Medicine In The Middle Ages

Yes, there were people during the colonial period who had helped expand the colonists knowledge of medicine, like Aristotle, but nothing to significant. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who believed everything was made from earth, fire, air or water. He said that the earth was cold, fire was hot, air was dry, and that water was wet. Five hundred years after Aristotle made his discovery there was a man by the name of Galen who took Aristotle’s ideas and went more in depth with them.

During the 1800s, physicians practiced various medical techniques, such as homeopathy and herbalism, while some physicians invented new techniques, like Electrotherapy. In the early 1800s, physicians relied on the "heroic" medicines for their medical treatments. Physicians classified the "heroic" medicines as treatments that would clean impurities from the body like purgation or bleeding by cup or by leech. For the people and physicians who did not agree with the "heroic" medicine, the development of other medical practices allowed them to deviate from the practices of the "heroic" medicines.

The early modern world period was from the 15th century to the 18th century. The majority of the population lived in rural cities. Life expectancy was not very long, and the lifespan was twenty-five years old. Diseases, famine, lack of medication, and improper sanitation contributed to the low life expectancy. Diet of the wealthy class consisted of bread, meat, and wine however the lower class’s diet consisted of fruits and vegetable.

Medicine is one of the most impactful advantages of modern-day society. Today, medicine consists of vaccines, surgeries, and yearly doctor visits. However, medical practices have existed in very different ways in each period. One of the significant shifting moments occurred during the period of the 1800s to the early 1900s. This hundred-year span marked the start of the exponential growth of medicine and medical operations.

Medicine was not knowledge at the time and often led soldiers to spread illness rather

Medical knowledge in the Middle Ages was very limited and underdeveloped compared to modern standards. Throughout three waves of plague during the fourteenth century, the first one being The Black Death, an estimated 75 to 200 million people were killed. The Black Death (Yersinia Pestis) was an epidemic plague and demographic disaster that killed at least one- third of Europe’s population between late 1347 and the 1350s (“The Black Death, 2016). Every family would have been affected, causing widespread despair, fear and devastation among the population. It was transmitted to humans through infected rat fleas and although similar, it was much more contagious and deadlier than bubonic plague (Routt, & Whales, 2008).

When people got sick they needed medicine, physicians, and health care. In the late 1500 there was not a great deal medican, there was mostly just spiritual analysis. One of the key figures of the medical world was Andreas Vesalius who became Professor of surgery and anatomy at the University of Padua, when he was only twenty three. In most detail Vesalius showed that

Anesthesia did not exist, and remedies for curing disease were more synonymous with witches potions than the medicine prescribed today. Besides the primality of medicine at this time, medicine differed based on if you were a white healer or a black healer. White healers cured people afflicted with insignificant illnesses using outrageously extreme methods. Black healers would mix and feed a person a concoction of roots and herbs that they had found to be useful in curing certain illnesses when they came about. Christine Andrea explains, “Slaves preferred their own doctors to white doctors and their ‘heroic’ purging and bloodletting.”

Health and Medicine during the Renaissance Before the Renaissance, people did not discover or know much about how the human body works. All of the remedies that they tried and drawings they made were just theories and were not scientifically proven to be correct. Since it was against the church to disect bodies, nobody did it until the Renaissance in which things started to change. Many people became less attached to the church and were starting to become curious and so began exploring how the human body functioned. They cut open bodies and with that made many discoveries.

Moreover, for thousands of years, medicine and witchcraft are closely linked. Although the history of medicine dates back to ancient time, but before the development of modern science, health has been stagnant in infant stages. People do not understand the cause of the disease, only by virtue of instinct, intuition, imagination and superstition, the use of plants, animals and minerals and other natural substances to treat pain. Before the 17th century, most of the accidental diseases or natural disasters, would be considered as the attribution from older people or poorer women, means they use witchcraft, also, due to the civil courts, several people testify were enough to incriminate these people. Thus, for centuries this kind of injustice

They would sell herbs and spices for their illnesses. There was no formal training. The fees were low so it would make it popular for the poor (Woolf 11). This was important to the Elizabethan Era because almost everyone could afford herbs and spices. Today, the doctors would prescribe prescription drugs and the people would receive the medicine in a pharmacy.

This resulted in drastic reductions in the standard of living across Europe in the Late Middle

Today, technology is the most relied on resource that people use. During the renaissance, medical technology was not very advanced, but advancements were still made. For example, the first “modern” physicians began to develop, studying physics and astronomy. The first disease to spread among thousands of people was syphilis.

Health as always been a concern no matter the time period and the Byzantines had different ways of going at it. Priests would come and bless the patients and pray that they get better, which sometimes worked because of natural cures. Another remedy would be doctors diagnosing the patient and giving them something that would make them feel better, like purgatives or bloodletting. Although, there were some cases where the doctor could do nothing. Then, Byzantines would turn to magic to help the sick by going to witch doctors.

During Ancient Egyptian times they didn’t have the technology we have today, so the people back then would die from most diseases, which, today we have