Herbal Remedies In Medieval Medicine

Herbal remedies are not as simple as just determining the illness and giving the prescribed medicine, without having knowledge of the body. The fundamental element of medicine in the Medieval time period is the theory of humours. This theory followed through until they reach the 19th century where more modern analysis could conducted. Humours also known as principle fluids are made up of four different fluid found in each individual: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. Each of the fluids are found in different organ of the body, black bile resides in the spleen and is the cause for melancholy, yellow bile is secreted by the liver and can cause irascibility, phlegm comes from the lungs and can be denounced to sluggishness, and the final

Benedictine abbess along with healer, Hildegard of Bingen having been integrated within the church for many years. Hildegard had made his assumptions that the presence of black bile or any of the other three fluids found in the human body is a direct connection to the devil. It is to believe that if a person has sinned, then the imbalance has occurred and cannot be corrected so easily. Christian and pre-Christian ideas in combination of other medical theories provided the church with the notion that involves elves and fairies. These creatures were a pre-Christian beliefs that were the cause of diseases, later development into the Christian beliefs where they were replaced with the devil. People flocked to the church to be relieved from these aliments and protection from God for they have not sinned. The life of the believers were in the hands of God, but not all could be mended by his hands, are now only guided by his

One of the procedures is known as trepanning, this was the process where the surgeon bore a hole in the person’s skull in order to alleviate any of the cerebral pressure or mental illness. People brought in with wounds with no way of sewing them up, were seared closed. Cauterizing had become a quick patch up for soldiers out on the battlefield as a way of fighting off an infection, this in theory was not always found in practice. A wound seared too little or too much could cause the infection to spread quicker. Along with some of the more grueling operations, amputation have been seen all throughout history. Amputations were not always the safest practice in Medieval times, many of the patients would die from shock of blood loss of an infection. Those that did survive the procedure would have complications from the lost