Medieval Flashcards
What could a medieval doctor do?
They followed the Ancient Greek method of ‘clinical observation.’
Took the pulse and used a urine chart to diagnose illnesses.
Prescribed natural medicines if plants, animal products, spices, oils, wines and rocks.
Balanced the four humours using methods such as bloodletting.
Remedies combined natural with supernatural approaches such as prayers and astrology.
What was the 4 humours?
An Ancient Greek theory started by Hippocrates and developed by the Roman doctor, Galen.
It stated that the 4 humours within the body had to be balanced in order to keep healthy
It was a doctors job to restore the balance.
How was a university trained doctor trained?
They had to take at least seven years of study at Oxford or Cambridge.
They learnt mainly by listening to lectures and debating what they had read in books.
Some doctors left university without having seen an actual patient.
Doctors followed treatment of Hippocrates, Galen, muslim, Indian and Chinese knowledge.
The universities were controlled by the church
Who did ordinary people turn to?
University train doctors were too expensive.
Poor people went to barber surgeons and wisewomen.
They would use a mixture of natural herbal remedies and supernatural cures.
In markets there would be people offering herbal potions, pulling teeth, mend dislocated limbs and set fractures.
They turned to the local monastery or parish priest for medical help.
People at the time believe that God could send illnesses as a punishment.
Prayers were often made to Saints who were said to cure specific ailments.
What was the Church’s belief for the cause of illness?
They believed in following the example of Jesus, who healed the sick.
So they founded many hospitals.
There was a strong belief that illness came from God.
Curing illness would be a challenge to God who sent it as a punishment or a test of faith.
So it was important to care for the patient not cure them.
How did the Church treat illness?
Prayers to God with the most important treatment.
The church encouraged the belief of miraculous healing.
There were many shrines filled with relics of a holy person.
These shrines were places that people made pilgrimage to, to help with their illnesses.
e.g The shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury.
They also followed traditional medical knowledge of the ancient world (Hippocrates and Galen)
Monks preserved and studied these ideas and copied their books by hand.
What were the different types of hospitals set up by the church?
Asylums for the mentally ill.
Monasteries had infirmaries that could provide free treatment for the sick and poor.
There were a few large hospitals, such as Saint Leonard’s in York.
Lazar houses dealt with people who had leprosy, they were set up outside towns as leprosy was contagious.
What were Islamic ideas about disease?
They set up the first hospitals for people with mental illnesses.
Victims of illnesses were treated with compassion instead of being seen as punished from God.
How did the Islamic empire treat the ill?
Caliph Al-Mamun created “the house of wisdom” which was the worlds largest library at the time.
The Islamic religion encouraged medical learning.
Hospitals called bimaristans were built to provide medical care of everyone.
Doctors were present and medical students trained along side them.
How did Islamic ideas spread to Europe?
Islamic books were translated into Latin by people such as Gerard of Cremona and Constantine the African.
Their medical ideas reached England through trade, as merchants brought new equipment, drugs and books.
What did Al-Razi do?
He stressed the need for careful observation of the patient.
He wrote over 150 books.
He followed Galen but he thought that all students improve the work of their teacher.
What did Ibn Sina do?
He wrote a encyclopaedia of medicine known as ‘canon of medicine.’
It covered the whole of ancient Greek and Islamic medical knowledge at the time.
It’s became the standard European medical textbook used to teach doctors in the west until the 17th century.
Who practiced surgery in medieval times?
Most were barbers who combined haircutting with small surgical operations such as bloodletting and tooth pulling.
Surgeons learned the skill by being apprenticed to another surgeon.
Some learnt on the battlefield since wars were frequent in the mediaeval period.
What could a medieval surgeon do?
Bloodletting, to balance the four humours.
Amputation or cutting off of a painful damaged part of the body.
Trepanning, drilling a hole in the patient’s head to let bad spirits out.
Cauterisation, usually done with a heated iron to stop the flow of blood.
Where was surgery practiced?
Mostly on battlefields.
In every day life, surgery was performed as a last resort.
Surgeons used natural substances such as mandrake root, opium and hemlock as anaesthetics.
