pearson medicine

• The Christian Church was dominant in medieval society. Belief in religious and supernatural causes of illness were common.
• God and the cause of disease

  The Church taught, and people believed, that God made them ill because He was either displeased with them or was testing their faith. This belief, and trust in ancient medical practices, held back medical research and meant that few new ideas about the causes of disease appeared in medieval times.
• Astrology

  The alignment of planets and stars was thought to cause some diseases. Astrology was used to help diagnose what was wrong with a patient. Use of astrology wasn't new in 1250 but it increased through this period, especially after the Black Death.
• The Church's control of ideas

  Most of what ordinary people learned was taught by the Church. The Church was also the centre of formal learning; it set up and ran universities where physicians were trained. Unlike most people, monks and priests could read and write. Most large collections of books were in monasteries. This meant the monasteries had a lot of influence over what books were written and read. The Church approved of traditional, rational explanations for disease. Dissections were usually performed at universities, but they were not common in this period. The Church also taught that people should follow Jesus' example and care for the sick. Many hospitals were housed in monasteries and nunneries.
• Rational explanations for disease in Medieval England were still based on ideas from the Ancient world, in particular those of Hippocrates and Galen.
• The Four Humours


  The Ancient Greeks thought everyone had a mix of four humours in their body. They believed people became ill when this mix was unbalanced, so to make people better they tried to put this balance right. These ideas continued well into the Middle Ages.
• Theory of Opposites


  In the 2nd century AD, a doctor called Galen developed the idea of the Four Humours further. Besides bleeding and purging to get rid of excess humours, treatment based on his Theory of Opposites aimed to balance the humours by giving the patient the 'opposite' of their symptoms.
• Hippocrates


  Hippocrates was an Ancient Greek doctor. His ideas and books were very influential well into medieval times and beyond. He dismissed the idea that gods caused disease – he believed there was a physical reason for illness, which needed a physical cure. Most of his treatments were based on diet, exercise and rest but he also used bleeding and purging to get rid of excess humours. He wrote the Hippocratic Oath, where doctors swore to respect life and prevent harm. His method of clinical observation – studying symptoms, making notes, comparing with similar cases, then diagnosing and treating – is the basis of the approach used today.
• Galen


  Claudius Galen was a Greek doctor who worked in Ancient Rome. He wrote many books and his ideas were the basis of medical training in the Middle Ages. He developed Hippocrates' ideas and mainly used bloodletting, or purging, to prevent and treat illness, as well as his own treatments based on his Theory of Opposites. He also drew detailed diagrams of human anatomy using knowledge he gained from operating on wounded gladiators and carrying out dissections on dead (mostly animals') bodies.
• Miasma


  Another theory about the cause of disease was that it was transmitted by 'bad air'. This was related to God because bad smells indicated sin. The theory originated in the Ancient world but continued into the Middle Ages and well into the 19th century.
• Prevention and treatment of disease in the Middle Ages was based on rational and religious methods as well as traditional remedies.
• Rational treatments in connection with the Four Humours

  • Bloodletting
  • Purging
• Traditional remedies


  • Herbs
  • Foods
  • Ointments
• Religious treatments


  • Praying
  • Fasting
  • Going on pilgrimage
  • Paying for a special Mass to be said
• Supernatural treatments


  • Hanging a magpie's beak around your neck to cure toothache
• Methods to prevent illness

  • Living a Christian life
  • Self-punishment
  • Carrying lucky charms or amulets
  • Chanting incantations
  • Bathing and washing
  • Exercising
  • Not overeating
  • Bleeding and purging
  • Purifying the air
  • Trying to keep streets clean
• Who treated the sick?

  • Barber-surgeons
  • Apothecaries
  • Physicians
  • Care in the home
  • Hospitals
• What physicians did


  • Observed a patient's symptoms and checked their pulse, skin colour and urine
  • Consulted urine charts in their vademecum (handbook)
  • Consulted zodiac charts to help diagnose the illness and to work out the best time to treat the patient
  • Either treated patients themselves (though this was rare), or sent them to a barber-surgeon or apothecary
• Symptoms of the Black Death included: swelling of the lymph glands into large lumps filled with pus (known as buboes), fever and chills, headache, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain.
• Treatments for the Black Death

