A Dummies Guide to Medieval Medicine
When was the Medieval period?
Different people put different dates on periods. For this post I’m talking about the period between the fall of Rome through to roughly 1450. Note – some medicine through time courses start in 1350…
What happened when the Roman Empire collapsed?
When the Romans left, so did much of the organisation and investment. In many areas the fall of Rome was quite violent and much was destroyed. This included books and some of the buildings that helped with Public Health. For a long time afterwards there was relatively little spent on Public Health as it was expensive and the money wasn’t availabe because it was often being spent on war. This led to some elements of medicine and health going backwards (regression).
Did everything get worse?
No. People still had access to wisewomen, herbal remedies and could turn to religion or the church for help. Richer people could still pay to see a doctor and there were still surgeons of varying levels of skill. For an ordinary person living in Britain, healthcare would have been little different – the noticeable change would have been the reduced number of trained doctors / surgeons. So whilst there were periods of chaos and war and a lack of learning about medicine, on a day to day level for ‘normal’ people things were little different in terms of medical practices.
What ideas stayed the same?
People still used common sense cures, went to family members for advice and used herbal remedies. There was also continued belief in supernatural causes of disease. A good example of the varied beliefs are the measures taken to try and prevent the Black Death spreading. This ranged from people whipping themselves to try and punish themselves for being sinners (they thought god was punishing them by sending the Plague) to quarantine being introduced in places. Charms, crosses and prayer were used by some, others linked it to bad smells and tried to clean the air. (Many tried a combination of these).
Did anything get better?
Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that things either got worse or just stayed the same in the Middle Ages. Thats not entirely true. As the church became more powerful there were increased numbers of monasteries. These provided infirmaries and helped the poor. The church also helped spread ideas and was largely responsible for the reintroduction of the ideas of people like Galen. Universities began to be built and there were some hospitals built.
What about breakthroughs and big ideas?
There wasn’t a ‘huge’ breakthrough or development in this period (in Europe at least), which is why some people think nothing got better. There were ‘little’ breakthroughs though! Theodoric of Lucca found out that it was best to drain pus from a wound and hemlock was being used to kill pain. Some of the new ideas being developed in the Islamic world started to spread into Europe as well (See this page for a brief introduction to Islamic Medicine).
