1. Dave Martin History 140 Tuesday, January 18, 2011
HISTORY 140 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS
Personal Research
What History Interests Me
Name: Dave Martin
Topic: 15th and 16th century explorers: Vasco da Gama and his first voyage
Points: 5
Source: Wikipedia, for starters
What is the most interesting topic in history that interests you at this moment? Anything. Cultural, Economic,
Political, fashion, food, diseases, anything.
List it above and then start researching it on Wikipedia, for discussion in class (groups) Thursday.
Outline what you learn on this sheet of paper (attach more if necessary, or if you wish to type it up).
Vasco da Gama and his first voyage
Age of Discovery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama finally achieved the dream of
reaching India by sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with "Asia". Soon, the Portuguese sailed
further eastward, to the valuable “spice islands” in 1512, landing in China one year later.”
What really fascinates me about these guys; they had balls. They had incredible courage, persistence and
arrogance. Vasco da Gama and his brother Paulo da Gama came from well to do families. They were
connected. Da Gama could have stayed at home, enjoyed a tranquil life raising grapes and making wine.
He could have lived the easy life. He could have spent his time making little da Gama’s and getting fat.
Instead he chose to explore, to conquer.
And conquer the world they did. Make no mistake; these guys were out to take over new land, establish
trade routes and secure new territories. They wanted control of the world, or at least as much as they could
secure for themselves. The overland trade routes (the Silk Road) were controlled by the Venetians. Spices
ruled the world. No refrigeration meant preservation by salt and spices. Everyone was looking for a new
way to India and China to secure those new trade routes.
And they didn’t go unprotected. They took the latest technology in navigation, maps, arms and medicine.
Portugal's most experienced navigators, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro Escobar, João de Coimbra, and
Afonso Gonçalves guided the ships. Five years after Columbus and nine years after Bartolomeu Dias, da
Gama left Lisbon for India. With no Suez Canal they had to sail around Africa and brave the passage of
The Cape of Good Hope.

2. Dave Martin History 140 Tuesday, January 18, 2011
This voyage was longer than going around the equator, greater than 25000 miles. Discovered in 1488 by
Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias and originally called the cape Cabo das Tormentas or "Cape of
Tempests", “where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet at the point where the warm-water Agulhas
current meets the cold-water Benguela current and turns back on itself – a point that fluctuates between
Cape Agulhas and Cape Point, about one kilometer east of the Cape of Good Hope”. It’s a bloody
washing machine of death.
Just look at the pictures below. They tell the story of what a passage through the Cabo das Tormentas is
like. And they didn’t know about scurvy yet. These guys found out the hard way. Fresh vegetables, fresh
fruit, fresh meat, those things lasted a few weeks at best. The English invented GROG years later to
keep the sailors docile and inline. The Portuguese hadn’t figured that out yet.
Medicine of the day didn’t know about germs, bacteria or general hygiene. They defecated at the Head
of the Ship and used a knotted rope to clean themselves. Dr. Rush's Bilious Pills or Rush’s
THUNDERCLAPPERS won’t be invented for three hundred years. Typhus, Diphtheria, Smallpox and
Measles became inexplicably more common in the 16th century. I say inexplicably as a quote from
January 1, 2010 by Manish Bhatia History of Medicine, but when you look at how they lived and the
cures of the day, I don’t find it inexplicable at all. Dried ground boar penis and pigeon dung?
So with a fleet of four ships and a crew of 170 men, da Gama left Lisbon on the 8th of July, 1497. Only
two ships and 55 crew members returned. That’s 32% of the crew returned, 68% perished, pretty poor
odds. What possibly could have motivated these people to embark on any of these voyages?
Certainly, the leaders of the expedition would receive fame and fortune for themselves and prestige for
their families. But what about the ordinary sailors who toiled and died. What could they possibly have
thought they would receive at voyages end that would have motivated them to take such a risk? They
faced disease, drowning, starvation, injury, brutality and a thousand other threats to life and limb.
Today, we live in such a protected environment it’s difficult to understand how these people lived, how
they thought. Their world is so alien to ours; we take for granted we’ll have a doctor and medicine when
we get sick. We don’t expect to die when we go to work. We fly to the ends of the earth in a matter of
hours when 16th century man seldom existed beyond 15 miles of his birth place.
