Medieval: 1250 - 1500

• Background info:

  • Most work in farming - low literacy rate
  • Church has large influence
  • Very little experimentation/science
  • Reliance on old ideas
• Key people:

  • Hippocrates - 4 humours
  • Galen - built on Hippo's work, Theory of Opposites
• Key events:

  • 1348 - Black death arrives
  • 1440 - Gutenberg invents printing press
• Key ideas (Causes):

  • Religious
  • Astrology
  • Miasma
  • 4 humours
• Religious causes - God sends disease as punishment for sin
• Miasma - bad air thought to cause disease. Generated from rotting matter etc
• 4 humours:

  • Body is made of 4 - blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile
  • Illness is caused when humours are imbalanced
• Astrology causes - people's star signs, and planet/star alignments can cause disease
• Key ideas (Treatment):

  • Religious treatments
  • Supernatural
  • Humoral treatments
  • Herbal remedies
  • Hospitals
  • Home
  • Doctors/healers
• Religious treatments - prayer, fasting, flagellation, pilgrimage
• Supernatural treatments - star charts for prescription, spells and charms
• Supernatural treatments - star charts for prescription, spells and charms
• Humoral treatments - balancing humours via phlebotomy (bloodletting), purging, and Theory of opposites
• Theory of Opposites - rebalancing humours using the opposite quality (e.g excess cold phlegm treated using hot peppers)
• Herbal remedy treatments - mixture of herbs for bathing, drinking, smelling. E.g theriaca mix
• Hospitals:

  • 1st in 1123
  • Most owned by the church and run by monks/nuns - no physicians
  • Mostly cared for people instead of curing them
  • Infectious, terminal, and pregnant patients were rejected
• Home treatments - most people were poor so had to be treated by unqualified women in their homes/villages using homemade remedies
• Doctors/healers:

  • Physicians - trained at university with Galen/Hippo's books. Only diagnosed and prescribed. Very expensive
  • Barber surgeons - small operations and surgeries. Learned from experience
  • Apothecaries - made herbal remedies. Learned from experience. Cheaper than physicians
• Key ideas (Prevention):

  • Religious
  • Lifestyle
  • Purifying air
• Religious preventions - avoiding sin, confessions, paying churches
• Lifestyle preventions - hygiene and diet advice given by physicians in a Regimen Sanitatis
• Purifying the air prevention - carrying sweet herbs, government cleaning streets
• Black death - plague spread by fleas on rats. Killed 1/3 of population
• Black death causes:

  • God sent it
  • 1345 alignment of planets
  • Miasma (main idea)
• Black death treatments:

  • Religious - prayers, accepting God's will
  • Humoral treatments - mostly didn't work
  • Air purifying - bonfires and flowers
  • Herbal remedies - mostly ineffective
• Black death prevention:

  • Religious - prayers etc
  • Purifying air
  • Escaping plague towns
  • Avoiding negativity
  • Government action - quarantines (hard to enforce)