General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) History Syllabus

History syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for History in General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Medicine and Health Through Time

   4 topics

   • Medieval medicine
     • The four humours and supernatural beliefs
     • Role of the Church
   • Renaissance breakthroughs
     • Vesalius, Harvey and anatomy
     • The printing press and challenge to Galen
   • Industrial revolution in medicine
     • Germ theory: Pasteur and Koch
     • Vaccination and anaesthetics
   • Modern medicine
     • Penicillin and antibiotics
     • The NHS and modern treatments
2. 2

   Germany 1918-1939

   4 topics

   • The Weimar Republic
     • Impact of the Treaty of Versailles
     • Economic crises and recovery
   • Hitler's rise to power
     • Early Nazi Party and the Munich Putsch
     • The Depression and 1933 appointment
   • Nazi dictatorship
     • Consolidation of power and terror
     • Propaganda and censorship
   • Life in Nazi Germany
     • Youth, women and work
     • Persecution of minorities
3. 3

   Elizabethan England 1558-1603

   4 topics

   • Government and society
     • Elizabeth's court and Parliament
     • Social hierarchy
   • Religious settlement
     • The Settlement of 1559
     • Catholic and Puritan challenges
   • Mary, Queen of Scots and plots
     • The threat from Mary
     • Catholic plots
   • Exploration and the Spanish Armada
     • Voyages and the New World
     • The Armada of 1588
4. 4

   The Cold War and International Relations

   3 topics

   • Origins of the Cold War
     • Yalta and Potsdam conferences
     • The Iron Curtain and containment
   • Cold War crises
     • Berlin Blockade and Wall
     • Cuban Missile Crisis
     • Prague Spring
   • End of the Cold War
     • Detente and Reagan
     • Collapse of the Soviet bloc
5. 5

   Historical Skills and the Historic Environment

   3 topics

   • Source analysis
     • Utility, reliability and provenance
     • Cross-referencing sources
   • Interpretations
     • Comparing and evaluating historians
     • Reasons for differing views
   • The historic environment
     • Site-specific study
     • Linking a site to wider context

History flashcards for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE)

25 of 58 cards from the History deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. In medieval medicine, what was the dominant theory used to explain illness, and who originated it?

   The Theory of the Four Humours, originated by Hippocrates and developed by Galen. Illness was thought to result from an imbalance of the four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.

2. Name the four humours and the bodily fluids/elements they corresponded to in medieval medicine.

   Blood (air), phlegm (water), yellow bile (fire) and black bile (earth). Health required these four to be in balance.

3. What was Galen's 'Theory of Opposites' and how was it used to treat patients?

   It treated an excess of one humour with its opposite — e.g. a fever (too much hot blood) treated with something cold like a cucumber, or bloodletting to remove excess blood.

4. Why did the Christian Church help preserve but also hold back medical progress in the Middle Ages?

   The Church preserved Galen's works (his ideas fitted belief in one God) and ran hospitals, but it banned dissection and discouraged challenging Galen, so understanding of anatomy stagnated.

5. What did medieval people commonly believe caused the Black Death (1348), and name two 'treatments' they used?

   They blamed God's punishment, 'miasma' (bad air), and astrology. Treatments included prayer, flagellation (whipping), carrying herbs/posies, and lighting fires to clear the air — none of which worked.

6. During the Renaissance, what did Andreas Vesalius achieve and in which 1543 book?

   Vesalius improved anatomical knowledge through dissection and corrected Galen's errors (e.g. the human jaw is one bone, not two). His book was 'On the Fabric of the Human Body' (1543).

7. What was William Harvey's key discovery (1628) and how did it challenge Galen?

   Harvey proved that blood circulates around the body, pumped by the heart, and is not constantly made by the liver as Galen claimed. This overturned a 1,400-year-old belief.

8. What was Ambroise Paré's contribution to Renaissance surgery?

   Paré, a French battlefield surgeon, replaced cauterising wounds with hot oil by using a soothing ointment (egg yolk, rose oil, turpentine), and used ligatures (threads) to tie off arteries instead of burning them.

9. Why did the discoveries of Vesalius and Harvey have limited immediate impact on patient treatment?

   They improved understanding of anatomy and physiology but did not produce new cures; doctors still could not treat diseases any better, and many continued to rely on the four humours.

