Due to being uneducated about the sickness, how it was spread and being unable to understand biology of diseases, people assumed that this was retribution from above due to their sins. Many medical and biological advances have been made since the Black Death; we now understand biochemistry and the molecular makeup of diseases, bacteria and viruses. We understand how infection occurs and how to prevent some of the infections and even how to cure most infections. But during this time period these advances had not been made, so they were left speechless. This event caused people to go into streets and beat themselves with whips asking for forgiveness from god, and to engage in other public displays of pain and punishment.
1347 and 1351 Black Death disease medicine was so not advanced doctors converted to astrology and superstition to try to explain the disease medicine they could provide were herbs and bloodletting for plagues sanitation and antibiotics and sulfa drugs social system of integrity and commitment based on land possession herbs, bloodletting, antibiotics, and sulfa drugs doctors don’t give patients medicine to their patient if the moon is in a negative sign jews were accused of poisoning wells then were put to death wore robes of silk with fur trim wanted large fees gave attention to diet, body health, mental standpoint came to patients on horseback would remove cataracts with a silver needle fix a mangled face with skin transplant
Galen used elements to explain illnesses and diseases. He said that your blood/air was hot and wet, yellow bile/fire was hot and dry, black bile/earth was dry and cold, and that phlegm/water was cold and wet. Galen called these ‘humors’, he said when you have a proper balance you were considered to be healthy and when you had an improper balance it was suspected that there was a disease present. In 1668 a man named Hermann Boerhaave was born.
During this time most physicians and scientist believed that cholera and other diseases were caused by miasma or the “bad air” that the people were expose to in the cities where they lived. I found this ideal interesting because at that time there wasn’t actual proof that cholera was caused by the “bad air” that Londoners inhaled in London, but most people believed that the cause of most dieses was the “bad air” that they were expose to which made them create the sewer system that unfortuanlly was how the London cholera outbreak started. In today’s society every time that a new diseases is discovered, scientists don’t believed the first theory that one person has to offer. Today when a disease is discover scientist test and retest their hypothesis, until there isn’t any doubt how the disease is transmitted or what causes the
Some believed the plague was caused by miasmas (bad air) or poisonous vapors associated with decomposition and foul air. Some people resorted to burning incense or other herbs because they believed that the overpowering smell of the dead victims was the source of the disease. Public officials took measures to contain the disease through quarantine by walling up homes that had members with disease. This action had limited success, but still prevented the disease more than in other areas which did not enforce this type of
Therefore, the medicine and treatments that people received for the Black Death were more based upon prayer and miracles, for example, a fifteenth century Italian medical book suggests that plague victims should make a good death through their last rites rather than treating their body . This would have meant that victims would have accepted their fate and exposed themselves to other people, such as the priest that would come to administer their last rites, meaning that the more contagious part of the disease, the pneumonic plague, would have been passed on to more and more people. However, whilst some of the medicines had no use, others did help to prevent the spread of the disease and, while no one had any idea why, some people did survive being infected due to some of the treatments. Lancing the Black Death’s famous buboes was one such treatment .
However, during the Middle Ages, bacteria was an unknown concept and the Jews were the easiest explanation. The Black Death was a plague caused by disease spreading
When my eyes were drawn to this horrid picture, the first thing that came to my mind was “Poor man!” and truly, that was the case. James Gillray illustrated this satiric colored cartoon depicting a man scared half to death because the ‘doctor’ had to draw off the noxious electrical fluid that sat at the bottom of the unfortunate soul with a metallic tractor. Published in 1801 in London, metallic tractors, which were very popular, had been around for a few years. The caption says “METALLIC-TRACTORS” and it shows exactly how medical treatment was conducted in the early 1800’s.
The Black Death was caused by various reasons, non-religious and religious. The disease in Europe, was said to be caused by, miasma (impure air) carried by warm southern winds, the March 20, 1345, conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, excessive clothing or outrageous fashion, and in the near east, caused by, miasma due to wind carrying the stench of Mongol bodies from Crimea,
Medical Science was drastically altered because of the Black Death. During the Black Death people had varied opinions on how to treat the illness. Draining the blood from the body and herbal medicines were popular forms of treatment. Some patients would even have amputations in an attempt to get rid of the
These remedies were based on the cause of the illness – be it natural or unnatural. Often medical ethics and basic philosophy of western medicine clashed with that of Africans’ whose beliefs were based on the supernatural....enslaved Africans maintained their own Afrocentric beliefs and practices associated with certain ailments and they continued to engage the services of the secret doctors. Secret doctors hid their knowledge about medicine, they administered their own remedieswhich included herbal medication and/or amulets, and carried out other healing rituals behind closed
People had no idea how it was caused or how to stop it and began panicking as people died every second. What did people think caused the Black Death? There were many reasons for what caused the Black Death including the humors being off balanced, the movements of the planets, the god and the devil, invisible fumes and poisons in the air and common sense reasons. However there was also barbaric reasons for what caused the Black Death.
Such bloodletting was attached to order. The superior one was in social or ceremonial rank, the more blood one had to sacrifice. For instance, a quantity of the priests had to have their husband pull a tender and difficult line through their tongue three times. After that the priest would then cut his wife's throat. As soon as she died he would then take the same tender and difficult line she worn and drag it through his sex organs until he died.
Some believed that it was God’s punishment. "... Many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment–retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness," (“Black Death” 2010). Some people believed that the plague happened as a result of the planets (McGowen 36). There even were a few people who believed that air poisoning was the cause of the Black Death.
When people got sick they needed medicine, physicians, and health care. In the late 1500 there was not a great deal medican, there was mostly just spiritual analysis. One of the key figures of the medical world was Andreas Vesalius who became Professor of surgery and anatomy at the University of Padua, when he was only twenty three. In most detail Vesalius showed that
