MEDIEVAL Medicine

Question 1

What were some of the Hippocratic Ideas?

Answer 1

• The Hippocratic Oath - Doctors would swear to treat patients and do no harm.
• Recording of Symptoms - Hippocrates encouraged doctors to question patients and find out detailed information to record symptoms accurately.
• Four Humours - Hippocrates encouraged doctors to look for natural causes and causes of diseases, and to move away from supernatural beliefs.

Question 2

What were some of Galen’s methods/ideas?

Answer 2

• Theory of Opposites - The opposite humours would cure your illness.
• Using Animals - In Rome he used animals and discovered that the brain controls the body, not the heart.
• Writing - Wrote 60 books that were used for 1500 years after his death.
• Mistakes - Galen thought blood was created in the liver and made mistakes over anatomy due to using animals.

Question 3

What were some of the ways medieval doctors would diagnose illness?

Answer 3

• Vademecum (Book of diagnoses)
• Urine chart
• Clinical observation
• Astrology charts
• Posies and oranges to protect themselves as they thought disease came from miasma.

Question 4

What were the causes of illness?

Answer 4

• Imbalance of humours
• God/curses
• Planets
• Bad smells/miasma

Question 5

What were some treatments?

Answer 5

• Country Doctors
• Barber surgeons
• Apothecaries (sold medicines)
• Quacks
• Wise women
• Balancing four humours by bleeding or applying leeches.
• Natural healing herbs
• Superstition

Question 6

What was the role of the church?

Answer 6

• Insisting people agree with the writings of Galen.
• Encouraged the belief that disease was a punishment from God.
• Promoted the idea to help others and care for the sick.