Medieval Medicine 1250-1500

• Miasma theory


  Belief that purifying or cleaning the air could prevent sickness and improve health
• Physicians' protection against disease

  • Carrying posies or oranges
  • Burning juniper, myrrh, incense during Black Death
• Purifying air


  Helped with other health conditions like fainting (e.g. burning feathers and making people breathe the smoke)
• Prayer and repentance treatments

  Belief that disease was a punishment from God, so sick people were encouraged to pray and repent
• Other remedies


  • Lucky charms containing powered unicorn horns, saying certain words to make treatment more effective
• Bloodletting and purging caused more deaths than they prevented, but remained popular despite observational evidence
• Physicians


  Male doctors, trained at university for 7 years, had little practical experience, read ancient texts and writings from Islamic world, used hand books and clinical observation to check patients' conditions
• In 1300 there were less than 100 physicians in England
• Seeing a physician was very expensive, only the rich could afford them
• Apothecary


  Prepared and sold remedies, gave advice on how to best use remedies, trained through apprenticeships
• Barber-surgeon


  Surgery was very dangerous, no way to prevent blood loss, infection or pain, apprentice-surgery by barbers only attempted rarely and poorly, only very minor procedures e.g. treating hernias, pulling teeth or treating cataracts
• Surgery was not a respected or well-paid treatment in medical England
• Most sick were treated at home by members of the family, mainly women of the house
• A few public hospitals existed, but most sick were treated at home
• Some people thought you could catch plague through bodies of dead victims
• When towns' cemeteries became too full to take plague victims

  1. They refused to extend the cemetery inside the town

  2. They said a new cemetery should be built away/outside of the town
• Edward III closed parliament to entertain the safety of people


  1349
• The Black Death was a series of plagues that first swept Europe in the mid 14th century
• Two illnesses involved


  • Bubonic plague - spread by bites of fleas from rats carried on ships, caused headaches, high temperature, puss-filled swellings
  • Pneumonic plague - airborne, spread by coughs and sneezes, attacked lungs, painful to breathe, caused victims to cough up blood
• Historian think that at least a third of Britain's population died as a result of the Black Death
• No one at the time knew the cause of the plague
• Beliefs about the cause of the plague

  • Judgement from God
  • Sin
• These prevention methods were mostly ineffective as the ideas about the cause were incorrect
• Hippocrates and Galen


  Very influential in medical diagnosis and treatment
• The work of Hippocrates and Galen was considered as the truth like the bible
• Hippocrates and Galen wrote down their best ideas and these were translated into Latin books
• The work of Hippocrates and Galen was considered important by the Roman Catholic Church
• Many of their ideas were taught after they died for centuries, even the incorrect ones
• Galen only ever did animal dissections, not human dissections, so some of his ideas were wrong
• Humours and miasma


  Incorrect theories, but rational as they assumed disease had natural causes rather than supernatural causes
• Hippocrates believed the body was made up of four fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile
• Hippocrates, Galen, and the Roman Catholic Church believed that doctors should treat patients based on the theory of humours
• The theory of miasma proved that people needed to be hygienic, as it was linked to the four seasons and the four elements
• Galen believed disease was treated using the opposite of the humour that was causing the problem, using things like foods, drinks, herbs, and spices
• The theory of humours and miasma was so influential that it lasted until the 1860s, when it was replaced by the Germ Theory
• Medieval doctors used bloodletting, purging, and other treatments based on the theory of humours to try to restore the balance of fluids in the body
• The Church discouraged dissection and encouraged the idea that disease was a punishment from God, preventing people from trying to find natural cures
• The influence of the Church over medicine meant there was no progression in medical knowledge until the Renaissance