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The Middle Ages Flashcards

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0
Q

How did war after the collapse of the Roman Empire impact on medicine?

A

Roman public health systems were destroyed and left to ruin.
Libraries full of medical books were destroyed.
Invading tribes did not know how to read, so they weren’t interested in education or the works of Galen.
Money was spent of war, as the most important priority, rather than on education and medicine.

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1
Q

What happened between AD400 and AD500?

A

The central control of the Roman Empire collapsed.

WAR broke out between countries that were once defended by roman armies or run by roman governors.
Britain was invaded by the Angles and the Saxons, and Rome was overrun by Barbarian tribes.

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2
Q

What was the only powerful centralised body to survive the collapse of the Roman Empire?

A

It religion- the Christian Church

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3
Q

How did Christian attitudes help the development of medicine?

A

Jesus said Christians had a religious duty to care for the sick, so hospitals were set up in nunneries and monasteries.

The Church preserved, translated and copied many medical books, such as those of Galen.

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4
Q

How did Christian attitudes hinder the development of medicine?

A

Dissection was banned.
It believed that ancient writings should not be questioned (the Bible was an ancient writing).
It supported the ideas of Galen and Hippocrates as they fitted in with their own.
Taught that all illness was sent as a punishment from God, so cures should only come from God.
The training of doctors was banned until AD1100.

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5
Q

What is the Arab world?

A

Countries in the Middle East and in North Africa.

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6
Q

How did Islamic attitudes help the development of medicine?

A

Muslims had a religious duty to care for the sick, mainly in Arab hospitals.
Arab rulers believed it was important to develop education, and Islamic scholars translated many medical books.
Doctors like al-Razi and Ibn Sinna wrote books on medicine, including their own ideas as well as those of Hippocrates and Galen.

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7
Q

How did Islamic attitudes hinder the development of medicine?

A

Banned dissection due to belief in the afterlife.

Islam supported the ideas of Galen and Hippocrates, as they fitted in with beliefs about Allah creating the body.

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8
Q

What is Galenic medicine?

A

Everything that Galen wrote about medicine.

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9
Q

What did people in the Middle Ages believe in that was similar to what the Greeks and Romans had believed in?

A

The theory of the four humours, the clinical method of observation, and Galen’s ideas about anatomy.

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10
Q

Why did people in the Middle Ages accept Galenic medicine?

A

Religion.
The Christian Church was very powerful and Galen’s ideas fitted in with their own beliefs. The church did not allow people to challenge these beliefs- it would be viewed as heresy. New ideas were discouraged.

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11
Q

What types of explanations to illness did the Christian Chruch encourage?

A

Supernatural and superstitious explanations.

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12
Q

What natural explanations to disease did people have in the Middle Ages?

A

Bad air and smells
The four humours
Poisons in the air
Minority groups (e.g. The Jews were believed to have poisoned wells in Germany).

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13
Q

What supernatural explanations to illness did people have in th Middle Ages?

A

Astrology
God punishing people for their sins
The Devil causing mischief.

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14
Q

What naturals treatments did people in the Middle Ages use?

A

Cleaning up towns that smelled bad
Purging
Bleeding
Opposites
Stopping practices like ‘the kiss of obedience’
Herbal remedies (e.g. Honey and plantain)

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15
Q

What supernatural treatments did people in the Middle Ages make use if to cure disease?

A

Praying for forgiveness
Beating themselves with a stick as a punishment for sin (flagellants)
Making gigantic candles to burn in Church.

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16
Q

Where did the Black Death start?

A

China

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17
Q

When did the Black Death come to Europe?

A

1348

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18
Q

What were the two types of plague?

A

The bubonic plague and the pneumonic plague.

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19
Q

How were people infected with the bubonic plague?

A

Flea bites from fleas that had previously bitten rats.

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20
Q

How were people infected with the pneumonic plague?

A

Other people who had the plague coughing over them.

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21
Q

What were the symptoms of the bubonic plague?

A

Cold and tired.
Buboes appeared under the arms or in the groin. These would burst and cause blood poisoning.
Blisters appeared all over the body, followed by high fever, severe headaches, unconsciousness and usually death within 4-7 days.

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22
Q

What were the symptoms of the pneumonic plague?

A

This disease attacked the lungs.

Victims would cough up blood and died very quickly- within a day or two.

