Summary: History

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• 1 Health and the People

• 1.1 Medicine stands still

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• What were 4 supernatural beliefs about disease?

  • Disease was a punishment from God for peoples sins
  • The cure was prayer and repentance
  • It was caused by demons and witches
  • Caused by evil spirits inside people and cured by exorcisms

• What 3 influences did the church have on medieval medicine?

  • Encouraged the idea that disease is a punishment from God preventing people from trying to find cures 
  • Scholars had to study from the incorrect work of Galen as it fit with religious beliefs
  • Church outlawed dissection so doctors couldn't learn about human anatomy

• What 3 ways was astrology used to diagnose disease?

  • Doctors owned an almanac calendar which included information about planets used to predict how there health was affected
  • Different star signs were thought to affect different parts of the body.

• What was the Four Humours theory?

  • Hippocraties believed the body was made up if four fluids- blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
    
  • These were linked to the four seasons and four elements
  • Galen believed diseases could be treated using opposites to throw the humours back into balanced 

• What was the miasma theory?

  • Bad air (human waste and dead bodies) causes disease when someone breathes it in.
  • It originated in Greece and Rome and was incorporated by Galen into the Four humour theory
  • It lasted until 1860 when it was replaced by the Germ Theory.

• How were Hippocrates and Galen influential?

  • The church regarded their work as the absolute truth
  • They were taught for centuries after their death, but Galen only dissected animals so ideas about anatomy were very wrong
  • The hippocratic oath is still used today and it is the belief that doctors should observe patients as they treat them 

• What 11 ways did people use to treat disease?

  • Praying
  • Pilgrimages 
  • Flagellants (public self-whipping)
  • astrology
  • bloodletting - leeches
  • purging - laxatives 
  • purifying air- posies and oranges
  • remedies from apothecaries 
  • physicians 
  • public hospitals 
  • barber surgeons 

• What progress was made in surgery?

  • Hugh of Luca and his son began dressing wounds with bandages soaked in wine to clean and prevent infection 
  • They realised pus wasn't a healthy sign 
  • John Ardene developed a deadly anaesthetic which could be used in controlled dosages

• What was health like in towns?

  • Houses were made of wood and crammed together- overcrowding and fires
  • No clean water supplies or sewage systems
  • Toxic waste thrown into drinking rivers
  • In the 13th century a clean water channel was built
  • In 1388 the government ordered town authorities to keep the streets free of waster

• What was health like in monasteries?

  • Wealthy so could afford to build infrastructure and waterways to keep water clean 
  • populations were small with one leader who had the power to enforce rules