I am captivated imaging what their lives were like, how they dealt with immense difficulties and survived
such odds.
Dave Martin
History 140

3. Dave Martin History 140 Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Wikipedia:
Vasco da Gama - First voyage
 On 8 July 1497 Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. The
distance traveled in the journey around Africa to India and back was greater than around the
equator.[6][7] The navigators included Portugal's most experienced, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro
Escobar, João de Coimbra, and Afonso Gonçalves. It is not known for certain how many people
were in each ship's crew but approximately 55 returned, and two ships were lost. Two of the
vessels were as naus or newly built for the voyage, possibly a caravel and a supply boat.[6] The
four ships were:
 The São Gabriel, commanded by Vasco da Gama; a carrack of 178 tons, length 27 m, width 8.5
m, draft 2.3 m, sails of 372 m²
 The São Rafael, whose commander was his brother Paulo da Gama; similar dimensions to the São
Gabriel
 The caravel Berrio, slightly smaller than the former two (later re-named São Miguel), commanded
by Nicolau Coelho
 A storage ship of unknown name, commanded by Gonçalo Nunes, later lost near the Bay of São
Brás, along the east coast of Africa[3]
 The Cape of Good Hope (Afrikaans: Kaap die Goeie Hoop, Dutch: Kaap de Goede Hoop
(help·info),
Portuguese: Cabo da Boa Esperança) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the
Cape Peninsula, South Africa. There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the
southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic
and Indian Oceans. In fact, the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres (90 mi)
to the east-southeast. The Atlantic and Indian oceans meet at the point where the warm-water
Agulhas current meets the cold-water Benguela current and turns back on itself – a point that
fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point, about one kilometre east of the Cape of Good
Hope.
 When following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, however, the Cape of
Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus the
first rounding of the cape in 1488 by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias was a milestone in the
attempts by the Portuguese to establish direct trade relations with the Far East. Dias called the
cape Cabo das Tormentas. "Cape of Tempests" was the original name of the "Cape of Good
Hope." (source: Englishwoman In America 1848 by Sarah Mytton Maury p. 33)
 Benjamin Rush (January 4, 1746 [O.S. December 24, 1745] – April 19, 1813) was a Founding Father
of the United States. Rush lived in the state of Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator,
humanitarian and a Universalist,[1] as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle,
Pennsylvania.
 Rush was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and attended the Continental Congress.
He was also a staunch opponent of Gen. George Washington and worked tirelessly to have him
removed as the Commander-In-Chief of the Continental Army.[2] Later in life, he became a
professor of medical theory and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite having
a wide influence on the development of American government, he is not as widely known as many

4. Dave Martin History 140 Tuesday, January 18, 2011
of his American contemporaries. Rush was also an early opponent of slavery and capital
punishment.
 In 1803, Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis to Philadelphia to prepare for the Lewis and
Clark Expedition under the tutelage of Rush, who taught Lewis about frontier illnesses and the
performance of bloodletting. Rush provided the corps with a medical kit that included:
 Turkish opium for nervousness
 emetics to induce vomiting
 medicinal wine
 fifty dozen of Dr. Rush's Bilious Pills, laxatives containing more than 50% mercury, which the corps called
"thunderclappers". Their meat-rich diet and lack of clean water during the expedition gave the men cause to use them
frequently. Though their efficacy is questionable, their high mercury content provided an excellent tracer by which
archaeologists have been able to track the corps' actual route to the Pacific.
Medicine in the 15th – 16th Century
http://hpathy.com/history-of-medicine/medicine-in-the-15th-16th-century/
January 1, 2010 by Manish Bhatia
History of Medicine
Print This Page | Leave a Comment
 Other epidemic diseases became inexplicably more common in the sixteenth century, among them
typhus, diphtheria, smallpox, and measles. In the north of Europe and among sailors, scurvy
also increased in frequency, though neither cause nor cure was suggested.
