Religious Healing

Medical knowledge of the day was inadequate for solving many
health problems, so healing through prayer and divination seemed
like a logical option. Since physicians and healers could be expensive
and were not available in some communities, faith healing
offered advantages. Anyone could pray for help at any time, and
every community had religious leaders to whom they could turn
for this type of healing.

Treatment: Popular Medicines

Medicines were used by both empirics and university-trained doctors as part of most treatments. Medications were compounded by the medical healer or physician, or later on, by the local pharmacist
from ingredients kept in an apothecary. Trial and error was very much a part of the treatment process. The results were mixed, ranging from effective (there was some knowledge of good pain killers and laxatives) to harmless (similar to taking a sugar pill with possible improvement from the psychological expectation
of getting better) to dangerous (some remedies—or their dosages— were actually poisonous)

Diagnosis and treatment Methods

Medieval medical healers and physicians took diagnosis and
treatment of their patients very seriously.

Medieval Hospitals

Hospitals in medieval times were not really hospitals in the modern sense of the word. While some offered minor medical care, they were primarily created to offer food and shelter to travelers (“hospital” is derived from the Latin word hospes, which means guest or foreigner). Religious entities were the primary sponsors of
these facilities. A Christian organization, the Knights Hospitaller (later known as the Knights of Malta), established many hospitals during the 12th century in areas through which people traveled on the Crusades so that soldiers and pilgrims would have a place to rest and get food. Over time, the Knights of Malta began to expand its offerings, establishing facilities elsewhere in Europe.

Early Scientists

Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–80) was a priest born in Germany,
who was educated at Padua and went on to become a fine teacher
in Paris. While a certain degree of science had been used during
the Roman Empire, Albertus was the first European to use the
scientific method. He built his theories on Aristotle and added
to these the idea that there could be the possibility of chemical
change. The church ultimately canonized him as a patron saint
of scientists.

Other Healers: Apothecaries

Healers tended to rely on herbs and common ingredients that
they could grow or easily gather. More advanced medical professionals
often requested ingredients that had to be imported,
and for which they turned to apothecaries, the forerunner of
today’s pharmacist. Apothecaries always maintained full stocks
of the more popular herbal cures and spices, such as saffron,
"background made him attractive enough that he was invited
to base himself in Italy at the Schola Medica Salernitana
(Salerno). Many of the works of Greek and Roman philosophers
and physicians, including Galen and Hippocrates, had
been preserved by the Islamic countries and translated into
Arabic.

“The Articella” as a Basis for University Teaching

The Eastern Roman Empire preserved a good number of medical texts from Greek and Roman times, where they had been rewritten in Arabic in order to make them more widely available throughout the Islamic Empire.

University-Trained Physicians and Others Who Learned from Books

The creation of medical training programs in a university setting
was one of the most important developments in medicine
during the Middle Ages, and the men who trained at universities
became the elite of the medical profession. The university movement
began in the 12th century with the founding of universities
in Paris (1150), Bologna (1158), Oxford (1167), Montpellier (1181),
and Padua (1222). In Oxford and Paris, medical instruction was
informal at first. By the 15th century (1436), Padua had become
the most highly respected of the medical schools, with fifteen medical
professors.

folK heAlerS

In the early part of the medieval period, folk healers were all that
existed to help anyone who was sick or injured. The term empiric
was used as a pejorative by some during the Middle Ages when
referring to folk healers; while the word generally is used to describe
methodology based on experience, it was used by medieval physicians
to describe those who practiced using skills honed through
experience, but without regard to the science or “deep insight” into
the problem. Empirics made up the largest group of health providers
in medieval Europe, and both men and women were included.
Some of these empirics were generalists; others specialized in one
type of care or another. (Midwives, discussed in chapter 5, would
have been included in this category.) Their approaches to treatment
varied widely, from fi rst-aid measures (simple cleaning and bandaging)
to the use of medicinal herbs or prayers and magic.

Belief in the Four Humors Continues

The four humors and the importance of keeping them in balance
in order to maintain good health was the most influential of the
theories that were passed down from the Greeks and Romans; it
was actually a dominant factor in medicine until the 19th century.
A physician or healer was to assess the basic composition of each
sick person and then establish a method to rebalance the patient’s
humors for better health. The factors that could affect humoral
balance ranged from diet and the environment to the position of
the stars.

Medical beliefs in Medieval times

The fall of the Western Roman Empire altered the pace of progress
for the people of the medieval era. Parts of Europe were
so disrupted that chaos overshadowed any type of scientifi c or
medical knowledge. In other areas, the culture held together well
enough that some of the medical practices from Greek and Roman
times survived to be passed on to later generations.

The Middle Ages

studied and wrote about the circulation of the human blood; and
Ambroise Paré (1510–90), who was a leader in surgery. Syphilis
was a major scourge of this time, and the way that society coped
with what seemed to be a new illness is explained. Not all beliefs
of this time were progressive, and the occult sciences of astrology
and alchemy were an important influence in medicine, despite
scientific advances.