Medicine in Britain, c1900-present: War, Science and the Development of Penicillin - Worksheets, Questions and Revision

12 original exam-style questions - 4 pages of questions with a full mark scheme - free printable PDF.

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This topic is chapter 5 of GCSE History: Medicine in Britain, c1250-present Practice Book 1.

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Medicine in Britain, c1900-present: The NHS, Genetics and Modern Public Health
Medicine in Britain, c1250-present: Change and Continuity in Ideas About the Cause of Disease

1.5 Medicine in Britain, c1900-present: War, Science and the Development of Penicillin

EDEXCEL 1HI0 · about 50 minutes

Total Marks

Name: _______________________________ Date: ____ / ____ / ______

Answer ALL questions. Write in full sentences for Questions 15, 16 and 17. You are advised to spend about 65 minutes on this pack.

Give the year in which the National Health Service was launched in Britain, providing healthcare free at the point of use.

(Total for Question 1 is 1 mark)

Name the government minister, in the Labour government led by Clement Attlee, responsible for founding the NHS.

(Total for Question 2 is 1 mark)

Name the 1942 government report, written by William Beveridge, that identified disease as one of five giant problems the postwar welfare state should tackle.

(Total for Question 3 is 2 marks)

Explain why it took over a decade for penicillin to become a widely available medicine after Alexander Fleming's discovery in 1928.

(Total for Question 4 is 8 marks)

Explain why the National Health Service, launched in 1948, was a significant development in the history of medicine in Britain.

(Total for Question 5 is 8 marks)

'Science and technology have been the most significant factor in improving medical treatment in Britain in the years c1900-present.' How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

(Total for Question 6 is 16 marks)

Name the mould whose antibacterial properties Fleming noticed on a contaminated culture plate in 1928.

(Total for Question 7 is 1 mark)

Name the two Oxford scientists who, working with Norman Heatley, developed a method to extract, purify and test penicillin as a usable drug in the early 1940s.

(Total for Question 8 is 2 marks)

Name the British surgeon who pioneered plastic surgery techniques for facial injuries at a specialist hospital in Sidcup during the First World War.

(Total for Question 9 is 1 mark)

Name the skin-graft technique, keeping a strip of skin partly attached to the body to preserve its blood supply while it heals, developed during the First World War.

(Total for Question 10 is 1 mark)

Name the American army physician who set up an early blood bank on the Western Front in 1917, using a chemical to allow blood to be stored before use.

(Total for Question 11 is 1 mark)

Name the two scientists who, in 1953, published the double helix structure of DNA, building on X-ray diffraction images produced by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins.

(Total for Question 12 is 2 marks)

Mark scheme · 1.5 Medicine in Britain, c1900-present: War, Science and the Development of Penicillin

Question 1

B1 1948
Answer: 1948

Question 2

B1 Aneurin Bevan
Answer: Aneurin Bevan

Question 3

B1 the Beveridge Report
B1 published in 1942, written by William Beveridge
Answer: The Beveridge Report (1942), written by William Beveridge.

Question 4

Level 1 (1-2): Identifies one or two general reasons for the delay, with little or no supporting detail or explanation.
Level 2 (3-4): Identifies and begins to explain one reason, supported by accurate detail.
Level 3 (5-6): Explains two reasons for the delay, each supported by accurate and relevant detail.
Level 4 (7-8): Explains two or more reasons in a well-developed, logically structured way, supported throughout by precise and accurate detail, showing how the reasons connect.
Indicative content:
- Fleming discovered penicillin's antibacterial effect in 1928 by chance, but he lacked the chemistry expertise and resources to extract and purify it into a stable, usable drug, and did not fully follow up his own findings.
- Producing enough pure penicillin was extremely difficult and expensive; it took the specialist chemistry and biological research of Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, and the practical laboratory skills of Norman Heatley, at Oxford in the late 1930s and early 1940s, to work out a method of extracting and purifying usable quantities.
- Testing and scaling up production safely took further time and resources, and Britain's wartime economy, under pressure from the war effort, could not divert enough industrial capacity to mass production, so American pharmaceutical companies took on large-scale manufacture from 1943.
- Government and military priorities during the Second World War, especially the urgent need to treat infected wounds among Allied soldiers before the 1944 D-Day landings, provided the funding and urgency that finally accelerated penicillin from a laboratory discovery into a mass-produced medicine.

