MIDDLE AGES

• How did the church control ideas about causes?

  - the church taught and believed that God made people ill as punishment

  - most of what ordinary people learned was from the church because it set up and ran universities where physicians were trained.

  - unlike most, monks and preists were literate so they had lots of influence over books that were written and read.
• What were religious treatments of disease?

  - praying

  - fasting

  - pilgrimages

  - paying for a special mass to take place
• What were religious preventions of disease?

  - lucky charms

  - living a strict Christian life

  - incantations
• What were the rational explanations of disease?

  1) 4 humours developed by Galen

  illness = unbalanced humours.

  
  

  2) Miasma

  Bad air= spreading disease

  Church agreed because they believed that bad air = sin
• How did physicians diagnose illness?

  - checking urine
• What were the rational treatments for disease?

  - theory of opposites

  - purging and blood letting

  - laxatives
• What were the rational preventions?

  - cleaning air

  - bathing and washing

  - not overeating

  - exercising
• Why did the church accept the theory of opposites?

  - Galen believed that God made the body and soul, so this aligned with the Churches ideas.
• Who treated the sick in the medieval period?

  - apothecaries

  - barber surgeons

  - hospitals

  - care in the home

  - physicians
• What did apothecaries do?

  - received training but no medical qualifications

  - mixed medicines and ointments based on their own knowledge or directions of a physician

  - they cost money but less than a physician
• What did barber surgeons do?

  - no training

  - carried out blood letting, pulling teeth and lancing boils. They also cut hair

  - basic surgeries like amputations

  - cost less than physicians
• What were hospitals like?

  - travellers and pilgrims often stayed in hospitals during their journeys

  - many were ran by the church so the emphasis was on God and healing

  - usually infectious people were not admitted

  - some hospitals were built for specific infectious diseases.
• How were most people cared for at home?

  - female family member

  - village 'wise woman' would also tend to people in their homes
• What did physicians do?

  - medically trained and unis

  - diagnosed illnesses and gave treatments- referred people to apothecaries or barber surgeons

  - expensive so used mainly by the wealthy

  - they checked urine and consulted charts

  - sometimes treated patients themselves but usually referred
• When was the Black Death?

  1348
• Common beliefs of the cause of the Black Death?

  - God sending as punishment

  - miasma

  - four humours

  - outsiders- strangers or witches caused disease.
• What were the symptoms of the Black Death?

  - fever and chills

  -headache

  - vomiting

  - swollen nymph nodes turning into buboes
• How did people try and prevent the Black Death?

  - praying and fasting

  - smelling bad smells hoping to overcome the disease

  - lighting fires or letting birds fly around to clear the air

  - not letting unknown people into villages

  - carrying herbs and spices to avoid breathing in bad air
• How was the Black Death treated?

  - praying and holding lucky charms

  - cutting open buboes to drain the pus

  - eating cool things to counteract fevers etc (theory of opposites)