Factors affecting Medicine in the Middle Ages

Factors affecting Medicine in the Middle Ages

1. Religion and Supernatural

   • Monasteries controlled education. Priests and Monks were often the only people who could read. Monasteries controlled what people read. The only libraries were in monasteries. The Church sometimes banned books they didn't want people reading.
   • Church taught that there were supernatural explanations for everything. People believed God, the Devil or the Planets controlled their lives. There was less focus on rational/practical ideas about disease thus incorrect treatments.
   • The Church were afraid new ideas would challenge the Power of the Church. Every new idea was checked to make sure it didn't contradict Galen, or the church. Taught to not have ideas.
   • Built hospitals for people to get better, for the poor and the rich alike. Nuns and Monks ran the churches and took care of the ill.
   • Preserved Ancient Books of Galen and Hippocrates, translated them and taught them in Medical Schools.
   • discouraged dissection, limiting anatomical knowledge
   • monasteries made real effort to provide clean water and effective toilets, had effective public health systems

2. War

   • made doctors scared to travel
   • enabled ideas to spread with other countries, e.g. to obtain and translate Roman/Greek books. Also many muslim ideas (Islam) came to western Europe via. the North African Muslims who ruled Spain
   • gave surgeons opportunity to practise on the wounded, could spread surgical/anatomical knowledge with other countries
   • hindered Public Health as it meant the Government spent money on War instead of on Public Health
   • disrupted trade so countries became poorer
   • fall of the Roman Empire led to destroyed Public Health systems, and medical libraries - leading to a loss of medical knowledge

3. Individual Genius

   • Galen's four humours theory is still in use, still practised and is not correct (no new ideas being put forward)
   • Ibn Nafis dared to disagree with Galen about how the blood flows around the body (although he was incorrect) similarly other Individuals began to challenge Galen
   • Ibn Sinna wrote a million word textbook covering all aspects of medicine.
   • Rhazes wrote the first accurate descriptions of Measles + Smallpox