medicine in britain set 3

Question 1

What supernatural treatments
were used to try and cure
illness?

Answer 1

pray, fasting (not eating), going on pilgrimage, paying for special Mass to be said.

Treatments based on specific ideas for specific illnesses eg hanging magpie’s beak
around your neck to cure toothache.

Question 2

Why did the sick get touched

by kings? (2)

Answer 2

Belief in divine right of kings and link to God and so they could cure illness

Question 3

What natural/rational theory
was followed to cure diseases
and who wrote it? (2)

Answer 3

Theory of Opposites

Galen, an Ancient Roman doctor developed on Hippocrates idea

Question 4

What was the key idea behind

the theory in Q12? (2)

Answer 4

said humours could be balanced by giving the patient the ‘opposite’ of their
symptoms.

Eg if hot give them a cool drink, if cold give them spicy food

Question 5

How could you rebalance the
humours? Give point and some
detail. (3+3)

Answer 5

BLEEDING (cutting a vein, leeches or cupping – performed by barber surgeons;)

PURGING using herbal remedies (vomiting via emetics, laxatives to loosen bowels)

Herbal remedies to drink, sniff, bath or rub in eg honey, herbs & spices. THERIACAS
– spice based mixtures

Question 6

What people were paid to treat
illness in the Middle Ages? Give
name and a fact. (4+4)

Answer 6

Physicians (doctors) who had trained at university and ideas based on Galen &
Hippocrates – expensive so used by rich in society.

Apothecaries – like chemists who mixed herbal remedies for all in society

Barber surgeons who had been apprenticed to other barber surgeons & dealt more
with physical problems eg pulling teeth, bleeding, surgery (setting broken limbs) –
used by all members of society

Wise women – local women who knew many herbal remedies mostly used by the
poor.