Medicine during the medieval era was multifaceted, relying on the skills of several classes of practitioners. The ill and aged were treated by university trained physicians, monks or folk healers, depending on the patients economic status. Though medical practices and procedures in the middle ages are generally considered obsolete and relying on herbal remedies, prayer, spells, and incantations, there were also surgeries performed and cure perfected that are similar to modern day procedures. The first medical university was founded in the 10 th century in S alamo, Italy.
Medieval physicians followed the Greek belief that the body was made up of four humors-sanguine (blood), choler, phlegm and melancholia. They believed that the primary cause of illness was and imbalance of the humors. All the humors had specific characteristics. Sanguine was hot moist, choler was hot and dry, phlegm was cold and moist, and melancholy was cold and dry.
The doctors worked to decide with humor was at fault and then balance it out. Sometimes doctors would purge and humor with herbal remedies, and or administer laxatives. Bloodletting was also a more rememberable “cure” to an illness. The dangers of blood letting are obvious, infection weakness, cutting up of an artery instead of a vein and causing unstoppable bleeding, accidental cutting of nerves and loss of consciousness by the patient. More often the not the result of bloodletting was either continual sickness or death of the patient. As improbable as it sounds, bloodletting fit perfectly into the humor theory.
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Bad blood with drawn from the humor with the problem would leave only the good blood to take over and become fine again. Phlebotomy (bloodletting) was considered by medieval medicine be a form of surgery. Bloodletting allows for the control of the humors in a certain part of the body. Phlebotomy was administered in two ways, derivation or revulsion. Derivation meant letting blood of a certain point to close off and infected area. Revulsion meant that blood was let at the most remote point to the affected area.
Both methods had specific use for different illnesses and were widely practiced by many medieval physicians. Faulty observation and misdiagnoses built the foundation for the theory of humors as the major medical explanation for health disorders of the medieval people. As an example, after Lent there would be many illnesses. After a long harsh winter with malnutrition, people would then again give up something, most likely a food that was expensive. This caused many problems in households with an imbalance in the humors.
Also the major food group, which was meat, was for the most part salted. Many people developed the first symptoms of scurvy out of the lack of vitamin C in their diet. As soon as lent began meat was prohibited according to the Catholic tradition, and the diet was soon implemented with other ingredients especially fresh herbs and vegetables during the spring time. The improved diet obviously improved the health of a medieval person.
There are very few documented surgeries, this is because there weren’t many options for surgery other then bloodletting. This is probably due to the fact that successful anesthetic procedures were not known until the 19 th century. But that is not to say they it was not attempted, it just was not successful. Potions were made for a surgery to relieve pain or induce sleep during the procedure. Some of these potions were more lethal then the surgery itself. For example, one was made up of lettuce, gall from a castrated boar, briony, opium, henbane, and hemlock juice-the hemlock juice in itself could have easily caused death.
A potion used as an anesthetic was called a dwal. Dwal meant deception, delusion, evil, or dazed. Dissections were only completed by a few surgeons. These people had to have strong stomachs and be very brave to explore a deceased human body. These “experiments” were looked down upon by the Popes and higher priests in the Catholic church. But and odd fact to point out is that the Church not only allowed but actually ordered cesarean sections done on dead pregnant women in attempt to save the unborn child’s soul.
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The fascination with the human body, however, was no put to its end but yet continued in during the Renaissance time period. The medicines in the Middle Ages more often than not would take the form of herbal remedies. In accordance with the humor theory, most plants, food substances, and commonly found house items were specified as either cold, hot, dry, or wet so that they could be used to balance out the humors. For example, pasta (hot) would be used for hot stomach, and cold and dry linen was applied to dry up infections. Many of these herbal remedies came from the church were the brothers and sisters of the Catholic Church were trained in this medical area.
The Black Death and Leprosy were widely infectious and well-known diseases during the Middle Ages. In early 1347 a fearful epidemic of bubonic plague broke out in Constantinople. From then on the great plague took over Europe and killed approximately 1/4 to 9/10 of the population in its affected area. There is much to tell of this disease, so in sort it was a highly infectious disease that would be transmitted by inhalation abrasion of skin or ingestion. Lung lesions, were a common in a person with the plague as well as death from heart failure. “The walls of blood vessels are attacked frequently causing hemorrhages and acute blood poisoning.” , states one web site.
And this Black Death was fatal in almost all cases. Another disease that swept across Europe was Leprosy. It is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium lep rea, a first cousin to tuberculosis bacteria. We cannot be sure that Leprosy was actually the disease that was “found” in the middle ages but it was often a diagnosis to many patients with disfigurements. It was almost as if a doctor that had a patient that he could not properly diagnose had leprosy. It was almost a if leprosy became a scapegoat.
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Although this disease was not as fatal as the plague it caused the leper to be isolated. Lepers were usually be banded to leper hospitals or leper communities. In many cases leprosy meant separation from ones family. Aside from herbal remedies, the Catholic church was a cure for almost anything.
Eventually the Catholic church would take over the medical aspects of the society providing sources for healing rituals. “Christians should not pamper the body at the expense of the sour or be consumed with the material temporal to the detriment of the spiritual and eternal” (Amundsen 6).
De Medicament is Liber by Marcella (1536) taught how to cure ills using plants, gems, and other natural substances. Although this was frowned upon by the Church, it was considered bearable as the importance of medications grew.
The use of drugs was permitted as long as no non-Christian incantations were used. The tension between the church the folk medicine arose had its basis in the dependence of the latter upon sources that were non-compatible with Christian faith. There were a books that most physicians used. They were called leech books. Bald’s Leech book, one of the few remaining, proposes a curious structure for the analysis of a human body.
Book 1 of this leech book writes about prescriptions for various ailments. The second book contains things such as recognition of signs of diseases and the occasionally attempts of diagnosis. Hospitals, or rather centers for the sick, became steadily more popular. Of course the majority still received treatment at home.
For the few that had the cash to spend could use the services of the monasteries for the few hospitals in the more urban areas. The term hospital was vital and flexible. It encompassed hotels for travelers and indigent students, dispensaries for the poor, clinics and surgeries for the injured, homes for the blind, and lame, the elderly the orphaned, and the mentally ill. Almost one half of the built hospitals was directly affiliated with monasteries and churches.
To summarize this era and the medical technology would be easy. There was none. The church took over quickly and before that it was men who “tinkered” with human bodies and made guesses on the treatment for the patient. The fact that these people know almost nothing about the human body played a large role in why the death rate was so high.
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“The film explores the complexities of the human body by investigating, in great detail, the functions the body performs routinely every day,” notes executive producer Jana Bennett. “We investigated and portrayed the human body in ways never seen before. This film brings images to the audience on a scale never before captured in the history of cinema.” To make The Human Body come alive took not ...
NO one know what a human needed to survive. Diseased people were considered disfigured and were banished and said to be non-existent. You would think that bleeding someone to death hundreds of times would give you a hint that that procedure was no good, but these people had no idea. When we look back and see how far we have come it makes you think how much you really appreciate our modern day medical technology.
