Medicine of the Early and Later Middle Ages

1. Lecture 3 Medicine of the Early and Later Middle Ages

2. Lecture Plan • Introduction to the Medieval Medicine. • The Byzantine Medicine. • Medicine in Arab Caliphates. • Medicine in Medieval Europe.

3. MEDIEVAL MEDICINE TIMELINE Later Middle Ages 10th cent. A.D. Early Middle Ages 5th cent. A.D. ancient Renaissance

4. monks folk healers university trained physicians Medieval Medicine

5. Medieval Medicine • The first medical university was founded in the tenth century in Salerno, Italy where Greek manuscripts written by such physicians as Hippocrates were studied.

6. Medieval Medicine and the Four Humors Theory hot choler sanguine dry moist melancholia phlegm cold

7. !notable! Doctrine of Signatures color of flowers and other properties of plants indicated their usefulness in treating particular diseases Medieval Medicine

8. Devine Retribution Due to this belief, many of the sick took pilgrimages in the hopes of recovering by making peace with God. Medieval Medicine

9. Medieval Medicine • This belief, however, did not stop the monks, who were the most literate of the general population, from applying what they had learned by making copies of the ancient medical texts. Each monastery had an infirmary where treatment was available with herbal remedies, based on those prescribed by Hippocrates and others, made from plants cultivated in their gardens.

10. Medieval Medicine Thus, there were: • university trained physicians, all men, who were based in towns and cities and served the wealthy • folk healers, usually women, in the rural areas • healers in the religious orders, who incorporated both aspects of healing into their practices

11. Medieval Medical Practitioners • Physicians were scholars who studied at universities. In order to be declared a physician, a student had to prove himself able to recite, lecture and debate the contents of his studies.

12. Medieval Medical Practitioners • Surgeons belonged to the working class and did the jobs that were considered beneath physicians, such as bloodletting and pulling teeth. Most surgeries were performed by the barber/surgeon. The most common operations were for hernias, gallstones and cesarean section.

13. Medieval Medical Practitioners • During the early medieval centuries it was the monks who copied out manuscripts of the works of Hipocrates and other Greek or Latin medical writers. There is evidence that they practiced the medical knowledge they obtained as scribes. Each monastery had an infirmary for its ailing and aged members. Medical aid would also be provided to the poor, travelers and pilgrims who visited. Some monks gained such a reputation for being skilled healers that they were sought out by lay patients. In some cases the care of such outsiders gave rise to hospitals apart from the monks' infirmaries.

14. Medieval Medical Practitioners • Leeches were lay practitioners whose training was more practical than theoretical. Practicing without proper education, they relied more on informal observation and folk medicine. They may have been apprenticed to a barber-surgeon or physician at some point.

15. Medieval Medical Practitioners • Dentatores were the dentists of the medieval era and were so expensive that usually only the very rich could afford their services. They removed decay, which was believed to be caused by worms, and filled teeth with ground bone. Gold was used for filling cavities by the fifteenth century. They repaired loose teeth with metal bindings and made dentures from ox and other animal bones.

16. Medieval Medical Practitioners • Herbalists (Folk Healers). Practitioners of popular healing varied widely from place to place within Europe. In some areas the healers were mostly women; in other they were predominantly men. In some places the secrets of healing were passed only from woman to woman or from men to men, but in other regions the gender alternated with each transmission. In some places healers were thought to possess inherited skills and if an attempt was made to pass these skills to people without these inherited gifts, they would be ineffectual.

17. Medieval Medical Practitioners • Midwives were taught their duties by other midwives or were introduced into the craft by fathers or husbands who were medical men. Midwives were usually apprenticed to older more experienced midwives. The only requirement for becoming a candidate for midwifery was a statement from the parish priest attesting to the applicant's good character.

18. Medieval Medical Practitioners • Medieval nurses were women who attended to the more basic needs of the ill in hospitals. Many joined monastic orders, but there were secular nursing orders as well, especially during the Plague. As the disease spread women from all socio-economic groups came forward to care for the sick. Noble-born women who became nurses of the poor or sick, were considered "nursing saints."

