New Directions in Medicine
The medical communities during the Middle Ages were rudimentary at best seeing as the most revered doctors were the physicians, who were said not to have much experience, but instead possessed a completely fabricated truth about the workings of the human body. The physicians, the top of the medical chain, were taught in schools around Europe including Salerno, Montpellier, Bologna, Oxford, Padua and Paris. During their stay at the universities they were taught that most all diseases and problems that occurred in the human body were caused by the unbalancing of the four humors in the body.
The four humors were invented by the Greeks and were different parts of the body each of which represented a part of the universe:
Blood: of the heart - air
Phlegm: of the brain - water
Yellow Bile: of the liver - fire
Black Bile: of the spleen - earth
The physician's job was to asses the four humors of the sick and rebalance them using different remedies including rest thereby healing his patients. There were, nevertheless, other doctors including surgeons, midwives, and barber-surgeons as well as some apothecaries.
Surgeons were the second most respected medical practitioners at the time. Their main jobs included performing operations, setting bones, and bleeding. Unlike the physicians of the time, it was extremely common for a surgeon's knowledge to be almost 100% based on his experience in the field instead of on what he learned in a university. However even with the classical knowledge of the physicians, when the medical practitioners of the University of Paris were consulted by King Philip VI and were asked to explain the plague none of them were able. This shocked the people of the Middle Ages and the health community was forced to reemphasize medicine at that time. As a result surgeons were raised to a more prominent position and war even seen as the equals to physicians. Furthermore, medicine was viewed in a more practical light, a light based 0n experience, like the surgeons saw it. The idea of the the four humors was slowly abandoned.
As mentioned earlier the Black Death not only forced the every day surgeons into a greater role, but it also gave Europe, especially Italy, a heightened sense of awareness concerning health. Laws were passed regulating waste in the streets, bathhouses and prostitution. The cities went so far as to form municipal boards of health who's primary goal was to enforce the new health regulations.
The four humors were invented by the Greeks and were different parts of the body each of which represented a part of the universe:
Blood: of the heart - air
Phlegm: of the brain - water
Yellow Bile: of the liver - fire
Black Bile: of the spleen - earth
The physician's job was to asses the four humors of the sick and rebalance them using different remedies including rest thereby healing his patients. There were, nevertheless, other doctors including surgeons, midwives, and barber-surgeons as well as some apothecaries.
Surgeons were the second most respected medical practitioners at the time. Their main jobs included performing operations, setting bones, and bleeding. Unlike the physicians of the time, it was extremely common for a surgeon's knowledge to be almost 100% based on his experience in the field instead of on what he learned in a university. However even with the classical knowledge of the physicians, when the medical practitioners of the University of Paris were consulted by King Philip VI and were asked to explain the plague none of them were able. This shocked the people of the Middle Ages and the health community was forced to reemphasize medicine at that time. As a result surgeons were raised to a more prominent position and war even seen as the equals to physicians. Furthermore, medicine was viewed in a more practical light, a light based 0n experience, like the surgeons saw it. The idea of the the four humors was slowly abandoned.
As mentioned earlier the Black Death not only forced the every day surgeons into a greater role, but it also gave Europe, especially Italy, a heightened sense of awareness concerning health. Laws were passed regulating waste in the streets, bathhouses and prostitution. The cities went so far as to form municipal boards of health who's primary goal was to enforce the new health regulations.