  • Praying and holding lucky charms
  • Cutting open buboes to drain the pus
  • Holding bread against the buboes, then burying it in the ground
  • Eating cool things and taking cold baths
• Most historians today think the Black Death was bubonic plague, carried by fleas living on black rats, which brought the disease to different countries on trading ships.
• where patients were treated for disease. Patients were given fresh food and plenty of rest.
• The Black Death, 1348–9
• Symptoms of the Black Death

  • Swelling of the lymph glands into large lumps filled with pus (known as buboes)
  • Fever and chills
  • Headache
  • Vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain
• Treatments for the Black Death

  • Praying and holding lucky charms
  • Cutting open buboes to drain the pus
  • Holding bread against the buboes, then burying it in the ground
  • Eating cool things and taking cold baths
• How people thought the Black Death was caused

  • Religion: God sent the plague as a punishment for people's sins
  • Astrology: the position of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn was unusual at this time
  • Miasma: bad air or smells caused by decaying rubbish
  • Volcanoes: poisonous gases from European volcanoes and earthquakes carried in the air
  • Four Humours: most physicians believed that disease was caused by an imbalance in the Four Humours
  • Outsiders: strangers or witches had caused the disease
• How people tried to avoid catching it

  • Praying and fasting
  • Clearing up rubbish in the streets
  • Smelling their toilets or other bad smells, in the belief this would overcome the plague
  • Lighting a fire in the room, ringing bells or having birds flying around the room to keep air moving
  • Carrying herbs and spices to avoid breathing in 'bad air'
  • Not letting unknown people enter the town or village
• The Black Death reached Britain in 1348, killing about one-third of the population.
• Ideas about what caused the Black Death and how it could be treated tell us a lot about how people in Late Medieval England thought about illness and disease.
• In the Renaissance period there was further investigation into Ancient Greek and Roman theories on disease and anatomy. More and more, the old ways were challenged and existing assumptions were tested. However, some things stayed the same.
• Change in ideas on causes of disease (1400-1700)

  • Fewer people believed in supernatural or religious causes of disease
  • Various new rational explanations for disease were suggested, such as seeds in the air spreading disease
  • Decline in the influence of the Church, and with it the focus on God as a cause of illness
  • Shift to a more scientific approach to diagnosing illness
• Continuity in ideas on causes of disease

  • The theory of miasma continued to be believed by many to be the cause of disease
  • The Theory of the Four Humours continued to be an accepted explanation for disease, although by 1700 very few physicians still believed in it
• Change in the work of physicians and scientists

  • Physicians stopped using astrology charts for diagnosis and timing treatment
  • Physicians realised that urine was not a good indicator of disease and stopped using urine charts for diagnosis
  • Physicians carried out more direct observations and examinations of their patients, rather than relying on the patient explaining their symptoms
• Thomas Sydenham


  Worked as a doctor in London during the 1660s and 70s, outlined his theories and observations in Observationes Medicae (1676), didn't rely on medical books when making a diagnosis but observed patients and recorded symptoms in detail, was instrumental in the 'new' idea that a disease had nothing to do with the nature of the person who had it, based treatment on the disease as a whole and didn't treat individual symptoms
• The printing press was invented around 1440 by Gutenberg. By the start of the Renaissance in 1500 there were hundreds of printing presses across Europe.
• The printing press


  Meant that many exact copies of texts could be produced in a short amount of time, helped reduce the Church's control of ideas, as it could no longer prevent the publication of ideas it did not approve of, the books, and therefore the ideas and discoveries of scientists and doctors contained within those books, could be shared more effectively and much faster across a wider area
• The Royal Society


  Aimed to further scientific understanding by carrying out and recording the results of experiments, sharing scientific knowledge and encouraging new theories and ideas, most significantly, it sponsored scientists to enable them to carry out research, from 1665 the Royal Society published a journal called Philosophical Transactions, in which scientists could share their work and ideas, King Charles II granted a Royal Charter to the society, he was very interested in science and his approval of the society helped it to gain credibility
• Although there were some changes in hospital care, most treatment and preventions during the Renaissance remained the same.
• Continuing treatments and preventions

  • Superstitions and prayer
  • Cleanliness
  • Bleeding and purging
  • Healthy living
  • Traditional herbal remedies
• Changes in prevention and treatments

  • More emphasis on removing miasma through draining swamps, and removing sewage and rubbish
  • People regularly changed their clothes to keep clean rather than just bathing
  • New herbal remedies from newly discovered countries appeared in England, and some were effective
  • The theory of transference led people to try and rub objects on themselves to transfer the disease to the object
  • Alchemy caused chemical cures using metals or minerals to become popular