Health and Medicine during the Renaissance
Before the Renaissance, people did not discover or know much about how the human body works. All of the remedies that they tried and drawings they made were just theories and were not scientifically proven to be correct. Since it was against the church to disect bodies, nobody did it until the Renaissance in which things started to change. Many people became less attached to the church and were starting to become curious and so began exploring how the human body functioned. They cut open bodies and with that made many discoveries. They accurately drew all of the organs, bones and muscles which lead to a huge progress in the medical field. The hospitals also advanced a lot during the Renaissance.
The huge improvement in the medical field started during the Renaissance. As mentioned, many of the remedies and other health treatment were only thought to help, and not proven to do so, such as bloodletting. Bloodletting was a treatment which was thought to cure a patient from an illness (see fig. 1). It was done by cutting open a vein from someone using a special tool called the
…show more content…
Usually hospitals were meant for the wealthy families who could afford it. Now, during the Renaissance it became more accessible to everyone. There was also an improvement in surgical procedures which meant that there was a higher rate of survival (surgical procedure improvements will be explained later). In Florence there were 35 hospitals which were sometimes sponsored by universities, church and public donations. Not much later, other countries in Europe started to follow and do the same. This meant that the number of hospitals was increasing and was beginning to become more popular. Another sign of improvement is that near Venice, on the island of Santa Maria Di Nazareth, a hospital was built specifically for patience with contagious diseases in order to not infect anyone