Medicine Through TimeTopic Summary
Topic Summary: The Great Plague 1665
Part of The Great Plague — GCSE History
This topic summary covers Topic Summary: The Great Plague 1665 within The Great Plague for GCSE History. Revise The Great Plague in Medicine Through Time for GCSE History with 8 exam-style questions and 5 flashcards. This topic appears less often, but it can still be a useful differentiator on mixed-topic papers. It is section 13 of 13 in this topic. Use this topic summary to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Topic position
Section 13 of 13
Practice
8 questions
Recall
5 flashcards
Topic Summary: The Great Plague 1665
Key Terms
- Great Plague: 1665 London epidemic — ~100,000 deaths (15-20% of city)
- Bills of Mortality: Weekly death counts by parish — first systematic disease tracking
- Plague orders: Lord Mayor's official measures: quarantine, red crosses, watchmen
- Searchers: Women employed to examine bodies and record cause of death
- Quarantine: 40-day lockdown of infected houses — the most effective measure (for wrong reasons)
Key Dates
- 1665: Great Plague strikes London; peak September — 7,000+ deaths/week
- 1666: Great Fire of London — possibly contributed to end of plague
- Compare: 1348 Black Death — same theories, less organised government response
- Compare: 1861 Germ theory — finally explains real cause of plague (200 years later)
Key Continuities (same as 1348)
- Miasma theory — still the dominant explanation
- Bleeding and purging — still used as treatments
- Prayer and religious responses — still widely practised
- Real cause (rat fleas, bacteria) — still unknown
Key Changes (different from 1348)
- Bills of Mortality — weekly systematic death recording by parish
- Organised quarantine — 40-day lockdown, red crosses, watchmen
- Plague orders — Lord Mayor issued official public health measures
- Searchers employed — first attempt to systematically record cause of death
- Lower proportional death toll: 15-20% (London) vs 30-50% (England, 1348)
- TCGT: Theories/Cures unchanged; Government/Tracking improved
Cross-Topic Links
- → Topic 34 (Black Death 1348): Comparing 1348 and 1665 is a core AQA skill — same wrong theories persisted, but 1665 shows improved government organisation despite no advance in understanding.
- → Topic 42 (Public Health): The Great Plague's Bills of Mortality and plague orders are an early form of organised public health — compare with Chadwick's 1842 report and Snow's 1854 investigation as later steps in the same tradition.
- → Topic 40 (Germ Theory): Miasma theory still dominated in 1665 — germ theory was 200 years away; understanding this gap shows the slow pace of explanatory change even as practical measures improved.
- → Topic 36 (Renaissance): Despite Vesalius (1543) and Harvey (1628), the Great Plague shows that new scientific ideas had not yet changed popular or official explanations of epidemic disease.
- → Unit 5 Topics 53-54 (Restoration England): The Great Plague and Great Fire (1666) both struck Restoration London — compare how authorities responded to each crisis under Charles II.