10. What was Edward Jenner's 1796 breakthrough and how did vaccination work?

    Jenner developed vaccination against smallpox. He observed milkmaids who caught cowpox did not get smallpox, then infected a boy (James Phipps) with cowpox, which made him immune to smallpox.

11. State Louis Pasteur's Germ Theory (1861) and why it was revolutionary.

    Germ Theory states that microbes (germs) in the air cause disease and decay — disproving 'spontaneous generation' (the idea germs were produced by decay). It gave a true cause of disease for the first time.

12. What did Robert Koch add to Pasteur's Germ Theory?

    Koch identified the specific microbes that cause specific diseases (e.g. anthrax, tuberculosis, cholera) and developed methods to stain and grow bacteria, founding microbiology.

13. How did the discovery of anaesthetics progress in the 19th century? Name two key anaesthetics.

    Anaesthetics made painless surgery possible: nitrous oxide (laughing gas), ether (used by Robert Liston), and chloroform (introduced by James Simpson, 1847, and used by Queen Victoria in childbirth).

14. What was Joseph Lister's contribution to surgery and what substance did he use?

    Lister introduced antiseptic surgery in 1865 using carbolic acid to kill germs on wounds, instruments and in the air, dramatically reducing deaths from infection after operations.

15. What were the public health improvements brought by the 1875 Public Health Act in Britain?

    The 1875 Public Health Act forced local councils to provide clean water, proper sewers and drainage, and to appoint Medical Officers of Health — a shift from laissez-faire to government responsibility.

16. What was the significance of John Snow and the 1854 Broad Street pump?

    John Snow proved cholera was spread by contaminated water (not miasma) by mapping cases around the Broad Street pump in London and removing its handle, halting the outbreak.

17. In modern medicine, who discovered penicillin and how, and who developed it into a usable drug?

    Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin (the first antibiotic) by accident in 1928 from mould. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain developed and mass-produced it during WWII.

18. What was the significance of the discovery of DNA's structure in 1953?

    Crick and Watson (using Rosalind Franklin's X-ray images) discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, leading to genetic understanding of inherited disease and later the Human Genome Project.

19. When and why was the NHS established, and who was its key champion?

    The National Health Service was established in 1948, championed by Aneurin (Nye) Bevan, to provide healthcare free at the point of use for all, funded by taxation, following the 1942 Beveridge Report.

20. What were the dates and terms of the Weimar Republic's creation after WWI?

    The Weimar Republic was founded in 1919 after the Kaiser abdicated (Nov 1918) and Germany signed the armistice. Its democratic constitution was drawn up in the town of Weimar.

21. Why was the Treaty of Versailles (1919) hated in Weimar Germany? Give three terms.

    Terms (the 'Diktat'): War Guilt clause (Article 231), reparations of £6.6 billion, army limited to 100,000 men, loss of land (e.g. Alsace-Lorraine, Saar, colonies). Germans called signers the 'November Criminals' who 'stabbed Germany in the back'.

22. What caused the 1923 hyperinflation crisis in Weimar Germany?

    After Germany failed to pay reparations, France occupied the Ruhr (Jan 1923). The government printed money to pay striking workers ('passive resistance'), causing money to become worthless — a loaf of bread cost billions of marks.

23. What was the Munich (Beer Hall) Putsch of 1923 and its outcome for Hitler?

    Hitler and the Nazis attempted to seize power in Munich; it failed and 16 Nazis were killed. Hitler was jailed (served 9 months), wrote 'Mein Kampf', and decided to gain power legally through elections.

24. Who was Gustav Stresemann and what did he achieve in the 'Golden Years' (1924-1929)?

    Stresemann stabilised Weimar: introduced the Rentenmark to end hyperinflation, negotiated the Dawes Plan (1924) and Young Plan (1929) to ease reparations, the Locarno Pact (1925), and joined the League of Nations (1926).

25. How did the Wall Street Crash (1929) help Hitler's rise to power?

    The Crash ended US loans (Dawes Plan), causing the Depression and mass unemployment (6 million by 1932). Desperate Germans turned to extremist parties; the Nazi vote soared, becoming the largest party in the Reichstag in 1932.

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