impacts on health/medicine

• the church had great influence in ideas about health and medicine in the medieval period
• the church taught people that disease was caused by god, the theory of the four humours and also taught Galen's theories because it fit with their ideas
• the church controlled medical learning and understanding as they chose which books to copy and redistribute
• work and harvests had little time for education and reading to expand their knowledge on disease and medicine
• animal dung in the streets and butchery created a lot of dirt in the streets leading to poor health
• people were very religious and followed the churches ideas as they were not encouraged to have their own ideas
• the church controlled education, especially where physicians were trained. this meant there was a lack of scientific understanding as dissections were mostly illegal
• ideas were slow to spread because books were copied by hand and very few people could read
• the printing press wasn't invented until 1440
• taxes were raised for wars so there was little money to keep the streets clean