Ideas about the cause of disease and illness

• Miasma:

  • Idea that disease spread through 'bad air'
  • Religion - bad smells related to sin
  • Written about by Hippocratus and Galen - were very influential
  • Swamps, corpses and dead matter could transmit disease
• Supernatural:

  • Alignment of planet and stars, star charts, date of birth helped identifying disease
  • Church disliked astrology - close to fortune telling
  • Black Death believed to be caused by alignement of planets - Church became more accepting
  • Seen as important because it was written about by Hippocrates
• Church/Sin:

  • People were very religious and got education from Church
  • the church ran all libraries and universities which trained physicians
  • People believed Church ideas
  • Illness was seen as punishment from God, test from God, cleansing of soul
  • Recovery was blamed on miracle from God - "proof of the divine"
• Four Humours:

  • Everyone had mix of four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile
  • Humour imbalance causes illness
• why did people believe in miasma and Four Humours: lack of understanding:

  • physicians did not touch patients directly
  • they would only read existing solutions to illness and read medical books which supported the Four Humours
  • dissection was seen as unholy to doctors - this led to lack of understanding of the body from doctors
• why did people believe in miasma and Four Humours:

  book learning:

  • 5% of people in countryside and 20% in towns were literate
  • many people could not read or write
  • the works of Hippocrates and Galen would be written in ancient Greek - they both pushed for the Four Humours
  • physicians were able to read in ancient Greek because they were taught by universities ran by the Church
  • ordinary people though highly of their opinions, so would follow their beliefs