Medieval Medicine Flashcards
All 47 cards in this deck
What was the most common supernatural/religious explanation for disease in medieval England?
That illness was a punishment sent by God for sin.
Give one astrological explanation for disease believed in medieval England.
That the movement or alignment of the planets caused disease.
What was the Theory of the Four Humours?
The idea that the body contains four liquids — blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile — and illness is caused by them being out of balance.
What was miasma?
Bad or impure air, believed to be filled with harmful fumes from rotting matter, thought to cause disease.
Why did Galen's ideas remain unchallenged in medieval England?
The Church controlled medical training and supported Galen, whose idea that the body was designed by a creator fitted Christian teaching, so challenging him was discouraged.
True or false? The Church encouraged people to investigate the natural causes of disease.
False. The Church taught that illness was sent by God, which discouraged people from improving their understanding of the cause of illness.
What was Galen's Theory of Opposites?
Treating an imbalance of humours with the opposite quality.
e.g. a cold illness (too much phlegm) treated with hot peppers.Which two treatments followed from the belief that disease was caused by an imbalance of the Four Humours?
Bloodletting (bleeding) and purging.
Give one way medieval people tried to prevent disease caused by miasma.
Purifying the air, e.g. carrying sweet-smelling herbs or burning sweet-smelling materials.
Give one religious action medieval people used to prevent or treat illness.
Prayer, fasting or pilgrimage to a holy shrine.
What was a Regimen Sanitatis?
A set of instructions from a physician on keeping healthy, e.g. diet, exercise and cleanliness, to keep the humours balanced.
What was the role of the physician in medieval England?
To diagnose illness (often by examining the patient's urine) and prescribe treatment, directing the apothecary and barber surgeon.
What was the role of the apothecary?
To mix and sell medicines made from herbs, spices and minerals, often ready-made for people who could not afford a physician.
What was the role of the barber surgeon?
To carry out bloodletting and simple surgery such as pulling teeth and lancing boils.
Who provided care in most medieval hospitals, and what was their focus?
Untrained monks and nuns, who focused on care rather than cure.
Who treated most sick people in medieval England?
The women of the family at home, using herbal and folk remedies.
What was medieval physicians' medical training based on?
The works of Galen and the Theory of the Four Humours, studied at Church-controlled universities.
When did the Black Death reach England, and what were the two forms of the disease?
1348–49; bubonic plague (spread by fleas) and pneumonic plague (spread by coughing).
Give two causes people in 1348 believed were behind the Black Death.
A punishment from God, and miasma (bad air); also an unusual alignment of the planets.
Give one treatment people used against the Black Death.
Bleeding or lancing the buboes; also praying, or using herbal remedies to make the sufferer comfortable.
Give one way towns tried to prevent the spread of the Black Death.
Closing the town gates to keep outsiders out (e.g. Gloucester tried to keep out people from Bristol), or cleaning filth from the streets.
Roughly what proportion of England's population died in the Black Death (1348–49)?
About one-third.
Who were the flagellants during the Black Death?
People who whipped themselves in public to show God they were sorry for their sins, hoping He would end the plague.
How is the Black Death now thought to have been carried from country to country?
Most historians think rats on merchant ships carried infected fleas between ports; when a flea bit a person, the disease passed into their blood.
Give one reason Hippocratic and Galenic medicine was significant in medicine after c1000.
It was a rational, natural approach based on clinical observation, not supernatural ideas — the beginning of a more scientific approach.
Who was Roger Bacon, and what happened to him?
A 13th-century English friar who was disciplined (put under house arrest) for suggesting doctors should do original research rather than trust the old books.
What was most everyday medicine based on for people who could not afford a physician?
Trial and error — many remedies that worked were not understood.
Why were hospitals founded in medieval England, and who paid for them?
Christian charity — Jesus had cared for the sick — so wealthy people and the Church founded them; most were small, often for about 12 patients (Jesus' 12 disciples).
What medical care did a medieval monastery infirmary provide?
A herbalist dispensed herbal medicines to the sick, and monks or nuns nursed and prayed for them.
Who was Rhazes (Al-Razi)?
An Islamic doctor who was the first to distinguish measles from smallpox, and who wrote a huge medical encyclopedia, al-Hawi.
Who was Avicenna, and what did he write?
An Islamic doctor who wrote 'The Canon of Medicine', which listed over 760 drugs and became a textbook in European universities.
True or false? Islamic doctors simply copied the ancient Greeks without questioning them.
False. They preserved ancient learning but were critical of it — Rhazes wrote 'Doubts about Galen' and Ibn an-Nafis challenged Galen on the workings of the heart.
How did medieval surgeons try to stop heavy bleeding from a wound?
By cauterising it — burning the wound with a hot iron to seal it.
What did medieval surgeons use to try to send a patient to sleep during an operation?
A soporific, e.g. a drink or sponge soaked in mandrake, opium or hemlock — dangerous, as the dose could kill the patient.
What made public health in medieval monasteries better than in towns?
Monasteries had planned sanitation — piped clean water, washrooms and latrines — and monks washed regularly.
What did medieval town governments do about dirty streets, and what was the problem?
They passed local (municipal) laws telling people to keep streets clean and remove rubbish, but the laws were not strictly enforced.
True or false? Medieval towns had sewers that carried waste away from houses.
False. Waste was tipped into the streets, cesspits and rivers, and there was no effective sewerage system.
True or false? Medieval people explained disease only in supernatural terms, with no natural explanations.
False. Alongside supernatural ideas such as punishment from God, medieval people used natural explanations like an imbalance of the Four Humours and miasma.
True or false? Islamic hospitals (bimaristans) cared for both rich and poor, and medical students trained there alongside doctors.
True. Islamic doctors also aimed to cure patients, not just care for them.
Who was Abulcasis (al-Zahrawi)?
A Muslim surgeon in Islamic Spain whose medical encyclopedia Al-Tasrif (c1000) described operations and the many instruments he designed; it was later translated into Latin and used by European surgeons.
What did Ibn al-Nafis work out about the heart and blood in the thirteenth century?
That blood passes from one side of the heart to the other by travelling through the lungs, not through tiny holes in the heart's dividing wall as Galen had taught. His work stayed unknown in Western Europe for centuries.
What was trepanning in medieval surgery?
Drilling or cutting a hole in a patient's skull, believed to release evil spirits or pressure causing illnesses such as epilepsy.
Who was John of Arderne?
An English surgeon of the fourteenth century who gained experience treating soldiers in the Hundred Years War. He became famous for operating on anal fistulas and wrote surgical books that drew on ancient and Islamic writers.
How did Islamic medical knowledge reach Western Europe in the Middle Ages?
From the late eleventh century Arabic medical books were translated into Latin, for example by Constantine the African in Italy, and were then studied in Italian medical schools such as Salerno, Padua and Bologna.
What did Hugh and Theodoric of Lucca suggest about treating wounds in the thirteenth century?
That a wound could heal cleanly without forming pus, which most surgeons then saw as a healthy sign, and that washing it with wine helped. Their ideas went against accepted teaching and did not catch on.
Give one reason medieval towns were hard to keep clean.
Any one: towns grew faster than their water supply and waste disposal could cope with; the same river was used for drinking water and for dumping sewage and trade waste; no one knew about germs, so cleaning aimed only at bad smells.
Where did medieval towns get their water from?
Mostly wells, springs and rivers; a few towns built conduits or pipes of lead or wood to bring in clean spring water, such as London's Great Conduit in the thirteenth century.