Religion and belief in the supernatural were key factors in the development of ancient medicine. They influenced the way that people thought and the way in which they lived their lives. The supernatural could be used to explain aspects of medicine that people didn’t understand at that time. Not everything was blamed on the supernatural, people did have some natural ideas about medicine and it’s causes and treatments. As the prehistoric age was a long time ago and no written language had been developed at the time it is difficult to get much evidence from this period.
We do however know that trepanning was common practice. This was when a small hole was drilled into the patient’s head to release evil spirits that were believed to be the cause of the patient’s bad health. Spirits were often thought to be the source of illness and disease in prehistoric times. People had a variety of ways to keep evil spirits away and these included wearing charms, casting spells and chanting. A witchdoctor or medicine man would usually cast spells and chants.
It was also believed that if somebody pointed a pointing bone at you they were taking you’re spirit away and this was also believed to bring you bad health. Despite this belief in spirits and the supernatural the prehistoric people did have some basic natural treatments and cures. These natural cures would be used if the causes of the injuries or illnesses were known. For example if somebody had broken a limb it would be treated with splints and cast in clay. In Ancient Egypt people believed in a number of Gods.
These included the God of healing, the God who gave doctors the ability to cure people and a Goddess who sent and cured epidemics. People who were rich and important such as pharaohs were mummified to prepare their bodies for the afterlife. This involved having vital organs removed from the body and preserving them in jars. The bodies were embalmed in spices and wrapped in bandages. The Egyptians could have learnt a lot about the anatomy from this. The Ancient Egyptians also believed in spirits and like prehistoric people they too used charms, amulets and spells to keep them away.
The Egyptians had more time to actually think about their medical ideas. This resulted in them having more natural theories on the causes and treatment of illness. They thought that if somebody was ill it could be that their blood vessels were blocked or flooding, this was because they compared the human body to the River Nile. The Greeks, like the Egyptians, believed that there were many gods. One of these Gods was called Asclepios and was the Greek God of healing.
Asclepions were temples that were named after Asclepios and this was where Greeks went if they were ill in the hope that Asclepios would visit them in the night and heal them. Despite this more and more people were coming up with natural ideas on how to treat illnesses. Hippocrates was a Greek natural thinker and his approach to medicine was very different from those before him. He believed that it was important to study a patient’s symptoms and write them down before attempting to treat the patient this was known as clinical observation.
Hippocrates also came up with the theory of the four humours. This was when he linked certain illnesses to certain seasons. For instance it showed that phlegm was linked to winter because people were more likely to get colds during this season. Public health was very important in Ancient Greece and this was partially due to Hippocrates who believed that hygiene and exercise was an important part of a healthy lifestyle. It was also important in Asclepions as operations often took place here despite the fact the patient would have thought it was Asclepios curing them.
The Romans like the previous two races we looked at were also polytheistic and this very much influenced the ideas of medicine at the time. Galen was a doctor who was in Rome for twenty years. He was a natural thinker. He thought that it was important to dissect bodies to learn more about the anatomy. However in some places this was forbidden because of religious beliefs so he had to dissect bodies of apes and other animals. His findings were recorded in books and passed down to future generations.
If we look at all the evidence we can see that the supernatural was very important in Ancient medicine and a lot of the medical ideas were indeed based on the supernatural. However this certainly does not mean that medicine was based entirely on the supernatural. There were many physicians whose treatments were based around natural medical ideas but they were often restricted in their exploration of the medical world by the religious framework in which they had to work. Then of course some cures worked because they were based on medical fact but at the time people believed it they was down to the supernatural.