medicine medieval

Question 1

Supernatural explanations of disease

Answer 1

• God sent disease (because He was angry, because He wanted to test peoples’ faith, or the disease itself was sent to purify peoples ‘souls)
• Astrology (misalignment of the planets)resulted in the creation of a miasma.

Question 2

Why was the Four Humours so dominant?

Answer 2

• The Church taught it was correct - Galen was not a Christian, but he taught that a god had made all body parts fit together, which supported Christian teaching at the time.
• It made sense on some level - e.g. when ill, you are often physically sick (so people thought the excess humours were actually being removed by vomiting.

Question 3

6.Rational explanations of disease :Miasma

Answer 3

• A miasma was bad air believed to be filled with harmful fumes.
• Hippocrates and Galen both wrote about miasma and suggested that swamps, corpses and other rotting matter could transmit disease.
• A clean smelling home was a sign of spiritual cleanliness. Homes that smelled bad suggested sinfulness and corruption.

Question 4

Religious and supernatural treatments

Answer 4

Religious treatments included
- healing prayers and incantations (spells)
- paying for a special mass to be said
- fasting (going without food)
- pilgrimages to the tombs of people noted for their healing powers were also popular

If prayer did not work, there were other supernatural remedies including
- chanting incantations using charms and amulets

Physicians also consulted star charts and varied their treatment according to the alignment of the planets and horoscope of the patient.

Question 5

Humoral treatments: blood letting

Answer 5

Blood letting was the most common treatment of this type - idea was to remove bad humours by removing blood and was usually done by barber surgeons or wise women.

Three different ways:
- Cutting a vein
- Leeches
- Cupping

Question 6

Humoural treatments: remedies

Answer 6

Purging made sense because it was believed the four humours were created from food eaten.
- Patient would either be given an emetic (to make them vomit) or a laxative to clear out bodily systems.
- Emetics were usually strong and bitter herbs like aniseed or parsley.
- Laxatives included mallow leaves stewed in ale or linseeds fried in hot fat.

Question 7

Preventing disease

Answer 7

• The Regimen Sanitatis provided common sense advice on maintaining bodily health. Advice included…
• Take moderate exercise
• Do not overeat
• Bathe regularly
• Live a life free of sin and pray/confess your sins regularly.
• Purifying the air through spreading sweet herbs such as lavender. People might carry a bunch of flowers (called a posy) with them

Question 8

Medieval medics: physicians

Answer 8

• Main role of the physician was to diagnose illness and recommend a course of treatment, but rarely treated the patient themselves… it was up to lesser medics to do this.
• Physicians would diagnose patients by looking at samples of a patient’s blood, urine or faeces, consult astrological charts and also ask the patient about their humoural tendencies.

Question 9

Medieval medics: apothecaries

Answer 9

• Mainly mixed herbal remedies and had a good knowledge of the healing power of herbs and plants thanks to their study of herbal manuals
• Sometimes would offer a prayer alongside a remedy

-Not as skilled or knowledgeable as physicians, with knowledge mainly passed down through the generations.

• Did not require a licence or formal training.

Question 10

Medieval medics: barber surgeons

Answer 10

• Probably least qualified as barbers would perform surgery with little more than a sharp knife and a steady hand… no licence or formal training required
• Would perform surgeries including removal of surface tumours, sewing up wounds or amputations.
• Most common job was blood letting

Question 11

Caring for the sick: Hospitals

Answer 11

-1,100 hospitals in England by 1500, this number having risen during the Middle Ages.

• Offered hospitality (care not cure) to travellers, pilgrims and the elderly.
• Usually run by the church
• Good places to rest and recover as the space would have been kept very clean, with bed linens and patient clothing being changed regularly.

Question 12

Caring for the sick: home

Answer 12

• Most people received care at home in this period, with women providing care for their relatives and dependents.
• Women made patients comfortable, prepared restorative foods and mixed herbal remedies.
• Women were also responsible for the garden, in which they were expected to grow healing plants

Question 13

The Black Death

Answer 13

which hit English shores in 1348.

• Mix of bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic plagues
• Spread from the Far East via trade routes.
• Up to 40% of the European population died
• Symptoms included black buboes (bubonic plague), sneezing and coughing up blood, fever and chest pains.

Question 14

The Black Death: causes

Answer 14

• God had deserted mankind as a punishment for sin
• There had been an unusual positioning of the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn which astrologers interpreted as an omen
• Natural cause thought to be breathing in miasma, thus corrupting the body’s humours.

Question 15

Black Death: treatments

Answer 15

-confess your sin and ask God for forgiveness through prayer

• Initially, physicians tried bleeding and purging, but this did not work.
• Physicians recommended strong smelling herbs like aloe

Question 16

Black Death: prevention

Answer 16

Supernatural means:
- pray to God and fast
- go on pilgrimage and make offerings to God
- show God how sorry you are by self-flagellation (whipping yourself)

Natural means:
- escaping the plague. Guy de Chauliac (physician to the Pope) advised people to ‘go quickly, go far, and return slowly.’
- carry a posy of flowers or fragrant herbs and hold it to your nose.

Common beliefs:
- Doing joyful things like listening to cheerful music
- Stop visiting family members who had the plague

Governments implemented new quarantine laws… e.g. people new to an area had to stay away from an area for 40 days to ensure they wren’t carrying the disease.

Question 17

Why no change? Education

Answer 17

• The main part of doctors’ training was reading the books of Hippocrates and Galen. Doctors were taught to believe that Hippocrates and especially Galen were correct about every detail.
• Trust in Galen was demonstrated by doctors attending the dissections of human bodies (as Galen had recommended) but they were not trying to make new discoveries, they just watched a surgeon dissect a body whilst someone read Galen’s work out loud.

Question 18

Why no change? Respect for tradition

Answer 18

The result of the influence of the Church and of the way doctors were educated meant that people had great respect for the past and traditional ideas.
When English scientist Roger Bacon (1214-92) suggested doctors do their own research and experiments, the Church leaders threw him in prison

Question 19

Why no change? Government

Answer 19

In the Middle Ages the king’s government took a laissez faire attitude. The king’s major jobs were to defend the country in war and keep the country peaceful. Occasionally kings would order towns to be cleaned (e.g. Edward III during the Black Death of 1349), but this was only in exceptional circumstances. No taxes were collected by the king’s government to improve people’s health or medicine.

Question 20

Rational explanations of disease: The Theory of Opposites

Answer 20

• Galen developed the Theory of the Four Humours further to include the idea of balancing humours by the Theory of Opposites.
• For example, he suggested that too much phlegm, which was linked to water and the cold, could be cured by eating hot peppers; a fever could be treated with a cucumber to cool a patient down.