Health and the people- Medieval times

Question 1

What were common practices of medieval doctors?

Answer 1

• bloodletting
• using leeches
• enducing vommiting or diarrhea
• using prayers or following astrology

Question 2

What methods did Medieval doctors use to explain why a patient was ill?

Answer 2

• imbalance in the four humours
• bad air e.g. miasma
• punishment for sin

Question 3

What was it like training to be a doctor in medieval times?

Answer 3

• doctors could leave university without ever seeing a patient
• doctors didn’t have many dissections as the church was against it
• doctors tended to simply debate what they had read of in books rather than in practice

Question 4

Who would commons people go to see in medieval times?

Answer 4

• village wise woman
• barber surgeon
• monestary or parish priest

Question 5

What’s an example of a text used by medieval commons people for treatment (communication)

Answer 5

Gilbert Eagle’s ‘Compendium Medicine’ [1230]

Question 6

What were Christian beliefs of illness in medieval times?

Answer 6

• as Jesus cared for the sick, many Christians cared for the sick
• however, illness was seen as being punishment form God and therefore to cure illness would be a challenge to God

Question 8

What’s an example of a medieval Christian giving their views on illness?

Answer 8

‘To buy drugs or to consult with physicians doesn’t fit with religion,’ Saint Bernard → 12th century Christian monk

Question 9

What did the Church encourage and give an example

Answer 9

Pilgrimmages and miraculous healing- e.g. the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury

Question 10

How many hospitals were there in medieval times (give dates too)

Answer 10

Between 1000 and 1500, 700 hospitals were started in England, almost all run by parishes or monestaries with some only able to treat 12 patients (like Jesus’ 12 disciples)

Question 11

What are examples of medieval people having some idea of contagion?

Answer 11

‘Lazar houses’ set up outside of towns to treat people with leporasy

Question 12

How influential was religion in Medieval times?

Answer 12

• At university, physicians learnt religion first and then medicine as they were run by the church
• churches created many hospitals- between 1000 and 1500, 700 hospitals were started in England
• training was not to discover new ideas but to make old knowledge clear and understandable
• Church’s support of Galen’s ideas because he believed in a single God

Question 13

What’s an example of the Church inhibiting the discovery of new ideas in medieval times?

Answer 13

13th century monk Roger Bacon was arrested for his ideas suggesting that scientific experimentation was important

Question 14

What were practices done by medieval surgeons? (effective and not effective)

Answer 14

• blood letting (not effective)
• amputation- largely ineffective but had been known to cure breast cancer or haemerroids
• drilling a hole into someone with epilepsy’s head to let demons out

Question 15

What were used as anaesthetics in medieval times?

Answer 15

• opioids
• mandrake root
• hemlock

Question 16

How would medieval surgeons prevent bleeding?

Answer 16

cauterisation

Question 17

Who were some examples of pioneers in Medieval surgery?

Answer 17

Hugh and his son Theodoric of Lucca

• Bologna university in Italy
• Wrote a book in 1267 criticising common view that puss was needed for a wound to heal
• They used wine to reduce chances of infection
• against hippocratic ideas

Mondino

• wrote the book Anathomia in 1316 that became the standard dissection manual for over 200 years

De Chauliac

• promoted Galen and criticised the de Luccas

Question 18

What are some examples of how public health was bad in the medieval period?

Answer 18

• rain could cause privy cesspits to overflow and excrement spread on the streets- they weren’t emptied often
• rivers often became polluted
• no knowledge of germs
• waste was dumped into rivers (e.g. by butchers)

Question 19

What are some examples of improvements in public health in the medieval period?

Answer 19

• 1371- London council prohibit the killing of large animals within city walls
• gong farmers gathered animal excrements on the streets and sometimes cleanes out cesspits
• belief in miasma resulted in avoidance of bad smells and attempts to clean

Question 20

How were monestaries an example of improved public health in medieval times?

Answer 20

• Water supplies going to them e.g. Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire
• Lavatoriums for washing
• monks were ordered to wash and bathe as clenliness was a sign of peity and celibacy
• wealthy due to making money from wool and donations

Question 21

What is an important example of the consequences of poor public health in Medieval times?

Answer 21

• The Black death [1348]
• At least 1.5 million people died
• Bubonic plague
• Belief that God had caused it
• plague worked very quick on victims with malnutrition → weaker immune system

Question 22

What did people do to try and escape the bubonic plague?

Answer 22

• drink mercury
• strap a chicken to the buboes
• fled to towns ans villages
• councils tried to quarentine infected places

Question 23

What were the key impacts of the Black Death?

Answer 23

• 1/3 of the English population perished
• food shortages → lack of labour
• positively, peasants became less tied to specific lands and moved around to fill the work
• food prices increased → quadrupled in some parts of England
• persecution of Jews, beggars and lepers

Question 24

How did the Black Death impact the Church?

Answer 24

• some blamed the church for cowardice and preachers for abandonning villages
• Catholic Church lost many members of the clergy
• ideas that God was punishing the people for sins and therefore they weren’t good enough