Medieval c1250-1500

Question 1

What organisation was dominant at this time?

Answer 1

The church

Question 2

What supernatural ideas did the church teach?

Answer 2

God made people ill because he was displeased with them. Another idea was that stars and planets influenced health – the position of planets and astrology was used to diagnose patients and the church started to support this idea.

Question 3

What was the church responsible for?

Answer 3

Education - set up universities where Physicians were trained

Question 4

What else did the church control?

Answer 4

The largest collections of books were in monasteries, which meant the church controlled what people read too. People didn’t challenge the church’s teachings/ideas. The church taught that dissection was wrong.

Question 5

Which individual did the church promote?

Answer 5

Galen

Question 6

Where were hospitals located

Answer 6

Monasteries and nunneries

Question 7

What were natural explanations for disease based on?

Answer 7

Ancient ideas

Question 8

Who was Hippocrates and what did they do?

Answer 8

Hippocrates was a Greek doctor who dismissed all supernatural ideas (that gods were responsible for illness). He devised a natural theory: the Theory of the four Humours.

Question 9

What was the Theory of Four Humours?

Answer 9

There are four liquids in the human body (blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile); if these liquids become unbalanced, then a person becomes ill.

Question 10

What did Hippocrates believe was vital?

Answer 10

Observation and recording of symptoms

Question 11

What did Hippocrates create?

Answer 11

He wrote many books and created the Hippocratic oath (a promise that doctors will act in the best interests of patients)

Question 12

What did Galen do?

Answer 12

Galen developed Hippocrates’ ideas and created the Theory of Opposites. He also wrote 350 books and drew diagrams of human anatomy (often based on animal dissection e.g. apes).

Question 13

What was the Theory of Opposites?

Answer 13

This theory was designed to get the humours back into balance – besides bleeding/purging, the theory advised the opposite treatment to the symptoms

Question 14

How long were Galen’s ideas taught for

Answer 14

1500-2000 years

Question 15

What was miasma?

Answer 15

that disease was transmitted by ‘bad air’. This was often related to God because bad smells indicated sin.

Question 16

What were the natural treatments for disease?

Answer 16

Natural treatments included blood-letting and purging (to get the humours back in balance, herbal remedies from the apothecary and burning fires to ‘purify’ the air and combat miasma. They sometimes tried to clean the streets clean.

Question 17

What was bloodletting?

Answer 17

Blood-letting would cut the vein, at different points on the body for different illnesses

Question 18

What was purging?

Answer 18

Purging would make the patient vomit or go to the toilet

Question 19

What were the supernatural remedies?

Answer 19

Praying, going to church, carrying lucky charms or amulets, fasting, going on pilgrimages or self-punishment (flagellation

Question 20

What did barber surgeons do/

Answer 20

They had no training, carried out blood-letting, did basic surgery (dentistry, wart removal, amputation), and cost less than physicians.

Question 21

What did apothecaries do?

Answer 21

They received training but no medical qualifications, mixed medicine and ointments from their own knowledge or instructions from physicians, cost less than a physician

Question 22

What did physicians do?

Answer 22

They trained at university, diagnosed illness and gave treatments, expensive so only available to most wealthy, very few physicians

Question 23

Who treated you at home?

Answer 23

A female family member of the village ‘wise woman’

Question 24

What were hospitals like?

Answer 24

The number of hospitals (based in nunneries or monasteries) increased during the Middle Ages but they usually treated pilgrims or travellers, they did not treat infectious diseases. Patients would have been kept clean, fed and given plenty of rest. Hospitals were places to recuperate and receive care

Question 25

How many did the Black Death kill?

Answer 25

It killed about one-third of Britain’s population.

Question 26

How was the black death caused?

Answer 26

When the infected flea would bite a person, the disease enters the blood.

Question 27

How did people think the Black Death was caused?

Answer 27

• Sent as God as punishment for sins
  -The unusual positions of the planets
• Miasma
• Volcanoes releasing poisonous gases
  -Four Humours
  -Strangers or witches

Question 28

How did people try to avoid catching the plague?

Answer 28

-Praying, fasting, flagellants
-Cleaning up rubbish on the streets
-Smelling toilets/poo to overcome the illness
-Lighting fires to cleanse the air
-Not letting strangers enter the village

Question 29

What were the symptoms of the plague?

Answer 29

large lumps (buboes) filled with black pus, particularly in the groin or armpit

Question 30

What were treatments of the plague?

Answer 30

praying, draining buboes, cold baths, eating cool things