Medicine Through Time- Medieval medicine Flashcards
What period in time did the Middle ages happen?
were the period in between the Roman Empire (often said to have ended in AD476) and the Renaissance (often dated from 1453).
When did the Dark Ages take place?
The Dark Ages are the first part of this period, following the collapse of the Roman Empire (476-1066)
When did the High Middle Ages take place?
The High Middle Ages are the second part of this period (1066-1453)
What was the structure of medieval society?
In the 5th century AD, waves of barbarians such as the Goths, Vandals, Saxons and Vikings invaded western Europe. Europe disintegrated into a huge number of small fiefdoms, each governed by a local lord, who protected his peasants - owned by him as ‘serfs’. These tiny states could not afford universities for study, or public health systems.
What happened to the ideas developed by the Greeks and Romans?
Communications were difficult and dangerous, so ideas travelled slowly. During the Dark Ages, the monasteries alone managed to hang onto learning and knowledge, and even the ability to read and write. Many of the medical ideas of the Greeks and Romans were lost at this time, and survived only in the Muslim cities of the Middle East.Similarly, technology was limited, and much of the advanced technical knowledge of the Romans was lost.
How did the Church affect people’s way of life?
Medieval Europeans believed in the Christian God, so politics and everyday life, as well as medicine, were dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. Most peasants were extremely superstitious. It’s authority was taken always, and going against it could mean death.
How did things begin to change after 1066?
After 1066, civilisation began to recover. Universities were established (eg in Paris in 1110, Oxford in 1167). Kings grew more powerful, and established courts as centres of culture and wealth. Trade and communications, especially, by sea, developed. Towns grew up, which created public health problems.
When and why did some medical knowledge return back to the West?
In 1258, Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols, and much ancient knowledge that had been retained in the east but lost to the west was carried back to the west by fleeing scholars.
How did the Church hold back medicine?
forbidding dissection of human corpses
insisting that people agree with the writings of Galen
encouraging people to rely on prayers to the saints and superstition to cure them of disease
encouraging the belief that disease was a punishment from God - this led to fatalism and prevented investigation into cures
In what way could the Church been seen as to have aided medicine?
the Church did encourage people to go on Crusades, meaning that people travelled to the Middle East. Here they came into contact with Muslim doctors, who were significantly more skilled than their counterparts in Britain.
What were the causes of the stagnation and regression in Medieval society?
the loss of medical knowledge/ bad doctors
the forbidding by the Church of dissection, and its encouragement of prayer and superstition)
the emphasis on ‘authority’ rather than on observation and investigation
the lack of resources to build public health systems
social disorder and war, which disrupted communication and learning
What was wrong with the way that medicine was taught?
Even when universities developed, after 1100 lectures on anatomy were rudimentary. They consisted simply of a butcher pointing to the different parts of a body, while the lecturer read a text by an authority such as Galen.Students did debate the ideas of Galen, any new ideas were judged on the debating skills of the student, not on scientific proof. The Church said that Galen’s ideas were so correct that there was no need to investigate any further.
What did Medieval doctors believed caused illness?
Although many Medieval doctors continued to believe in the theory of the four humours, they also said disease was caused by demons, sin, bad smells, astrology and the stars, stagnant water, the Jewish people etc.
How were Muslim doctors more advanced?
during the reign of Harun al-Rashid (786-809), the books of Hippocrates were translated into Arabic. At first, Muslim doctors like al-Razi (‘Rhazes known as the Galen of Islam’) conserved the ideas of the Greeks and Romans. Later, Muslim doctors such as Avenzoar and Ibn an Nafis actually began to challenge errors and to develop new ideas.
Why did knowledge not spread from Islam to Europe?
because the Christian Church was at war with Islam, Muslim ideas spread only slowly to western Europe. The exception was a book by Ibn Sina (often known as Avicenna) - the ‘Canon of Medicine’.
What area of medicine actually improved during Medieval times?
Surgery
Who carried out surgeries?
During the Middle Ages, surgery was left to barber-surgeons, not to trained doctors.
What advancements did they make in surgery?
Medieval surgeons realised how to use wine as an antiseptic, and they used natural substances as anaesthetics. Medieval surgeons could therefore do external surgery. There was also, surprisingly, some internal surgery undertaken.
