Medieval Medical Progress Flashcards
What was an Asclepeion?
Where people went to live a healthy life in Ancient Greece
What enabled Islam to have an impact on medicine?
- it was unified so provided the peace and order for medicine to progress
- prophet Muhammad’s teachings supported science and learning about medicine
How did Muslims use knowledge of the ancient greeks?
By translating their works into Arabic to spread them across the Islamic world
Give 2 examples where Islamic individuals were preserving knowledge from the ancient Greeks
- during the rule of caliph Harun al rashid, Baghdad became the centre of the translation of Greek manuscripts to Islamic ones
- Ibn Sina wrote an encyclopaedia called the cannon of medicine covering all of Ancient Greek and Islamic knowledge
Give an example where Islamic individuals added to previous knowledge
The muslim doctor Al razi, distinguished measles from smallpox for the first time, he wrote over 150 books and believed all students should improve upon the work of their teacher despite him following Galen
Give 2 ways Galen’s ideas made large impacts on medicine
- his ideas profoundly influenced western medicine for 15 centuries
- his work arrived in Europe and Greek translations were made in Salerno, Italy, and quickly became university medical texts
How did Hippocrates impact medicine?
- he believed diet and rest were important for a patients recovery
- wrote 60 books
Why is it significant galens work started being spread form Salerno?
As this was a religious stop off point to the ‘holy land’ many people went to
Why was galens work so widely accepted for so long?
As Church leaders carefully looked at his work and decided it fitted with Christian ideas
Complete the sentence:
Most medieval surgeons were barbers who combined hair cutting…
With small surgical operations such as bloodletting and tooth extraction
Complete the sentence:
Compared to physicians, barber surgeons were… who learned their skill by…
Lower class medical tradesmen….being apprentices to another surgeon, watching and copying them, or they learnt in the battle field since wars used to be frequent
Complete the sentence:
The most common procedure was bloodletting done to…
Restore balance of humours in the body. It was performed by making a small cut on the inside of the arm where blood was allowed to run out
What was amputation known to be successful for?
Treating cases of breast cancer, bladder stones and haemorrhoids
Complete the sentence:
In medieval times, It was thought that epilepsy was caused by…
Demons inside the brain so a surgeon might cure the patient by drilling a hole into the skull to let the demon out
Complete the sentence:
Most surgery was performed on…
Battlefields
How did surgeons try to reduce pain in surgeries, (which were only used as a last resort)
Used natural substances like mandrake root, opium and hemlock as anaesthetic but too strong a dose may kill the patient
What was cauterisation?
A method of burning the wound to stop blood flow. This was done with a heated iron and was very painful
What tools did a surgeon use?
Saws for amputation, arrow pullers, cautery irons and bloodletting knives
What problems did barber surgeons have and what methods were used to reduce them?
Pain, infection and bleeding
The Natural anaesthetics were used in surgeries (pain)
Cauterisation was used on open wounds (bleeding)
Who was John Arderne?
Give a score and describe his influence, techniques and pain/infection/bleeding
He was an English surgeon
▪️Influence: 7/10, formed a work association of the guild of surgeons and made a manual, Practica in 1376
▪️technique: 7/10, illustrated operations in his book
▪️pain infection bleeding: 8/10 used opium and henbane to dull pain
Who was abulcasis?
Give a score and describe his influence, techniques and pain/infection/bleeding
He was a Muslim surgeon
▪️Influence: 7/10, wrote a 30 volume medical book, invented 26 new instruments
▪️techniques : 7/10, he came up with ligatures and described how to do them
▪️pain infection bleeding: 5/10 he made cauterisation popular which led to pain and infection
Who was Guy de Chauliac?
Give a score and describe his influence, techniques and pain/infection/bleeding
A French surgeon
▪️Influence: 9/10 his text book, Great surgery written in 1363 dominated surgery in France and England for 200 years
▪️techniques: 4/10 mostly used Galen’s techniques and quoted him 8890 times in his book
▪️pain infection bleeding: 2/10 didn’t focus on preventing them
Who were Hugh Luca and his son Theodoric?
Give a score and describe his influence, techniques and pain/infection/bleeding
Famous surgeons who worked at Bologna university, Italy
▪️influences: 2/10 as their views disagreed with Hippocrates and so were unpopular
▪️techniques: 8/10, used wine in wounds to reduce infection and had new methods of removing arrows
▪️pain, infection, bleeding: 8/10, used methods that actually worked to reduce infection
Who was Roger Frugardi?
Give a score and describe his influence, techniques and pain/infection/bleeding
An Italian surgeon
▪️influence: 9/10, wrote a text called practice of surgery in 1180 and was widely used in Europe
▪️techniques: 7/10 tried ambitious operations to the chest and attempted to remove bladder stones
▪️pain infection bleeding: 6/10 warned trepanning was dangerous and caused pain but still did ambitious operations
Who was mondino de Luzzie?
Give a score and describe his influence, techniques and pain/infection/bleeding
Famous professor in Bologna who supervised the first public dissection in 1315
▪️influence: 9/10, wrote a book Anathomia, in 1316 and was used as a manual for over 200 years
▪️techniques: 5/10 supervised the first public dissections but still no-one questioned Galen
▪️pain infection bleeding: 2/10, didn’t really make an impact
Give 3 ways progress was being made in medieval medicine
- use of herbal anaesthetics
- wine was used as a disinfectant
- dissections were happening
Give 3 ways progress wasn’t being made in medieval medicine
- ancient ideas were still heavily influential
- blood letting was still used
- some things they were doing may have made it more likely to cause infection - cauterising wounds
When did John arderne become famous?
When he had a 50% success rate in removing growths from a patients anus
How was Jhon arderne encouraging medical progress?
He urged doctors to trust their own judgement and experience instead of relying in the old texts of Galen and Hippocrates
