Main Paper

• Reason for lack of change

  The church was so powerful, it controlled almost every aspect of life
• How the church controlled ideas about medicine

  1. Encouraged people to respect tradition and ancient ideas

  2. Controlled communication, no printing press until 1440 AD so church controlled production of books

  3. Agreed with and encouraged people to follow the work of Hippocrates and Galen

  4. Controlled education, funded universities and trained doctors to learn through books not practical experiments
• The government at the time did not have a great deal of power over ordinary people's lives, Kings had no duty to improve health and local government had little power to take action to improve public health in towns
• Idea: God and sin


  Disease was a punishment from God or a test of faith
• This idea was taught by the church and reinforced by Bible stories
• Lack of scientific knowledge made it difficult to challenge the church's teachings
• Religious approach to treatment

  Prayers, going to Mass, pilgrimages, belief in the King's healing touch
• Religious approach to prevention

  Prayers, avoiding sin, maintaining hygiene linked to godliness
• Idea: Astrology


  Health affected by position of planets and stars, especially at birth
• Astrology initially resisted by the church but later accepted and encouraged, especially after the Black Death
• Impact of astrology on treatment


  Physicians checked star charts to diagnose and choose correct treatment
• Idea: Four humors theory

  Body contained four liquids (humors) - blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile. Imbalance caused illness
• The theory was based on the writings of Hippocrates and Galen, supported by the church, and difficult to challenge due to doctors' training being based on studying ancient texts not experiments
• Treatments based on four humors theory

  Purging, bloodletting, using opposites, herbal remedies
• Prevention based on four humors theory

  Moderate diet, regular purging, regimens for individual patients
• Idea: Miasma


  Bad air and smells from rotting matter could make you sick
• Idea based on writings of Hippocrates and Galen, encouraged by the church's link between bad smells and sin
• Preventions based on miasma

  Bathing, keeping homes clean and fresh-smelling, carrying posies
• Types of healers


  • Physicians
  • Apothecaries
  • Surgeons/barber-surgeons
  • Home remedies by women
• Physicians were the most expensive, university-educated, trained by the church, and did not actually treat patients directly
• Apothecaries were much cheaper and more affordable than physicians, mixing a wide range of herbal remedies
• Surgeons/barber-surgeons were the cheapest but lacked training, only doing basic procedures
• Hospitals were run by the church, delivered hospitality not medical care, and did not admit infectious patients or pregnant women
• Black Death


  Bubonic plague spread by fleas on rats, killed 40% of those infected; pneumonic plague spread by coughs/sneezes, 100% fatal
• Causes blamed for Black Death

  • Miasma/bad smells
  • Imbalanced humors
  • Punishment from God
  • Planetary positions
• Treatments for Black Death

  1. Religious treatments like prayer

  2. Attempts to rebalance humors by bleeding, purging, herbal remedies

  3. Bursting buboes
• Preventions for Black Death

  1. Religious preventions like prayer, pilgrimage, flagellation

  2. Carrying posies and pomanders

  3. Avoiding bathing

  4. Quarantine (ineffective)

  5. Stopping street cleaning (ineffective)
• Medical Renaissance in England (1500-1700)


  • Some ideas about disease began to change
  • The way doctors treated and prevented disease hardly changed at all
• Factors impacting the Medical Renaissance

  • Changes in attitude (humanism, secularism)
  • Developments in technology (clocks, microscopes, thermometers)
  • Developments in education (new universities, more experimentation)
  • Improvements in communication (printing press)
• Humanism


  A set of beliefs that included rejecting religious ideas and using science and experiments to answer questions about the world
• Secularism


  The idea that religion should be kept separate from other aspects of life
• The printing press allowed for scientific journals to be made to spread scientific and medical ideas
• The Royal Society


  • Scientific society set up in 1660 with a Royal Charter
  • Had its own laboratory and equipment
  • Published the Philosophical Transactions, the world's first scientific journal
  • Had a reference library for members
• God and sin

  The idea that disease was seen as a punishment from God or a test of faith
• Four humors theory


  The belief that unbalanced humors caused disease
• Miasma


  The idea that bad air smells created by rotting matter could make you ill
• Contagion


  The belief that diseases were caused by seeds in the air and certain conditions could spread diseases
• Astrology and digestion were ideas about the cause of disease that were no longer used in the Medical Renaissance
• Transference


  The idea that you could transfer an illness into another object
• Thomas Sydenham


  • Argued against Galen and Hippocrates
  • Believed the cause of disease came from outside the body
  • Encouraged close observation of symptoms
  • Treated the disease causing symptoms, not each symptom
  • Believed diseases could be classified
  • Encouraged use of remedies to treat the disease, not just symptoms