The Middle Ages
Medicine & Remedies
God & Medicine
Medicine was dominated by religion
Sickness was believed to be a punishment from God for sins
Doctors were priests or other religious scholars
Hospitals sprang up in monasteries and other religious establishments
Patients given food and comforted by religious nursing staff
Little less was done to cure their illness
Traditional cures use herbal remedies & potions were seen as witchcraft and banned from the church
Laws stated that only trained and registered people could practice medicine
Schools and universities began to educate wealthy individuals in religion, the arts, law and medicine
- Generally men, and occasionally a few women, were trained and allowed to become physicians
Surgery
Surgery was a crude practice during the middle ages but operations such as amputations, setting broken bones, replacing dislocations and binding wounds were relatively common
Opium was sometimes used as an anaesthetic while wounds were cleaned with wine to try and prevent infections.
Plague
The biggest challenge to medieval medicine came in the form of the Black death, or Bubonic Plague
In 1347, an outbreak of bubonic plague broke out in Istanbul
Traders soon carried the disease throughout Europe and records show that in some areas it killed up to 90% of the population
We now know that bubonic plague is a form of highly contagious and fatal pneumonia
During the middle ages, the only treatments were superstitious remedies, prayer, herbal medicines and recipes for clearing the air of miasma or poison.
The plague was considered to be a punishment from God and so public health was not considered to be important
- There was never any attempt to control the many rats that infested villages and towns and carried the disease