Medicine in the Middle Ages

Medicines, something essensial that you problably have or had to take in at least once in your life. It could be essential for your health, but what is it all about. How did medicines exsist and how was it practices many centuries ago? In this text, we will teach you all about how medicine was used centuries ago.

The meaning of medicine

Medicine is basicly the act to care for someone that is not feeling good or that is injured. Medicine is not simply just a pill that you drink in to become better. However,it is related to it, but the meaning of Medicine is far more broad and complex. It is for examplem, the act of trying to research about what kind of way you could heal someone and to discover the problem as of why the person became sick or how it all works out. This has been practiced since the prehistoric times. At those times, it was seen as some kind of art and something prestigous to do if you knew how to. It also was mostly connected with religion, that it was in God's hands if you were to be healed or not. It would also sometimes be claimed that ceartain illnesses and diseases were the work of God to punnish hummanity. It was also connected to philosophical belives that the medicine man could heal you with simple ingredients like herbs and to pray with it. However these days, medicine is combined with art and science. The science part might be self explenatory, it is basicly the research what diseases there are and how to kill them. The art part is simply how you would give someone the medicines to get healed. There are for example many ways to get medicines inside of your body, this could be trough a syringe, with a pil or with an infusion. In today's world, the old and ancient methods of medicine and healing is now considered to be a alternative medicine while the newly developed medicines is considered to be the main source. This happend cause it has proven that the newly made medicines are simply way more effective into preventing diseases and healing people.

Medicine before Feudalism

In the prehistoric ages, alot of herbalism was used as medicine. This means that alot of leaves, animals and minerals were used in order to get healed. This would be done by a shaman or the so called ''medicine man''. They would also include religion into the healing process and basicly start a healing ritual in order to get cured. This went on for many and many years, however in Ancient Egypt it was abit different. An Egyptian physician was researching the concept of diseases and how it worked, this was found in old Egyptian texts which was arround 2000 BCE. He basicly made a textbook that was about medicine and left it to the nobility. Medicine was also practiced in Ancient China. Evidence of this was also found arround the Bronze Age. It was described that herbalism was still being used but surgeries were also performed in those times.

The Islamic Golden Age of Medicine

Many many years later when civilizations settles and made kingdoms and empires, medicines in general improved greatly. During the time of the Byzantine Empire, hospitals were invented and actually being used to try curing people raither it being a place where the sick could slowly die. it was also in those times where they would check with someones blood if they had something weird going on in the body and if they were getting sick or not. a few centuries later, the Islamic world had a Golden Age going where they prospered and invented new things. One of those things were the advancement of medicine. It is the Persian physicises that wrote The CAnon of Medicine which was used as an standard medical text at many medieval European universities. Therefore it was one of the most famous and important books for medicine in medieval Europe. Besides this, where were done alot of researches about how the body works and how medicine works.

The usage of Medicine in Medival Europe

While this happend, Charlamange, The Emperor of the Franks also happend to get his hands on these inventions since it was being spread all arround Europe and suggested that hospitals should be made right next to churches. This was to kind of start up an wellfare system for the young, old and the weak. For this, these churches were given extra estate and land in order to make an income while caring for these people, but it was also given to actually grow the herbs and materials needed to heal the ill. As time progressed, the churches slowly established a network of universities where medicine was studied and perfected. One of the most known universities for medicine was the Schola Medica Salernitana which was in Salerno. In this universitiy, many Greek and Arabian physicians were made and therefore is one of the most prestigious and famous universities in medival Europe.

The major medical shift towards Europe

The Black Death was a plauge that devistated the whole of Eurasia, it was however argued that Europe was less devistated than the Middle East. This is simply cause the Islamic Golden Age was on an decline and that many prominent people started to appear in Europe that made many medical advancements. However, in during and right before the Black Death, it seems that the medical advance thinking shifted towards the Europeans rather than the Persians and the Arabians. This is cause of how people used to think about medicine, using traditional autority. While the more prominent people in Europe belived that this was not realy the reason and the way to practice medicine and from there using different methods, and it worked. These physicians also disproved alot of old theories about medicine in the past.

Modern times with medicine

From that point on, and years of practice and research. Many breaktroughs has been made with medicine untill today where we can practicly cure almost any disease and sickness. Unfortunatly this doesnt mean that all diseaeses and problems have a cure yet. It is too complex for us to know the answers but perhaps the future has many more promises that it can fufill to us.