Medicine and Science

Robert Gottfried:

Medieval:

• Surprising virtually all medical observers failed to make the connection between plague and the plethora of dead rats that preceded an epidemic.
• Preventative steps were always urged, as Doctors recognised the inadequacies of their curative abilities.
• Best preventative measure was prayer. Purgation through laxatives, diuretics, phlebotomy, and cutery was encouraged. Diet was important, too much sleep was bad.
• Some Christian doctors were often more scientific when discussing cures.
• Beyong purgatives, bleeding and the latter's allied treatments, cautery and cupping, there was little advice.
• Virtually all authorities believed that there was no sure cure - one of the most important legacies of the plague, served to changed medical practice.
• Failure of medical profession was widely noted, discussed and criticised. 
• Organised medicine, particularly the university trained physicians, suffered blow to its prestige and confidence.
• Medieval science was unable to change and respond successfully to its greatest challenge.

Robert Gottfried:

Early Modern:

• New role of hospitals. Before Black death, hospitals were institutions designed primarily to isolate, rather than cure, the sick. After the plague, this began to change - some hospitals remained isolation wards but a substantial began to try and cure their sick patients.
• New techniques in management and organisation, e.g. divided into wards.
• Advances in public health and sanitation. By the 16th century, public health was a common phenomenon in most of Europe's urban centres (examples of boards of health).

Moote A and D:

Medieval:

• Medical practitioners were overwhelmed by the plague as a whole, so largely fell back on traditional methods and treatments as a result.
• Evidence: case study of Nathaniel Hodges - trusted the college's traditional Galenic way of fighting diseases by adjusting the individual's humours through bleeding, purging, sweating and vomiting.
• Also advocated opening the pores and calming the spirits with liquors and soporifics to achieve a balance of the humours, replacing their 'dis-ease' with a healthy 'ease'.

Early Modern:

• However, some progress towards modernisation was made.
• The founding of the Royal Society, a new forum for medical practitioners to discuss their theories created calls for 'renovation', 'reform' and 'renewal'
• BUT, faced resistance from most members of the college of physicians, however some members welcomed the attempt to integrate medicine and the new science.

Paul Slack:

Early Modern:

• Advised against 'general assemblies' of several congregations, instead ordering services in every parish church where 'prudent' care should be taken 'to keep the sick from the whole'.
• Special manual of plague prayers for private use by householders, recommended that houses should be 'perfumed...with frankicense' before prayers were said.
• Clapham - dismissed all natural explanations for plague and attributed everything to divine providence.
• If a true believer dies of the pestilence, it was because of his lack of faith, not because he neglected natural remedies.
• Despite continuing reliance on authority, and a heavy dependence on traditional medicines, there was a marked increased in the amount of contemporary comment and personal reflection in the plague literature.