 Epidemic diseases of the sixteenth century were quite different from those of the preceding
century. The sweating sickness, leprosy, and epidemic chorea had almost ceased to exist. Syphilis,
though less virulent, continued to be common, and the favored treatment was with mercury or
guaiac. Gonorrhea became even more common. These two venereal diseases were directly
responsible for the suppression of communal baths, which had been especially popular in the
German. In many areas this meant a loss of the only convenient means of personal hygiene, since
adequate water was still generally unavailable to most of the population, at least in amounts
sufficient for daily bathing or waste removal.
 Hospitals continued to be established and supported by municipalities. As leprosy became
increasingly rare, most of the thousands of leprosaria closed. In their place, however, institutions
were increasingly built for the ―lunatic‖ and the poor, who had been displaced from their feudal
position without being made a part of the more urbanized society in which they lived. ―Witch
hunting‖ also grew by leaps and bounds.
 Many new universities were founded in the sixteenth century, especially in Germany and in
central and eastern Europe. In the medical schools, the mainstays remained Avicenna’s Canon,
Galen’s Ars parva, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the works of Dioscorides. In 1543,
Giambattista da Monte, or Montanus, (1498-1552) revived the Hippocratic form of bedside

5. Dave Martin History 140 Tuesday, January 18, 2011
teaching at Padua. Though this was to lapse after 1551, it was later revived by his students
Albertinon Bottoni and Marco degli Oddi. But this change was minor relative to the revolutions
going on in the study of botany and anatomy, changes so important in the later development of the
history of medicine that the next chapter will be devoted to them.
 The Methods in Practice
 Though it was the age of reason, there was not much change in the practice of medicine. It was
still believed that God implanted the soul in the embryo forty days after conception. The soul
controlled growth and nutrition, sensation and motion, and all rational activity. There were other
weird ideas like – the liver created blood, which was used by the brain to create invisible nervous
spirits which flowed through the nervous system and were vectors of sensation and
motion. Medical schools still taught the Canon of Medicine written by Avicenna, a Persian doctor,
in 1030 AD and the works of Galen, a Greek physician whose views had been the standard for
more than a thousand. Human health was believed to require equilibrium between the four main
bodily fluids, or humors — blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Each humor was built up
from the four elements and displayed two of the four primary qualities: hot, cold, wet, and dry.
 Doctors were reluctant to trust their own direct observations whenever they conflicted with ancient
wisdom. Out of religious concern for the sanctity of the human body, dissections were still chiefly
restricted to animals, and strict laws prohibited the practice. Dogs and pigs provided most of the
raw material for study. By the mid 16th century, medical faculties were reluctantly beginning to
adopt the study of corpses, mostly those of executed criminals. There were never enough, and
bright medical students, undeterred by fear of punishment, often took matters into their own
hands. By night those who could not afford the services of grave-robbers wielded a shovel
themselves, digging up fresh corpses for clandestine study.
 The Importance of Excreta
 Most physicians rarely touched a patient, save for taking a pulse or checking a fever, relying
instead upon the examination of excreta in order to render a diagnosis and prescribe treatment.
Samples were probed for consistency, odor, and shade. Urine was swirled, sniffed, and held up to
the light. An accomplished physician could identify more than a score of different colors and
densities, and describe the significance of each. There were five shades of yellow, four of red, and
five of green (from pistachio to rainbow to verdigris to emerald to leek). There were two shades
near black; one translucent; and another the white of milk or parchment, each shade carrying a
specific implication. There were infinite subtleties. Urine might smell fetid, sweet, or putrid, and
display variations due to sex, age, and mental state. The liquid might be oleaginous, or ruddy, or
resemble raw meat washings. It might remind one of poor wine or chick-pea water. It might be
thick or thin, turbid or clear, musty or semen-like. Even the sediment could be broken into ten
distinct types, from flaky to fleshy to mucoid. To the seasoned eye and nose, such nuances might
indicate dispersion of vitality, the presence of an atrabilious humour, deficient digestive power,
or—when white or slightly reddish—even herald the advent of dropsy.
 Humors and Vapors
 Doctors consulted not only medical texts but also books on astrology and numbers–and, of course,
the Bible. Hippocrates’ Epidemics was essential in interpreting the length of time between
significant stages of disease, which could help predict the outcome. Every effort would be
dedicated to striking the proper balance between the all-important humors—hot and dry, cold and
moist—that kept the body well, or, when out of balance, made it ill.
