MEDICINE THROUGH TIME PART 2 - MEDIEVAL MEDICINE

HISTORY REVISION NOTES

               MEDIEVAL MEDICINE (476 – 1453)

               Medieval civilisation

·         Medical knowledge lost when the Roman Empire collapsed.

·         Lack of resources to build public health systems.

·         People encouraged to rely on prayer and superstitions to cure them = prevented medical exploration.

·         Europe developed into small fiefdoms, each governed by local lord.

·         Division = knowledge spread slowly; extremely difficult/dangerous to share knowledge with so many fights between fiefdoms.

Medieval Medical knowledge

·         Greek and Roman books of knowledge were lost.

·         Universities = lectures were rudimentary (undeveloped), involved a butcher pointing to parts of the body, and reading a passage from books written by famous doctors e.g. Galen.

·         Church forbid dissection of human bodies = couldn’t explore and misunderstood anatomy, e.g. Italian doctor Alderotti claimed ‘combing the hair comforted the brain’.

·         Believed that disease was caused by:

1) Four Humours.

2) Demons.

3) Sin (flagellants whipped themselves to punish)

4) Bad smells.

5) Stagnant water (water that doesn’t flow/move)

6) Jews.

7) Miasma (bad air).

Medieval Surgery

·         Surgery left to barbers-surgeons (NOT trained…