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23
Q

What fraction of people had died of the Black Death by the end of 1349?

A

One in three

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24
Q

Why couldn’t people in the Middle Ages understand where the Black Death was coming from or why it was happening?

A

They did not have the scientific understanding or the technology which would have shown them that it was germs from fleas or rats.

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25
Q

What did medieval people blame the Black Death on?

A

Bad air and bad smells, the stars and planets, minority groups such as the Jews poisoning water, god punishing people for their sins, imbalance of the four humours, poor living conditions and dirty towns.

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26
Q

What is a barber surgeon?

A

A barber who also provided medical help including small operations like tooth extraction.

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27
Q

What were the crusades?

A

In the Middle Ages Christians from Europe fought the Muslim Turks for control of the holy land.

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28
Q

Which was the only area to see some progress during the Middle Ages?

A

Surgery

29
Q

Who did the majority of surgery on battlefields?

A

Barber surgeons

30
Q

What did barber surgeons use as antiseptic?

A

Wine

31
Q

Why were operations dangerous?

A

Infections were common and infections could lead to death.

They were only carried out when necessary, such as amputating a limb or removing an arrow.

32
Q

Why are Christian barber surgeons sometimes compared to Muslim doctors who treated soldiers during the crusades?

A

Muslim doctors did not operate as often as Christian surgeons, and they were careful to keep the wound clean to help prevent infection.

33
Q

Why did surgery improve during the Middle Ages?

A

War was common.
Lots of people were wounded in battles and so doctors had to improve their methods or those people would not be able to fight anymore.

Experienced barber surgeons developed new ways of treating people.

34
Q

In what ways were living conditions and health and hygiene poor in the Middle Ages?

A

Towns were cramped and streets were narrow.
Human waste went into the streets, and into the streams where people got their drinking water.
Wells for drinking water were often close to cesspools of sewage.
In villages, people lived in smoke-filled huts that they also shared with animals during winter.

35
Q

Who had the best living conditions during the Middle Ages?

A

Monks and nuns, who lived in monasteries and nunneries with fresh water and toilets.
Most were so wealthy that they could afford to keep themselves healthy, clean and well fed.

36
Q

Give three roles of women in medieval medicine.

A

Wise women
Midwives
Nuns

37
Q

Who took charge of medicine in the home?

A

Women

38
Q

What was the village wise woman?

A

A woman who acted as a midwife and make natural remedies (e.g. onions and lichen) for general aches and pains that were not cured quickly.

39
Q

Who took charge of childbirth?

A

Midwives assisted in the delivery, passing on their methods through generations of women.
Most men kept well away from involvement in childbirth, although a few were starting to take an interest.

40
Q

Why did the church discourage women from taking an active role in medicine?

A

They saw women as inferior to men.
They were happy for women to look after their families at home, but disapproved of the wise women, sometimes accusing them of witchcraft.

41
Q

Why were women not allowed to train as doctors in universities?

A

They were run by the church.

42
Q

Why did monks and nuns run hospitals for the sick inside monasteries and nunneries?

A

It was their religious duty to care for the sick.

43
Q

What treatments took place in these religious hospitals?

A

Eating a particular diet, sleeping well, balancing the four humours and praying to god to ask for his forgiveness.

44
Q

Why were operations not very common in the religious hospitals?

A

Barber surgeons did not work at them.

45
Q

Why did not many monks die during the Black Death whilst parish priests did?

A

Monks cut themselves off from society rather than taking in victims- hospitals did not have to admit someone who had an infectious disease.
Parish priests actively cared for the sick in their parish.

46
Q

Describe an Islamic hospital as encouraged by the Islamic religion.

A

They had different wards for different diseases.

They would support patients when they were getting better after they lefty the hospital.

47
Q

What were the threats to public health during the Middle Ages?

A

People urinated where they liked.
There were open sewers in the streets.
Some toilets emptied directly into streams.
Butchers washed the blood from dead animals into the streams.
People washed in and drank from contaminated streams and rivers.
People poured waste from chamber pots out into the street.

48
Q

What improvements were there to public health in the Middle Ages?

A

People were arrested if they urinated in the street (however there was no proper police force).
A small number of rakers were employed.
People were fined for littering and throwing waste out of the windows.
There were public toilets in London.

49
Q

Why were the monasteries the most healthy places to live?

A

They were located near fresh water and had toilets.
They were rich and well organised.
Monks believed that being clean was part of worshipping god.

