask to prove that germs in the air were responsible for disease. In Britain, Joseph Lister proved that Pasteur’s work was right by applying germ theory to his surgical operations which he published in 1867. Men like Professor Lionel Beale, who investigated the cattle plague of 1866, helped show that germs were the cause of disease and John Tyndale brought Pasteur and Lister’s work together to make it difficult to defend the spontaneous generation theory. For example, over time different factors have been important to explain the cause of disease. In the Middle Ages, religion explained the cause of disease by repeating ancient Greek ideas that an imbalance in the humours was responsible for illness. In the early nineteenth century, governments believed that disease and illness were caused by poisons in the air. In the 20th century, we understand the causes of disease because Science and Technology explains it and gives us chemicals to kill germs. For example, students may offer a basic explanation stating that Louis Pasteur proved the Germ Theory. This theory said that germs cause disease and are not the result of disease. Students may provide a basic explanation of a different factor, such as stating that religion explained disease in the Middle Ages. • The learner’s achievement in SPaG does not reach the threshold