Medieval Medicine, c.1000-1500 Flashcards
(37 cards)
When was Gilbert Eagle’s Compendium Medicine and what was it?
C.1230, a comprehensive English medical textbook blending European and Arabic medical knowledge together
When did the Black Death arrive in England?
1348
Where did the Black Death arrive from? and How?
Asia through trade routes. Bubonic plague spread by infected fleas on rats. Pneumonic through coughing.
What was the Four Humours Theory?
Set fourth by the Greeks (Hippocrates and Galen), the idea that the body was a balance of four humours (Blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm). If balanced you were healthy, if unbalanced you would get sick.
What was a cure for unbalanced blood? (four humours)
Bloodletting or eating and drinking red wine or meat
Who cured the sick in Medieval England?
Barber surgeons (bloodletting and minor surgery); Wise women or men (First aid, herbal remedies, supernatural cures i.e. charms); Travelling healers (extracted teeth, sold potions, mended fractures); Herbalists in monasteries (used herbal treatments, bloodletting and prayers); Trained doctors (expensive, few of the, studied for at least 7 years, used Galen and Hippocrates as well as Compendium Medicine and Avicenna’s canon of medicine)
What Islamic medical text did Avicenna write and what was important about it?
The Canon of Medicine, it highlighted 760 drugs/medicines and was used until 1800.
What did Doctors use to identify/treat disease? (Not supernatural)
Clinical observation (checking pulses and urine); four humours
What did Doctors use to identify/treat disease? (Supernatural)
Position of the Stars and Planets; charms and prayers
How did Christianity affect Medieval Medicine?
1) Christians believed it was good to look after the sick;
2) God sent illness as a punishment or a test of faith, so curing was against God’s will;
3) Monks preserved and copied by hand ancient medical texts;
4) Prayers the most important treatment rather than drunks;
5) Christians created over 700 hospitals between 1000-1500;
6) Church believed in miraculous healing and the sick were encouraged to visit shrines and pray to saints.
7) Hospitals were funded by teh Church or wealthy patrons
8) Hospitals did not cure the sick and so many had priests not doctors
9) Church approved the medical ideas of Galen and Hippocrates and encouraged their ideas in universities; they were not to be challenged
10) Roger Bacon arrested for suggesting doctors should do original research
How did Islamic medical knowledge spread?
Arrived in Italy around 1065 through latin trnaslations from Constantine the African. The unviersities in padua and Bologna in Italy became the best places to study medicine in Europe.
What were the key Islamic ideas about medicine?
1) Encouraged medical learning and discoveries as Muhammad (pbuh) said ‘For every disease, Allah has given a cure’. So doctors were inspired to find them
2) Muslim scientists were encouraged to find new cures and drugs such as senna and naphtha
3) Mental illness was treated with compassio
4) Valued Hippocratic and Galenic medicine, and preserved and learned from the books of the ancient world
5) Muslim hospitals were meant for treating patients not simply caring for them like in the Christian world.
Who was Al-Razi/Rhazes?
C.865-925; Islamic doctor, distinguished measles from small pox for the first time, wrote over 150 books, followed Galen but was critical of him
Who was Avicenna?
980-1037; Islamic doctor, wrote the Canon of Medicine which was an encyclopaedia of Ancient Greek and Islamic medicine which listed over 760 different drugs such as laudanum and discussed anorexia and obsesity. Used until the 17th century.
Who was Ibn al-Nafis?
Islamic doctor; in the 13th century he concluded that Galen was wrong about how the heart worked, claiming that blood circulated via the lungs, but Islam did not allow human dissection and his books were nto read in the West. Europeans continued to accept Galen’s mistake until the 17th century.
Medieval surgery was a risky business for the patient because surgeons…
1) Operated without effective painkillers
2) Had no idea that dirt carried disease
3) Could not help patients with deep wounds to the body
4) Sometimes thought pus in a wound was good (it was not and is not.)
Medieval procedures for surgery were…
1) Blood letting to balance humours
2) Amputation to cut off a painful or damaged part of the body e.g. for breast cancer
3) Trepanning to drill a hole in the skill to ‘let the demon out’ e.g. for epilepsy
4) Cauterisation to burn a wound to stop the flow of blood using a heated iron
What forms of anaesthetic were typically used in medieval surgery?
Mandrake root, opium and hemlock, but too much might kill the patient
Who was Abulcasis?
A Muslim surgeon, wrote a 30 volume medical book in 1000; invented 26 new surgical instruments and many new procedures e.g. ligatures made cauterisation popular.
Who was Hugh of Lucca and his son Theodoric?
In 1267 criticised the common view that pus was needed for a wound to heal; used wine on wounds to reduce invenction and had new methods of removing arrows; clashed with Hippocratic ideas and did not become popular
Who was Mondino de Luzzi?
Led new 14th century interest into anatomy; in 1316 wrote Anathomia which became the standard dissection manual for over 200 years; in 1315 supervised a public dissection in Bologna, the body did not fit Galen’s description so people said the BODY was wrong rather than Galen
Who was Guy De Chauliac?
French surgeon who wrote Great Surgery in 1363 which had references to Islamic and Greek writers like Avicenna and Galen (quoted 890 times); opposed Thedoric of Luccas idea about preventing infection
John of Arderne
Most famous surgeon in Medieval England; set up the Guild of Surgeons in London in 1368. Wrote the surgical manual Practica based on Greek and Arab knowledge and used experience in the Hundred Years War between England and France.
He specialised in operations for anal abscess (swelling with pus), a condition common in knights
Created a painkiller ointment from Hemlock and Opium which removed the need for cauterisation
What was unhygenic about Medieval Towns?
1) Water - as towns grew, increased demand led to rivers being used to remove sewage and other waste.
2) Sewage - towns were usually dirty with few paved streets; cesspits (holes where human waste was put) could overflow onto roads and into rivers
3) Rubbish - poorer areas had dirty streets littered with toilet waste and household rubbish
4) Tradesmen’s waste - leather tanning used dangerous smelly chemicals, while butchers dumped blood and guts into rivers