What were the problems of surgery in medieval times?
they still had no idea that dirt carried disease. Deep wounds still caused death from bleeding, shock and infection. Some surgeons even believed it was good to cause pus in wounds.
What part of surgery in Medieval times were similar to Prehistoric medicine?
A medieval surgeon might cure an epileptic patient by trephiningthe skull to let the demon out.
What was wrong with the system of public health like in Medieval times?
Medieval towns did not have systems of sewers or water pipes like Rome had. Medieval towns were probably filthy. Garbage and human waste was thrown into the streets. Houses were made of wood, mud and dung.Rats, lice and fleas flourished in the rushes strewn over the clay floors of people’s houses (often changed only once a year).
What did people do to keep healthy?
They had their own version of the Greek’s Programme for Health. The doctor Alderotti advised people to stretch their limbs, wash their face, clean their teeth, exercise etc.
Guy de Chauliac (the Pope’s doctor) realised the importance of a good diet, and that a poor diet made people more vulnerable to the plague.
Nobles took regular baths (perhaps two a year).
Towns had bath houses (which were also restaurants and brothels).
People realised that a room next to a privy was unhealthy, and towns paid ‘gongfermers’ to clear out the cess pits.
What aspects of public health were actually useful in Medieval times?
Monasteries developed comprehensive systems of public health, including fresh running water, ‘lavers’ (wash rooms), flush ‘reredorters’ (latrines) with running sewers, clean towels and a compulsory bath four times a year.
Medieval kings passed laws requiring people to keep the streets clean.
Leaders in Venice realised that sexually transmitted diseases were infectious, and ordered checks on the city’s prostitutes.
During the time of the plague many towns developed quarantine laws, and boarded up the houses of infected people. People with leprosy, likewise, were confined to lazar houses (a place for people with infectious diseases).
During the Middle Ages the first hospitals were built since Roman times (eg St Bart’s in London).
In what ways were there developments that suggested improvements in medieval medicine?
Schools of medicine were set up in Universities such as Bologna and Salerno, and there were lectures in anatomy.
New writings of Muslim doctors (such as Rhazes) became available.
Doctors debated the best methods of treating disease.
Padua University (alone) insisted that doctors visited the sick during their training.
In what ways were these developments unhelpful, or deceiving?
The anatomy ‘lectures’ consisted only of the doctor reading from a book while a prosector pointed to parts of the body.
The ancients were held unquestioningly as the true authorities, any debates was seen merely as an opportunity to practice the art of arguing.
Doctors had a terrible reputation. During the Black Death, ““…doctors were useless and indeed shameful as they dared not visit the sick for fear of becoming infected”” wrote Guy de Chauliac.
What did people think of Medieval doctors?
some people disliked doctors
some thought doctors killed them
some thought doctors were dishonest
some claimed that some doctors were illiterate/ badly trained
some did not approve of doctors who were women
What were their methods of diagnosis?
Many Medieval doctors carried with them a vademecum (meaning ‘Go-with-me’) book of diagnoses and a urine chart. Usually, they examined the colour, smell and taste of the patient’s urine, and made an on-the-spot guess as to what they might be suffering from. Pictures from the time make it clear that doctors also did clinical observation, and took their patient’s pulse.
How did doctors try to protect themselves from infection?
Other essential doctor’s equipment included posies, oranges or lighted tapers. Since they believed that bad smells carried disease, they believed that they could protect themselves from catching the disease by carrying something nice-smelling.
How did doctors attempt to cure illness?
Since they still believed in the theory of the four humours, many of their cures involved balancing the ‘humours overflowing’. They did this by bleeding, applying leeches, or causing purging or vomiting in their patients. Other ways of balancing the ‘natural heat’ included the taking of hot baths. Also used a huge range of natural healing herbs and substances
What supernatural cures were there?
Monarchs thought that by touching patients suffering from the ‘King’s Evil’ (scrofula) they could cure them. Peasants prayed to St Roch to cure their toothache or the plague, or turned to St Anthony to cure them of ‘St Anthony’s Fire’ (ergotism). During the time of the plague, huge Christian processions were held, at which people flagellated (whipped) themselves, to try to show God how sorry they were for their sins.