Question 5

Level 1 (1-2): Identifies one or two general reasons for the NHS's significance, with little or no supporting detail or explanation.
Level 2 (3-4): Identifies and begins to explain one reason, supported by accurate detail.
Level 3 (5-6): Explains two reasons for the NHS's significance, each supported by accurate and relevant detail.
Level 4 (7-8): Explains two or more reasons in a well-developed, logically structured way, supported throughout by precise and accurate detail, showing how the reasons connect.
Indicative content:
- Before 1948, many people could not afford to see a doctor or pay for hospital treatment, so ability to pay, not medical need, often determined whether someone received care; the NHS provided healthcare free at the point of use for the first time, funded through taxation.
- It followed the 1942 Beveridge Report, which identified disease as one of five giant problems facing postwar Britain, and was created under Health Minister Aneurin Bevan as part of a wider postwar welfare state, showing a new role for government in guaranteeing access to medical care.
- It brought together, for the first time, hospitals, GPs, dentists and other services into one coordinated national system, rather than a patchwork of charity hospitals, private doctors and limited local authority provision.
- It changed who could access modern medical advances such as penicillin, vaccination programmes and surgery; previously these depended heavily on a patient's income, whereas after 1948 they were, in principle, available to everyone.

Question 6

Level 1 (1-4): Shows limited relevant knowledge of medical developments in this period, and offers only a simple, unsupported opinion on the statement.
Level 2 (5-8): Shows some relevant knowledge and identifies relevant factors, but the argument is only partly supported and lacks a developed judgement on how far the statement is accurate.
Level 3 (9-12): Shows good relevant knowledge and explains a range of factors, reaching a supported judgement on how far the statement is accurate, with some links made between factors.
Level 4 (13-16): Shows precise, well-selected knowledge and explains a range of factors in a balanced way, reaching a fully supported and sustained judgement on how far the statement is accurate, with clear analytical links between factors and consistently accurate use of specialist historical terminology.
Indicative content:
- Supporting the statement: the discovery and mass production of penicillin (Fleming, 1928; Florey and Chain, early 1940s) gave doctors, for the first time, an effective treatment against many bacterial infections that had previously often been fatal.
- Supporting the statement: advances such as blood storage and transfusion techniques developed during the First World War, and later the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953, building on the X-ray diffraction work of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, opened the way to a genetic understanding of disease.
- Against the statement: government action was also crucial, most obviously the creation of the NHS in 1948, which changed who could access treatment regardless of the scientific advances available, showing that access, not only invention, determines a treatment's real-world impact.
- Against the statement: war acted as a major spur to medical progress in its own right, for example the urgent wartime need driving the mass production of penicillin and battlefield necessity driving advances in blood transfusion and plastic surgery, so the circumstances that funded and demanded these discoveries mattered as much as the science itself.
- Against the statement: the role of individuals, such as Fleming's chance observation or Bevan's political drive to establish the NHS, also shaped exactly when and how these developments happened, showing that no single factor acted alone.
- A balanced judgement might conclude that scientific and technological discoveries provided the essential medical breakthroughs, but that their impact ultimately depended on other factors, especially government funding and organisation and the pressures of war, working together with the science.

Question 7

B1 Penicillium (accept Penicillium notatum)
Answer: Penicillium

Question 8

B1 Howard Florey
B1 Ernst Chain
Answer: Howard Florey and Ernst Chain

Question 9

B1 Harold Gillies
Answer: Harold Gillies

Question 10

B1 the tubed pedicle (skin) graft
Answer: The tubed pedicle graft

Question 11

B1 Oswald Robertson
Answer: Oswald Robertson

Question 12

B1 James Watson
B1 Francis Crick
Answer: James Watson and Francis Crick

Medicine in Britain, c1900-present: War, Science and the Development of Penicillin - Worksheets, Questions and Revision

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