Medieval medicine

Four Humours:

Black Bile/Yellow Bile/Phlegm/Blood

•  Imbalance causes illness ---------> Have to be balanced (bloodletting)

Animal Dissection:

• Dissected pigs and monkeys----------> Dissecting people was frowned upon (flood and hanged murderer)
• Made mistakes--------> Thought jawbone was two bones (only 1)

Observation:

• Had to observe patients for long time before diagnosing-----> more accurate and reliable

Why so influential?

• Books covered everything-----> people believed he had all the answers
• Supported by the church------> people highly religious at the time

Believed in four humours (same theory as Galen)

Hippocratic oath:

• Made sure doctors were reliable
• Stopped doctors from simply trying to make money (had to be qualified)
• Did it because he felt patients were being treated unfairly

Observing and recording:

• Helped diagnosis to be more accurate
• More likely to find cure if doctors had better knowledge

Natural treatments:

• Change in diet and lots of rest-----> believed these caused disease

Keeping healthy:

• Reccomended a light diet, gentle exercise and rest to keep humours in balance

Ways it helped:

• Quran told muslims to look after sick and needy.  Insisted cleanliness.
• Arabs skilled in eye operations (removing cataracts and tumours)
• Hospitals built in muslim cities (Bagdhad and Cairo)
• Translated work of Galen and Hippocrates into Arabic (given to medical students)
• Doctors had to have a licence to practice medicine
• Checked druq quality in major cities
• Used opium to send patient to sleep
• Gave tips on surgery
• Avicenna wrote a textbook caleed the canon of medicine
• Rhazes first person to spot difference between smallpox and measles
• Islamic ideas taken back to Europe

Ways it hindered:

• Believed illness caused by God
• Islamic law forbade the dissection of human bodies
• Some Arab doctors used astrology to help to treat patients

Ways it helped:

• Taught it was religious duty to care for the sick
• Founded hospitals run by monks and nuns
• Nuns gave herbal remedies
• Copied out medical books in monasteries
• Supported Galen's ideas

Ways it hindered:

• Taught that religion was cause for some illness

Barber surgeons:

• Used big tools such as axes and saws to treat patients
• Had little or no training
• Used to remove external diseases e.g. ulcers

Antiseptics and anaesthetics:

• Believed wine could be used as an antiseptic
• Used natural substances e.g. mandrake and opium as anaesthetics

Dirt causes disease:

• Had no knowledge that dirt causes disease
• Lots of death from bleeding, shock and infection

Epilepsy treated by cutting a hole in the head of the patient to let the demon out (trephining)

Run by monks and nuns

Advantages:

• Provided nurses 
• Provided clean conditions
• Offered rest

Disadvantages:

• Had no medicine
• Did not perform surgery

Leper houses:

• Places used to isolate people with contagious diseases

Conditions:

• Lots of waste flowing through streets
• No sewers to take away waste
• Towns had bath houses (roman baths)
• First hospitals built (St. Barts)
• Houses boarded up during black death
• Houses made of wood,mud and dung
• 'gongfermers' paid to clear out cess pits

Beliefs about causes:

• Imbalance of 4 humours------->Air, earth, fire, water
• Dirt and bad air
• Outsiders such as jews------> burned at the stake 
• God's punishment-----> People whipped themselves in public
• Close position of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars

Treatments:

• Make and light candles as offferings to god
• Opposites---> Rainy outside, light fires
• Doctors had NO idea
• Surround yourself in fumes worse than black death to ward it off