19. Byzantine Medicine In Byzantine times (from about 400 AD to 1453 AD) medicine shows but little originality. The work handed down to us are all compilations, but as they frequently contain excerpts from lost works they are of some historical value.

20. Byzantine Medicine Byzantine medicine drew largely on Ancient Greek and Roman knowledge.

21. Byzantine Medicine Byzantine physicians often compiled and standardized medical knowledge into textbooks.

22. Byzantine Medicine Arguably the first Byzantine Physician was the author of the Vienna Dioscurides manuscript, created for the daughter of Emperor Olybrius around 515.

23. Byzantine Medicine A gallery of birds from the Vienna Dioscurides Byzantine manuscript.

24. Byzantine Medicine Oribasius, perhaps the greatest Byzantine compiler of medical knowledge, frequently made revisions noting where older methods had been incorrect.

25. Byzantine Medicine Another Byzantine treatise, that of the thirteenth century Nicholas Myrepsos, remained the principal pharmaceutical code of the Parisian medical faculty until 1651.

26. Byzantine Medicine The last great Byzantine Physician was Actuarius, who lived in the early 14th Century in Constantinople. His works on Urine laid much of the foundation for later study in that field.

27. Byzantine Medicine An important contribution of Byzantium is arguably the fact that it was the first Empire in which dedicated medical establishments - usually set up by individual Churches or the State, which parallel modern Hospitals in many way, flourished.

28. Byzantine Medicine The first hospital was built by Basil of Caesarea in the late fourth century, and although these Institutions flourished, it was only throughout the 8th and 9th Centuries that they began to appear in Provincial Towns as well as Cities.

29. Byzantine Medicine • Hospital hierarchy included: • the Chief Physician (archiatroi) • professional nurses (hypourgoi) • orderlies (hyperetai)

30. Byzantine Medicine Doctors themselves were well trained and most likely attended the University of Constantinople as Medicine had become a truly scholarly subject by the period of Byzantium.

31. Byzantine Medicine The Byzantine doctor Myrepsos receiving the Patients, from a greek manuscript, 13th century

32. Byzantine Medicine Christianity always played a key role in the building and maintaining of Hospitals, as it did with most other areas of the Empire. Many Hospitals were built and maintained by Bishops in their respective prefectures.

33. Byzantine Medicine Christianity also played a key role in propagating the idea of charity, medicine was made accessible to all and... simple.

34. Arabian Medicine A second reservoir of medical learning during those times was the great Muslim empire, which extended from Persia to Spain.

35. Arabian Medicine Avicenna’s (980–1037) principal medical work, The Canon of Medicine, became a classic and was used at many medical schools.

36. Arabian Medicine The greatest contribution of Arabian medicine was in chemistry and in the knowledge and preparation of medicines.

37. Arabian Medicine At that period, and indeed throughout most historical times, surgery was considered inferior to medicine, and surgeons were held in low regard.

38. Medicine in Medieval Europe At about the same time that Arabian medicine flourished, the first organized medical school in Europe was established at Salerno, in southern Italy.

39. Medicine in Medieval Europe Remarkably liberal in some of its views, Salerno admitted women as medical students.

40. Medicine in Medieval Europe The Salernitan school also produced a literature of its own; the best-known work, of uncertain date and of composite authorship, was the “Salernitan Guide to Health”.

41. Medicine in Medieval Europe Salerno yielded its place as the premier medical school of Europe to Montpellier in about 1200.

42. Medicine in Medieval Europe Medieval physicians analyzed symptoms, examined excreta, and made their diagnoses. Then they might prescribe diet, rest, sleep, exercise, or baths; or they could administer emetics and purgatives or bleed the patient.

43. Medicine in Medieval Europe Surgeons could treat fractures and dislocations, repair hernias, and perform amputations and a few other operations. Some of them prescribed opium, mandragora, or alcohol to deaden pain.

44. Дякую за увагу!Thank you for your attention!Merci de votre attention!Dziękuję za uwagę!Danke für IhreAufmerksamkeit!