The middle ages

Question 1

What was prevention and treatment based on in the middle ages?

Answer 1

Prevention and treatment of disease in the middle ages was based on rational and religious methods as well as traditional remedies.

Question 2

What was bloodletting?

Answer 2

• Bloodletting was the most common treatment for an imbalance of humours.
• It was either done by cutting a vein using leeches or by cupping.
• Different points in the body was used for different illnesses.
• Occasionally this was performed by physicians but, more usually, by barber-surgeons or non-medical persons.

Question 3

What was purging?

Answer 3

• Purging was another treatment used to re-balance the humours.
• It either involved making a patient vomit or go to the toilet to bid food a fond farewell.
• Emetics and laxatives were mixed by apothecaries, wise women or at the patients home, physicians prescribed treatments and sometimes gave enemas themselves.

Question 4

What are traditional remedies?

Answer 4

• The most common remedies were traditional ones made with herbs, which were drunk, sniffed or bathed in.
• Remedies also included different foods to rebalance the humours and ointments to apply to the skin.
• They were made at home or mixed and sold by the apothecary.

Question 5

What are the religious treatments?

Answer 5

• Praying
• Fasting
• Going on pilgrimage
• Paying for a special mass to be said

Question 6

What are more religious and supernatural methods?

Answer 6

• Living a Christian life
• Chanting incantations
• Self punishment such as flagellation (punishing yourself so god wouldn’t)
• Carrying charms

Question 7

What are some rational methods?

Answer 7

• Trying to keep streets clean
• Bathing and washing
• Exercising
• Not overeating
• Bleeding and purging
• Purifying the air

Question 8

Who treated the sick?

Answer 8

• Barber surgeons
  
  • No training
  • Carried out bloodletting, pulling teeth and lancing boils
  • also cut hair
  • cost money but still less than a physician
• Care in the home
  
  • Most people were treated at the home by women
  • The village ‘wise woman’ would be free
• Physicians
  
  • medically trained
  • expensive so mainly used by rich
  • very few of them
• Apothecaries
  
  • received training but no medical qualifications
  • cost money but still less than physicians
  • mixed medicines and ointments

Question 9

Describe the hospitals.

Answer 9

• usually people with infectious diseases that were not able to cure were not admitted.
• kept very clean
• give fresh food and plenty of rest
• some were actually built for infectious disease
• many were ran by the church
• number increased in the middle ages