?Medieval towns and public places may not have been clean by modern standards, but Medieval people understood the connection between clean living and good health. Occasionally, they took a bath about once a year. Medieval towns did not have systems of sewers or water pipes like Rome had but they did have the river flowing in channels under the Fountains Abbey. Medieval towns were filthy. Garbage and human waste was thrown into the streets. However for most people sanitation was non-existent. . Despite the lack of public health many towns had public bath-houses where you could pay to have a bath.
In source A it shows toilets and washrooms. This contributes to a better public health system because then there is no human waste in the streets attracting rats, mice and lice which contain a variety of diseases and fleas. Also the washrooms help towards personal hygiene. Personal hygiene is important because it exposes you to diseases, infections and bad odours. Most people in Medieval times never saw a doctor. They were treated by the local wise-woman who was skilled in the use of herbs, or by the priest, who pulled out teeth, set broken bones and performed other operations.
Their cures were a mixture of superstition (magic stones and charms ), religion (for example driving out evil spirits from people who were mentally ill). This is also known as trephining and herbal remedies . In souce B it says ‘ … The pain will stop at once as I have often seen. ‘ If a medevial doctor has found a cure/charm that has worked more then once they will use it. People in the Middle Ages believed that plants had magical powers, so therefore by using the ‘magical plants’ the person who is unwell or injuired will be healthy again. Plants were used for medical purposes as well as for spells.
Alot of people in the middles ages thought that it actually worked, however, there is no scienctific proof that it is wasn’t just mind over matter. In the source it also says ‘ In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen… ‘ This is refering to Christianity and God. People using this method of treatment obviously thought that God was curing them. Sources C and E are similar as they both show natural methods of curing disease but source D shows a supernatural method. In source D Edward the Confessor was a important figure who was believed to have the power to heal.
He began the royal custom of touching ill people to cure them. In source D the doctor is making the patient vomit to restore the balance of the four humours and in source C they are using no supernatural methods just the taste, smell and heat of a smaple of blood from patients to find what is wrong and cures. It is a suprise to see Hippocrates as a medieval doctor because he was a greek physician. Medieval doctors tended to be uncritical in their acceptance of Greek and Roman ideas and not very innovative. They believed that there was little new to discover.
The Theory of the Four Humors did force Medieval doctors to observe their patients carefully, using the Greek idea of Clinical Observation, (which is still used today) and it did lead them to diagnose and recommend treatments based on Hippocrates’ and Galen’s teachings. Patients with plenty of money could hope for a doctor who followed Hippocrates’ discoveries, observed his/her symptoms to come to a diagnosis based on the theory of the Four Humors and prescribed treatments based on the idea of re-balancing the humors in order to restore health.
Such treatments might take into account the season of the year, as each humor was held to be sensitive to its own season (yellow bile to summer, black bile to autumn, phlegm to winter, blood to spring). A patient might be prescribed more, or less, exercise, hot baths or certain foods Source G it is talking about leprosy. The association of lepers with the unclean is seen in the popularity of baths as a treatment for leprosy, however in the medieval time baths were not very frequent. The rules for lepers tells you that lepers were forced to wear a distinctive style of clothing .
Also they were forbid to go near anyone and they knew by stopping the disease from spreading it would wipe it out. In souce H it shows that in the medieval times doctors surgery and pharmacies were quite modern seeming as in this day and age you have your pharmcey round the corner from your doctor. Also it shows that to make people feel better they had to prescirbe medicine. Bloodletting is the of often small quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease.
Doctors did it to balance the humours, as it was thought that a surplus quantity of it was to cause ill health. All four elements – fire, earth, water and air – were thought to be present in the blood, and so bloodletting was believed to return the patient to general good health. Bloodletting was still popular because surgery was still a crude practice and surgeons tried to avoid it. Also there was lots of methods of bloodletting, these included rubbing sugar-water to leeches. In source I it tells you a extract from a medieval gruide for doctors.
In the extract it included a critical bit of information why bloodletting was so popular, money. ‘After he draws their blood he tells them in order to gain an extra fee, that he sees by their blood that they will need another bloodletting. ‘ People in the middle ages needed the money for paying to go to church so they could get rid their sin and paying the rent and taxes so they had a home. People in the middle ages who wasn’t rich didn’t have much money unlike the luxury life kings and lords had.
So this had to result into bloodletting to gain an extra fee. . Other examples can be linked to the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen. For example, someone who had a cold or a fever needs to be cooled down or bled to rebalance their health(humors). Doctors at this time could also make use of some tests. They used urine charts to analyse what may be wrong with a patient, also the taste. In source C it is a natural way of seeing what is the diagnosis and is still used today how ever we do not taste, smell or use the heat to see what the problem is.
Hippocrates’ is a natural way of curing also however it would not be used today because you wouldn’t balance the four humours you would find the problem and get treatment to cure it. In soucre F it is also a supernatural way of curing someone however we would not use the theory of four humours to cure someone by using the four elements and make sure they were in balance. This theory came to a discovery of another balance of the opposites, this included trying to find the underlying cause of the disease.