Middle Ages Flashcards
What happened to the church?
It became very powerful
Monasteries controlled education and only libraries were there, made an effort to provide clean running water and toilets
Priests and monks only people who could read
Opened medical schools and taught ideas of Galen as they fitted with the church’s views.
How did religion hinder disease and infection?
Doctors reverted to herbal remedies and superstition
Uroscopy
Astrology
How did the church help health in the Middle Ages?
Set up hospitals for sick and poor
- run by monks and nuns
- genuinely ill often turned away due to fear of spreading of disease
What theory’s did they use in the middles ages to explain cause of disease?
Imbalance of humours God Miasma - bad air Worms Astrological alignments
What was public health like in the middles ages?
War destroyed Roman public health systems
Waste thrown on to streets
Water stored next to cesspit
Animals roamed streets
Street full of rooting flesh and bones
Rakers to clean streets
Found it healthier to drink beer than water
What were methods of prevention of the spread of disease and infection in the Middle Ages?
Prayer, votive candles . Flagellation
Bleeding purging
Clean streets, sit in a sewer
Anti-semitism
What did they use for treatments of disease and infection in the Middle Ages?
Same as prevention
Herbs
Hospitals
What developments in surgery happened in the Middle Ages?
John Bradmore - metal forceps to remove arrow
Removed splinters from skull and stones from bladder
Henri de Mondeville - challenged Gallen, said try not to produce pus
Removed small tumours
Removed cataracts from eyes
Used mandrake, opium or hemlock to make patients drowsy
Wine first used as an antiseptic
What was knowledge of anatomy like in the Middle Ages?
No dissection in UK between 500ad -1500ad
Galen was not challenged
Islam made new discoveries - Ibn Al Nafis discovered circulatory system in the 1200s
What are the key factors for the Middle Ages?
Religion - hospitals, Islam, support Galen, monasteries provide models for public health
Government- no single government, didn’t see job as to provide public health
War - Muslim ideas to Europe, surgical improvements, destroyed Roman public health systems
Science and technology- loss of health systems, declined
When was the Middle Ages?
500ad - 1500 ad
What did Al-Razi and Ibn Sina do?
Al-Razi - distinguished difference between measles and smallpox, improved Galens ideas
Ibn Sina - wrote medical books, cannon
What was a major development in helping to spread ideas made in the Middle Ages?
The Printing Press (1445)
What caused a great demand for surgery in the Middle Ages?
Warfare - but surgery held in low regard, many procedures left to untrained barber surgeons
Surgical treatments still simple
Explain the Black Death - 1348.
Spread by coughs and sneezes or by rats carried overseas
Most victims died, struck down by it suddenly.
Ships were quarantined
