Medieval c1250-1500 Flashcards
(30 cards)
What organisation was dominant at this time?
The church
What supernatural ideas did the church teach?
God made people ill because he was displeased with them. Another idea was that stars and planets influenced health – the position of planets and astrology was used to diagnose patients and the church started to support this idea.
What was the church responsible for?
Education - set up universities where Physicians were trained
What else did the church control?
The largest collections of books were in monasteries, which meant the church controlled what people read too. People didn’t challenge the church’s teachings/ideas. The church taught that dissection was wrong.
Which individual did the church promote?
Galen
Where were hospitals located
Monasteries and nunneries
What were natural explanations for disease based on?
Ancient ideas
Who was Hippocrates and what did they do?
Hippocrates was a Greek doctor who dismissed all supernatural ideas (that gods were responsible for illness). He devised a natural theory: the Theory of the four Humours.
What was the Theory of Four Humours?
There are four liquids in the human body (blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile); if these liquids become unbalanced, then a person becomes ill.
What did Hippocrates believe was vital?
Observation and recording of symptoms
What did Hippocrates create?
He wrote many books and created the Hippocratic oath (a promise that doctors will act in the best interests of patients)
What did Galen do?
Galen developed Hippocrates’ ideas and created the Theory of Opposites. He also wrote 350 books and drew diagrams of human anatomy (often based on animal dissection e.g. apes).
What was the Theory of Opposites?
This theory was designed to get the humours back into balance – besides bleeding/purging, the theory advised the opposite treatment to the symptoms
How long were Galen’s ideas taught for
1500-2000 years
What was miasma?
that disease was transmitted by ‘bad air’. This was often related to God because bad smells indicated sin.
What were the natural treatments for disease?
Natural treatments included blood-letting and purging (to get the humours back in balance, herbal remedies from the apothecary and burning fires to ‘purify’ the air and combat miasma. They sometimes tried to clean the streets clean.
What was bloodletting?
Blood-letting would cut the vein, at different points on the body for different illnesses
What was purging?
Purging would make the patient vomit or go to the toilet
What were the supernatural remedies?
Praying, going to church, carrying lucky charms or amulets, fasting, going on pilgrimages or self-punishment (flagellation
What did barber surgeons do/
They had no training, carried out blood-letting, did basic surgery (dentistry, wart removal, amputation), and cost less than physicians.
What did apothecaries do?
They received training but no medical qualifications, mixed medicine and ointments from their own knowledge or instructions from physicians, cost less than a physician
What did physicians do?
They trained at university, diagnosed illness and gave treatments, expensive so only available to most wealthy, very few physicians
Who treated you at home?
A female family member of the village ‘wise woman’
What were hospitals like?
The number of hospitals (based in nunneries or monasteries) increased during the Middle Ages but they usually treated pilgrims or travellers, they did not treat infectious diseases. Patients would have been kept clean, fed and given plenty of rest. Hospitals were places to recuperate and receive care