50
Q

What caused people to be healthy or unhealthy?

A

Injuries from fighting in battles
Poor hygiene in cramped towns
Plagues such as the Black Death

51
Q

Who provided medical care?

A

Women
Barber surgeons
Monks and nuns
Doctors for the rich

52
Q

What caused diagnoses and treatments to remain the same or to change?

A

Medical stagnation in this period due to the impact of war and religion.

53
Q

How far did new ideas and treatments affect the majority of the population?

A

The majority carried on with herbal remedies and used ideas from Hippocrates and Galen.
There were some advances in the treatment of war wounds.

54
Q

In what ways did religion hinder medicine in the Middle Ages?

A

It was believed that God was the cause and cure of disease (this led to fatalism and prevented investigation into cures).
Chirstian and Muslim support of Galen’s ideas which were taught simply for fitting in with beliefs (opposition would be prosecuted).
Dissection banned.

55
Q

In what ways did religion help medical progress during the Middle Ages?

A

The church helped preserve lots of Greek and roman knowledge.
Monks and Arab scholars copied out and translated ancient medical books.
Church built universities to train physicians using Galen’s books.
Christian and Islam belief that people had a duty to care for the sick (led to hospitals in monasteries and Arabs famous for care standards- by 1100s every large town had a hospital).
Arab rulers believed it was important to develop education with their wealth (Baghdad= centre for medicine).

56
Q

What were some of the causes of medical stagnation in the Middle Ages?

A

The loss of medical knowledge/bad doctors.
The forbidding by the church of dissection, and it’s 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.

57
Q

How did Christian Europeans come into contact with Muslim doctors, who were significantly more skilled than them?

A

The church encouraged people to go on crusades.

58
Q

Briefly describe the work of Ibn Sinna (Avicenna).

A

Write a medical encyclopaedia entitled ‘The Canon’, which compiled a summary of all the medical knowledge that existed by the 10th century, including the works of the Greeks as well as his own medical ideas.
E.g. There were chapters on eating disorders, obesity and the medicinal uses of drugs.
Used as a standard text book to train European doctors in schools and universities until the 1600s.

59
Q

Who was Ibn Sinna?

A

An Arab-Muslim doctor who lived throughout the Middle Ages, and who later became known as ‘the Galen of Islam’.

60
Q

What did al-Razi do to contribute to medicine?

A

He wrote over 200 books, including his own ideas but also those of the likes of galen and Hippocrates.
He described for the first time the difference between smallpox and measles.

61
Q

Give an example of a quote from one of al-Razi’s works?

A

“He who studies the ancients, gains the experience of their labour as if he had himself lived thousands of years.”

62
Q

Why did medieval doctors look down on medieval surgeons?

A

Often people died during surgery.

Physicians were trained in a university, whilst surgeons were not trained at all.

62
Q

What type of surgery could medieval surgeons undertake?

A

External surgery on problem areas such as facial ulcers and eye cataracts.
Internal surgery such as the removal of bladder stones.

63
Q

How were barber surgeons able to make advances in surgery?

A

Trial and error.

They learned from their mistakes.

64
Q

In what ways did practicing as a doctor progress during the Middle Ages?

A

Schools of medicine were set up in universities such as bologna and Salerno, and there were lectures in anatomy.
New writings of Muslim doctors became available.
Doctors debated the best methods of treating disease.
Padua university insisted that doctors visited the sick during their training.

65
Q

How were the apparent improvements in the training of doctors deceiving?

A

The anatomy lectures consisted only of doctors reading from a book whilst a prosector pointed to parts of the body.
The ancients were held unquestionably as the true authorities.
Doctors had a terrible reputation (e.g. For undermining their position in order to become wealthy).

66
Q

Why was bloodletting used widely in the Middle Ages?

A

The Four Humours

Preferred over an operation

67
Q

What equipment did medieval doctors carry with them to help diagnose disease?

A

A vademecum (book of diagnoses), a urine chart, posies, oranges or lighted tapers (to prevent bad smells).

68
Q

What methods did medieval doctors use to treat patients?

A

Bleeding, applying leeches and purging.
Providing hot baths, a soup of yellow lentils or water cooled with snow.
Natural healing herbs from apothecaries (e.g. Fig poultices for plague sores).

History Medicine Through Time (10 decks)

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