Medicine

• Treatments used in medieval England (c1250-c1500)

  • Religious and supernatural treatments
  • Healing spells and incantations (spells)
  • Humoural treatment
  • Cutting a vein
  • Fasting
  • Pilgrimages
  • Leeches
  • Cupping
• Remedies


  Herbal infusions e.g. theriaca
• Preventing disease


  • Different foods would rebalance the humours
  • Keeping the air pure
  • Carrying bunches of flowers or pomanders
• Medieval 'medics'


  • Physicians
  • Barber surgeons
  • Apothecaries
• Physicians


  • Had to take a degree that was between seven and ten years long
  • Diagnosed patients but barber surgeons or apothecaries would carry out the treatment
  • Diagnosis process: collection of samples, checking against astrological charts, analysing the humours
• Apothecaries


  • Created medicines, treated patients, created charms
• Barber surgeons


  • Did smaller surgeries and bled patients, had lots of practical experience
• Bathing


  Warm baths stopped blockages, impurities would exit the body, plants and herbs were put in the water
• In 1348 the Black Death came to England from Europe
• Black Death


  • Bacteria came with fleas carried by rats in merchant ships
  • Symptoms were buboes which swelled and filled with pus
  • Roughly a third of the population died
• Causes of the Black Death


  • Religious and supernatural: punishment for sin, unusual planetary positions
  • Natural causes: impure air (miasma)
  • Blaming Jews
• Treatments of the Black Death

  • Supernatural: prayer, asking for forgiveness
  • Natural: bleeding, purging, herbs like aloe and myrrh, theriaca
• Preventing the Black Death

  • Supernatural: pray to God, fast, go on pilgrimage, self-flagellation
  • Natural: run away, stop bathing, hold flowers to nose
  • Government: quarantine laws
• There were epidemics such as the plague and many serious diseases, so more people wanted to learn about medicine
• Alchemy became more popular
• There were new discoveries about the body (anatomy)
• Scientists like Galileo and Copernicus started to challenge what the Church was saying about medicine
• Paracelsus said the Theory of the Four Humours was not true
• People understood the digestive system and realised urine could not be used to diagnose disease
• Physicians recorded more observations of patients
• Improved communications


  • More people were able to read and write than in the medieval period
  • In 1440 the first printing press was invented. By 1500 there were hundreds of presses in Europe and this meant information could be produced quickly and took power away from the Church
• The Royal Society was set up in London in 1660 to share and talk about science. The king supported this society. In 1665 a journal, Philosophical Transactions was published each year. Discoveries published here were respected.
• Scientific approaches to diagnosis

  • Humanism developed in the Renaissance which made learning about new things popular. They did not think God was responsible for disease, but many still relied on Galen and Hippocrates' theories. E.g. in the 16th century 590 editions of Galen's works were published.
• Thomas Sydenham


  A well-respected physician who made people rely less on Galen and Hippocrates. Instead of using medical books he made observations of patients during diagnosis. He treated each symptom separately rather than seeing all symptoms as a result of one cause.
• In 1628 there was a new theory in Britain that blood moved around the body rather than was created in the liver (Galen)
• In 1676 Observationes Medicae argued that illness was caused by things outside the body rather than the humours.
• In 1683 a more powerful microscope was developed.
• Prevention


  • People thought you could stop yourself from getting ill by avoiding things such as draughts, exhaustion, too much food, strong alcohol and laziness.
  • At this time people also thought that your 'constitution', how strong or weak your body was, could help you avoid illness.
  • Being clean was seen as important: in the 16th century Henry VIII had to close many bathhouses because of the rise of syphilis. People therefore changed their clothes often rather than bathing to avoid disease.
  • Atmosphere/weather was seen as increasingly important and barometers and thermometers were used to measure this.
  • Miasmata was still seen as a problem. You would be fined if you did not keep the area outside your house clean.
• Treatment


  • A new theory called transference was used in this period. This was where an illness could be transferred to something else if it was touching it. E.g. warts were cured through rubbing them with an onion.
  • Herbal remedies were still used but extra herbs from the New World. For example, sarsaparilla from the New World used to treat the Great Pox. Another example is that Thomas Sydenham made the idea of using cinchona bark from Peru to treat malaria popular.
  • Chemical cures; this was a new science called latrochemistry or medical chemistry. In the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, published by the College of Physicians 1618, there were 122 chemical cures. An example of a chemical cure is wine left overnight in an antimony cup-if drank in the morning this would make the patient vomit, so is a type of purge.
• Andreas Vesalius


  The most famous anatomist. He studied at Paris and Padua which were important universities at this time. In 1537 he published Six Anatomical Tables which showed different parts of the body. He used this when he gave lectures. He then published On the Fabric of the Human Body in 1543 after dissecting many bodies of criminals. In doing this he found 300 mistakes in Galen's works as Galen had dissected animals. Vesalius encouraged other doctors to dissections and popularised them. Artists drew the diagrams of dissected bodies in his works.
• Medical care


  • Education for apothecaries and surgeons grew 1500-1700. Both professions needed licences to work.
  • Physicians: their training courses did not change much in this time and most still learned from books rather than practice. Although dissection was now legal, it was very hard to find corpses. Due to the printing press many more textbooks were available, and poorer medics could get copies of pictures in the books: these were call fugitive sheets.
  • In the 16th century in hospitals patients would get good food, a visit from a physician and medication. After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 many hospitals closed as many were attached to the Church. New hospitals were developed that catered for specific diseases these were called pest houses.
  • Local communities often looked after the sick, including women caring for others and often the aristocracy e.g. Lady Grace Mildmay (1552-1620).
• William Harvey


  He studied medicine in Cambridge and Padua, important universities at this time, and by 1618 he was a royal doctor to James I
• William Harvey


  • He was very interested in dissection and wanted his students to observe the body rather than just read about it in books
  • As a professor he taught Vesalius's theory that veins had valves in them
  • He dissected bodies and found that Vesalius was right
  • He also discovered that blood flowed towards the heart, which went against what Galen had argued (blood was made in liver)
  • He proved that all veins and arteries were linked together
• William Harvey's experiment


  1. A tight cord was tied around an arm (cutting the blood flow)

  2. When the cord was undone slightly blood could flow into the arm but not out of it

  3. This was because arteries (taking blood away from the heart out to the body) were deeper than veins
• William Harvey's theory


  The heart acted like a pump, which disagreed with what Galen had argued (blood flowed through invisible pores in the heart)
• Why people believed Harvey's theory

  • Other people, such as Vesalius, had disagreed with Galen before
  • Harvey was personal physician to Charles I so it made him look like a good physician
  • The Church was now less powerful so it made it easier for Harvey to disagree with Galen
  • There were new technologies such as pumps used to fight fires which inspired Harvey
  • People were looking for more logical explanations to the human body in this period
• Many think his book (An Anatomical Account of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals) was the start of modern physiology
• • Lots of doctors did not pay attention to Harvey's research
  • He was criticised by some doctors
  • It was difficult to apply in everyday medicine
  • His ideas were not used in universities until 1673
• Great Plague


  A disease spread by fleas on rats
• The Great Plague lasted

  June to November 1665