Leaflet made by: Abdullah Baiyat
Medicine in the medieval times
Western medicine advanced very little in Europe during the middle Ages. Scholarship fell into the
religious sphere, and clerics were more interested in curing the soul than the body. Many people
considered disease and injury to be punishment from god and thought that cures were only
possible through prayer or by punishing them selves. There were still docters that did treatments
and surgery.
Methords of treatment
In the medieval period they still believed
in the 4 humors which meant that many of
the cures involved balencing the humors
that were over flowing. The way they
balenced out the humors was by bleeding,
applying leeches, or causing purging or
vomiting in their patients. Other ways of
balancing the 'natural heat' included the
taking of hot baths, drinking a soup of
yellow lentils, or applying water cooled
with snow. During the time of the plague,
huge Christian processions were held in
which they would wipp themselves to
show god they were sorry.They thought by
doing this god wouls stop punishing them.
• They drank bamboo juice for small
pox.
• Fig poultices for plague sores.
• The monarchs believed that if you
had scrofula (a hand disease) by
touching the king’s hand the
disease will get cured.
Surgery
Docters studied the anatomy of the body
and developed surgery as disections
were allowed. The docters learnt Galen’s
theories however the person that did the
surgery often made mistakes. The
problem of unsuccessful surgery was delt
with but not completely.the docters
recognise that during the surgery
infection and pain were the two things
that mostly caused death. To stop
infection during surgery they used wine
as an antiseptic and drugs to ease pane
however some drugs were very
dangerous.
Changes in medicine during the
medieval period
One of the obvious changes was the training of
docters as ther were medical schools being
established.
There were also some slow changes like after a
little while docters started to question Galen and
Hippocrates teachings were questioned and
things improved.New ideas like the urine chart
wher developed.