Medieval Medicine: 5th To The 15th Centuries

Medieval medicine, spanning from the 5th to the 15th centuries, was an ancient way of healing wounds, illnesses, and even beliefs. Medieval medicine was deeply rooted in tradition, superstition, and religion. Drawing upon ancient Greek and Roman techniques passed down through generations, ancient spiritual rituals, and crude models often inspired medical treatments based on animal dissections or ancient texts that were sometimes inaccurate or incomplete, with some practices including prayers as a medical treatment. These medieval treatments were completed by particular people who considered themselves ‘doctors’ or, more commonly, physicians or healers. These ‘physicians’ held esteemed positions within their communities, commonly known for their

Through these factors and a lack of anatomy knowledge, there were great impacts on the success of medical treatments.

Example 1:

One factor that impacted the success of medieval treatments was herbalism. Herbalism is an ancient healing art that relies on the therapeutic properties of natural herbs. Passed down through generations, herbalists, or apothecaries, possessed intimate knowledge of local flora and their medicinal uses, such as healing or taking pain. Herbalism was used because of the deeply rooted belief that plants could heal. These beliefs came from dictation on Luna cycles, which led to each herb having supposed healing properties based on its taste, smell, and appearance. This was believed to correspond to the four bodily fluids. However, the lack of anatomical understanding among physicians led to misguided treatment approaches. An example of this would be the commonly used herbs, nightshade and hemlock, that were ingested as pain relievers, muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatory agents, and as a treatment for whooping cough and hay fever. These plants are now considered toxic by modern standards, and the use of these plants would cause adverse health effects and even fatalities. Without a

Physicians lacked an understanding of disease transmission, and surgical techniques led to infections running rampant, undermining the success of medical treatments and causing unnecessary suffering and death. Physicians had no ground knowledge of the anatomy, so there was limited understanding of how disease spread between the body or between individuals. This lack of understanding caused complications while giving treatments because the physicians would unknowingly transmit diseases into the systems of patients because of the uncleaned tools. Physicians would commonly have a set of tools that would be used on everyone and would require minimal to no sanitation or cleaning in between patients. These surgical procedures carry a high risk of infection because of their limited anatomy knowledge. Though there is no record of how this caused unsuccessful practices because the medieval people did not know the impacts that hygiene and sanitation had on the human anatomy, sanitation was a major factor in the success rate of medieval practices, seeing as all practices should have included some type of hygiene to maximize success. Overall, the lack of anatomy knowledge among medieval physicians severely limited their ability to develop effective medical treatments. Because of this limited knowledge, medieval physicians