Treatment of disease in the Middle Ages

• Treatment of disease made little progress in the middle ages, simply due to the lack of understanding in causes of disease.
• Treatments in the Middle Ages often followed the idea of the cause, e.g. religion or the four humours
• It was important to go through spiritual healing for illness, religious healing included: healing prayers and incantations, paying for mass to be said, and fasting (going without food)
• Pilgrimages, to tombs were popular, and the sick would touch holy relics, or pray at shrines to cure their illnesses.
• Herbal remedies to drink/sniff/bathing were given by wise women or apothecaries.
• Many remedies worked, honey was put on wounds to fight infection whilst aloe vera for digestion. Most remedies, used herbs, minerals and animal parts - stye in the eye used onion, garlic, bulls bladder and wine.
• They continued the use of ancient ideas by physicians using the four humours
• Blood letting, cupping, leeching, purging and bathing to remove bad humours or an imbalance in them.
• Blood letting - the most common way to remove bad, humours/blood it included: cupping - putting warm cups onto open cuts to draw out blood into the cups.
• Leaching - using leeches to suck out bad blood.
• Purging - swallowing a mixture of herbs and animal fat to make you sick, or taking laxatives to empty your bowls and ‘cleanse’.
• Bathing - warm bath prescribed with herbs to draw out the humours.
• Supernatural - specific treatments for illnesses, such as magpies beak your around your neck for toothache.
• Barber, surgeons ‘trepanned‘ skulls to release demons, making them ill, but was dangerous!