Medicine during the middle ages was a subject that was looked at in a much different perspective than how it is perceived today. Medicine as it is performed today is much more accurate, precise and logical compared to the middle and dark ages. The middle ages relied on much more theological and spiritual theories rather than actual physical and medical theories. During the middle ages scientific method was very sparse in Western Europe and this is probably one of the main reasons there was very little logical theory used in medieval medicine.
As far as medical “technology” had come before entering the Middle Ages, it is easy to admit that it did not make much of an advance or leap in success during the majority of this time. During this time much focus encircled healing the soul rather than the body. Many theologians and even some medical practitioners believed that the cause of diseases and illness came through sin, destiny and even astral influences. This eventually led to a massive death total in Western Europe. Since that much of medieval medicine was based on religion and spiritual aspects, it’s not surprising that churches did much of the medical teaching in the Middle Ages. The church stated that in some cases God would send illness as a punishment to sinners and other evil-doers and the only way to cure yourself was to pay repentances, and this was the theory that the Western Civilization lived by to cure diseases and illnesses.
Church and religion was primarily one of the main focus points during the dark ages. Much of life during the middle ages set their goals and values based on religion which is arguably different from today. Even though there is still a large religious population existing on earth today, it was still much larger during the middle ages. It is easy to say that much of man and woman based their daily lives and values on religious boundaries. So it might sound weird to someone to say that medicine and other medical subjects were based significantly on religion and spirituality, but back then that is all they had to base there ideas on and technology was not a factor.
The actual cures that the population of the Western civilization had for their diseases were still not logical antidotes or remedies but were more reasonable as a whole. Humours were the main underlying principle of medieval medicine. The medieval theory believed that within every person there were four humours or fluids that needed to be present to keep a person healthy. These for humours were the black, yellow, phlegm and blood biles. For instance they believed if someone had too much of the phlegm humour, then they would develop lung problems because the phlegm bile was produced in the lungs. The main logical aspect of this treatment was the fact that they had actual working remedies for these problems. Patients were put on diets, or were exposed to blood-letting by leaches to reduce the blood bile.
A good portion of the medieval medicine ideas came from an ancient Greek physician known as Galen. Galen was a man of many interests and looked into many professions before focusing on medicine. He did much of his studies like dissections and other experiments of that sort on pigs, apes and other animals because dissection of the human body was strictly against roman law. Dissection of these animals taught him a lot but did lead to a lot of knowledge mistakes on the human body because humans and animals are obviously structured much differently internally. He finally became more understanding of the human body when he became a physician for a gladiator school. Working on many cases of trauma and open wounds let him gain more knowledge on the human body and he called this “windows into the body.”
Galen’s research and experiments set a tone for the rest of the world to absorb. Galen was one of the first, and quite possibly the first person to actually start to understand the functions of the human body. Galen gained much experience from working on his gladiator subjects and discovered a lot of different aspects about the human body, for example: body functions, body parts, and other things in that such nature. What is most incredible about this is that Galen did not have the tools or technology that the current people that live on this earth have now. Galen must have been a very intelligent individual to be able to work with individuals such as the gladiators and his other patients and be able to comprehend what was going on with their body. This is primarily why he was a role model for much of medieval medicine.
The prior remedies were not the only assessments made during the middle ages. Herbs were also a tool used in the belief of the Christian faith in the Western civilization. The herbs proved as a form that God has given a form of “prescription” for every illness, these usually coming from animals, vegetables or minerals since it was believed that God created everything on earth. All of these seemed to carry a type of signature that indicated what part of the body or fulfillment that they medicated. The seeds of skull caps were used to cure headaches basically because they resembled little skulls and white spotted leaves were used for tuberculosis because they looked like diseased lungs. Besides the use of herbs and fulfillment of humours, other Christian beliefs were used, for example certain shrines. Many ill patients were brought to specific shrines that were supposably used to cure patients of specific illnesses and diseases. Although sometimes possible “miracles” occurred, this belief turned out to be a great downfall for the medieval period. What is known as the “Black Death” plague Leprosy killed many people of the Western civilization because the use of spiritual and religious forms of medication simply did not work.
Although in the middle ages they were obviously not as technologically advanced as we are today, surgeons and physicians did exist. But there was a big difference between the two. For the most part physicians aided to problems that surfaced inside the body and surgeons dealt with other problems like wounds, broken bones, amputations and other severe medical problems. This makes sense because that is how the medical world works today, physicians are basically the people who are able to diagnose the problems and the surgeons focus on the technical work. After a noticeable amount of people were not being healed correctly, the people demanded that surgeons, physicians and others of that sort to be medically trained for a number of years to be able to practice on patients which is still demanded upon to this day. Many medical professionals were scholars and priests which made sense because even though medicine was starting to become a little more logical it still followed a Christian path. Any untrained physicians were liable to be prosecuted and fined.
Even though it is stated that medical advancement did not take place during the middle ages, there are reasons why the practice stayed in place and at least made an attempt to become better. This reason is because of the up-rise of epidemics. The “Black Death”which was actually a pandemic which killed over seventy-five million people in Europe in the 1340’s. But that was not the only epidemic. Other diseases occurred, for example Leprosy. Leprosy is an infectious disease that is caused primarily by mycobacterium. This disease is a close relative to tuberculosis but is different in the fact that it cannot be grown outside of other living animal cells. This was unknown back in the Middle Ages however because of the lack of technology and killed many Western civilians. The main remedies used to attempt to cure these people came from obviously religion. As stated earlier, shrines, statues and prayer were used to help heal the diseased people but it was not a successful attempt.
For an overview, for the most part medieval medicine was very useless in most cases and did not enhance until they started to follow Islamic practices which were much more enhanced and useful. Islamic practices were much more helpful because they focused on other medical interests rather than just religion. The Islamic medical field seemed to be much more advanced than Western Europe. They based their medical practices on more logical boundaries than Western Europe. The Islamic practices were more focused on physical medical attention which was more logical and is the main practice today. Islamic physicians actually traveled to help cure many of the people of the medieval Western civilization. It cannot be certain what other medical tools or remedies were used in this time because not all of that time of history was recorded but it is certain that we have come a dramatically long way since then.
Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_medicine
http://library.thinkquest.org/15569/hist-6.html
http://www.maggietron.com/med/epidemics.php
The Cambridge History of Medicine, Porter, Roy,
Visualizing Medieval Medicine And Natural History, 1200-1550, Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds, Alain Touwaide
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