 After making a diagnosis, the doctor would prescribe medication, diet, or surgery. Patients were
cautioned not to eat fruit after salad, the mixture of which could overload one’s humours with
deadly results. Strenuous sex must be avoided, for it might induce seizures. Apothecaries prepared
purgatives for syphilis, emetics for poison, and tinctures of lead and mercury to cure the vapors,
those exhalations of the liver and stomach that produced hysteria and depression.

6. Dave Martin History 140 Tuesday, January 18, 2011
 Surgery
 Clinical surgery during the Renaissance also owed much to France, though almost entirely
because of a single person. Ambroise Pare (1510-90) came from unusual circumstances for one
who was to be so influential in the history of medicine. From the countryside, he was first
apprenticed to a barber and later a wound-dresser at the Hotel-Dieu in Paris. Snubbed by the
College de St. Come, in 1537 he joined the army, where he was to achieve his fame. Giovanni da
Vigo (1460-1525) had written in his Practica copiosa in arte chirurgica (1514) that gunshot
wounds were poisonous, and from the pseudo-Hippocratic doctrine that ―wounds which are not
curable by iron are curable by fire‖, Vigo and others concluded that gunshot wounds should be
first dressed with boiling oil. As Pare later related (in French, for he knew no Latin) in The
Method of Treatment for Wounds Caused by Firearms (1545), one night after treating many
gunshot wounds with boiling oil he ran out of oil although many wounded remained uncared for.
With trepidation, he merely cleansed their wounds and dressed them. The following day, he
rushed to see how poorly those not treated with oil had done. To his amazement, they were
sleeping comfortably and their wounds were healing well. In marked contrast, the soldiers treated
with boiling oil were feverish and in much pain, and their wounds were inflamed. As Pare’s fame
grew and this story was made common knowledge, boiling oil was no longer used on the
battlefield.
 During later campaigns, Pare reintroduced the ancient method of stopping hemorrhage by using
ligatures and abandoned the cauterizing irons. In 1554 Henri II made him a master surgeon (in
spite of his poor education), and in 1561 he published his magnificent treatise A Universal
Surgery, wherein many novel procedures and types of apparatus were presented.
 Anesthesia
 Anesthesia was primitive and most often not used at all. A surgeon’s ability was measured by the
time he took to operate. A patient’s hands and feet were bound to the table while amputations or
other procedures were performed. Various methods were tried. The hammer stroke involved
encasing the patient’s head in a leather helmet that guided the surgeon as he delivered a solid blow
to the skull with a wooden hammer, rendering the patient either unconscious or dead. Narcotic
sponges were soaked in mandrake and belladonna and pressed over the mouth of the patient, who
sucked the solution and either fell into a deep sleep or died. Shock and sepsis killed most of those
who survived the blade.
 Treatments
 Dried ground boar penis was supposed to cure pleurisy, while pigeon dung was helpful for eye
irritations. Grease was applied to burns, and verbena was prescribed for the bite of a rabid dog.
 Blood-letting was the most common treatment for alleviating symptoms of disease and for
releasing malignant humors. One palette of blood—precisely three ounces—was let for pleurisy,
and was drawn from the elbow of the arm opposite the affected side. Two to four palettes were
drawn from the chest to cure peripneumonia. The basilic vein was bled for difficulties of the liver
or spleen, while the temporal vein was tapped for melancholy or migraine. Every malady had its
vein, and every vein its malady.
 Wounds were cleaned and washed with salted water as a first aid measure. Splinting and
traction were employed in the treatment of fractures. Broken skull bones were treated by
elevation of the depressed fragments, while trephining (drilling a hole in skull) was resorted to
when necessary. Wounds involving soft tissues were sutured & severed blood vessels were
ligatured as the tying up of bleeding arteries & veins had begun to replace the cautery as
haemostatic. The wound was then dressed with tow or wool. In injuries of the mouth which
rendered the intake of food difficult or impossible, nourishment administered by means of nutrient
enemas.