Medieval Medicine and Disease

80 Pages·2014·17.449 MB·English

by  Toney Allman

®
About the Author
Toney Allman holds degrees from Ohio State University and the University of
Hawaii. She currently lives in Virginia, where she enjoys a rural lifestyle, as well
as researching and writing about a variety of topics for students.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Allman, Toney, author.
Medieval medicine and disease / by Toney Allman.
pages cm. -- (The library of Medieval times series)
Audience: Grade 9 to 12.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60152-657-1 (e-book)
1. Medicine, Medieval--Juvenile literature. 2. Medicine--Europe--History--Juvenile literature.
3. Europe--Social conditions--To 1492--Juvenile literature. I. Title.
R141.A45 2015
610.936--dc23
2013045380
CONTENTS
Important Events of Medieval Times 4
Introduction 6
From Darkness to Light
Chapter One 10
Magic, Mysticism, and Miracles
Chapter Two 22
Treating Injuries
Chapter Th ree 34
Women and Childbearing
Chapter Four 45
Sickness and Disease
Chapter Five 57
Th e Medical Profession and Hospitals Evolve
Source Notes 70
For Further Research 74
Index 76
Picture Credits 80
IMPORTANT EVENTS
OF MEDIEVAL TIMES
1000
800 A century of invention in
farming begins; devices such
In Rome, Pope Leo III crowns
as the heavy plow increase
Charlemagne emperor; his
agricultural productivity and
Carolingian dynasty rules
help double Europe’s population.
western Europe until 987.
1099
632
ca. 950 Th e First Crusade
Th e Prophet ends Muslim rule
Europe’s
Muhammad dies in Jerusalem until
fi rst medical
as Islam begins 1187, when the
school
to expand both Muslims under
opens in
east and west Saladin recapture
Salerno,
of the Arabian Jerusalem from
Italy.
Peninsula. the Crusaders.
400 600 800 1000 1200
476
Romulus Augustulus, the 1066 1200
last Roman emperor in William of Normandy defeats Th e rise of
the West, is dethroned. the last Anglo-Saxon king at the universities
Battle of Hastings, establishing begins to
Norman rule in England. promote a
revival of
learning
1130
throughout
Church authorities in France ban tournaments; the the West.
ban on these popular festivals, which provide knights
with opportunities to gain prestige and fi nancial
reward, is later reversed.
1184
Church offi cials meeting in Verona, Italy, approve
burning at the stake as a punishment for anyone
found guilty of heresy.
4
1215
King John of England signs the Magna Carta, limiting the rights of the monarchy.
1346
Using the longbow, English archers overwhelm
the French army at the Battle of Crécy during
the Hundred Years’ War.
1328
Charles IV dies, ending
341 years of successful rule
by the Capetian kings who
established modern France.
1316
Th e Italian physician
Mondino De’ Luzzi writes
the fi rst book of the 1378
medieval period devoted Th e Great Schism, in which there are
entirely to anatomy. three claimants to the papacy, occurs.
1250 1300 1350 1400 1450
1347
Th e deadly bubonic
1337
plague strikes Europe and
Th e Hundred Years’ War returns intermittently for
begins between France the next 250 years.
and England.
1453
Th e Ottoman Turks conquer
Constantinople following a seven-
week bombardment with cannons.
1267
Henry III of England enacts the Assize
of Bread and Ale, one of the fi rst laws to
regulate the production and sale of food;
1231 the law ties the price of bread to the price of
wheat, thus preventing bakers from setting
Pope Gregory IX establishes the
artifi cially high prices.
“Holy Inquisition,” whose purpose
is to search out heretics and force
them to renounce their views.
5
INTRODUCTION
From Darkness
to Light
In 945 CE a terrible new disease appeared in France and thereaf-
ter swept throughout parts of Western Europe without warning
and seemingly for no reason. In a text written at the time, the
French historian Frodoard (or Flodoard) describes the epidem-
ic’s eff ect on people. Th e Chronicles of Frodoard reports:
Th e year 945, in the history of Paris and its numerous
suburban villages, a disease called ignis plaga [fi re plague]
attacked the limbs of many persons, and consumed them
entirely, so that death soon fi nished their suff erings.
Some few survived, thanks be to the intercession of the
Saints; and even a considerable number were cured in the
Church of Notre Dame de Paris. Some of these, believing
themselves out of danger, left the church; but the fi res of
the plague were soon relighted, and they were only saved
by returning to Notre Dame.1
St. Anthony’s Fire
At the time the fi re plague struck Paris, sick people turned to
the Church for help. No real hospitals existed, but churches had
infi rmaries, or centers for caring for the sick, where clergy and
monks took in patients, gave them a bed and food, and comfort-
ed them until they recovered or died. Historians estimate that
Notre Dame had beds for six hundred patients in 945. When
6
the fi re plague struck again in 1039, people again turned to churches
and monasteries for aid. During this epidemic, Gaston de la Valloire, a
French nobleman, established a large hospital, or infi rmary, to care for
the victims and dedicated this hospital to St. Anthony. Th e hospital gave
the plague its common name: St. Anthony’s fi re. Eventually, monks of
the order of St. Anthony established more than 370 such hospitals dedi-
cated to caring for victims of St. Anthony’s fi re. Th is holy fi re disease was
believed to be a punishment from God, and it caused terrible suff ering.
Historian Fielding Hudson Garrison explains:
Th e disease usually began with sensations of extreme coldness in
the aff ected part, followed by intense burning pains; or else a crop
of blisters broke out, the limb becoming livid, foul, and putres-
cent, and eventually dropping off : in either case, after causing great
suff ering in the unfortunate victim. Recovery commonly followed
the loss of a limb and, by some cruel sport of fate, patients some-
times survived after losing all four limbs. When the gangrene at-
tacked the viscera [internal organs], however, it was speedily fatal.2
Gangrene—the death and decomposition of body tissue—was the
defi ning characteristic of St. Anthony’s fi re. From medieval descriptions
of the disease, scientists today know that St. Anthony’s fi re was gangre-
nous ergotism. Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye
grains under cool, wet conditions. It is toxic to people WORDS IN CONTEXT
who ingest breads made from contaminated rye. Rye
putrescent:
bread was a staple of the French people during medi- Decaying and
eval times, but with no knowledge of fungi or micro- decomposing.
organisms or infection, medieval people understood
nothing of the cause, prevention, or treatment of St. Anthony’s fi re. Af-
fected people fortunate enough to be cared for in a church or monastery
hospital recovered, either because they were not fed rye bread while they
were patients or because the grain stored at the church or monastery was
not contaminated with ergot. When these patients returned home and
resumed eating the bad grain, they sickened again and survived only if
they returned to church infi rmaries such as at Notre Dame or the St.
7
Medieval Europe,
Circa 1250
Anthony’s hospitals. People thought it was the saints, prayers, and God
who had healed them.
Struggling for Answers
Th e learned men and physicians of medieval times never did discover the
true cause of St. Anthony’s fi re nor of most of the many deadly diseases
that terrorized people of the Middle Ages. With no scientifi c knowledge
to guide them, people believed that diseases were punishments from God
or supernaturally determined by witchcraft or the devils and demons that
roamed the earth. Th ey depended on handed-down folklore for heal-
ing, and even the most educated physicians looked to the misinformed
8
teachings of ancient Rome to understand medicine and disease. Roman
medicine emphasized bodily fl uids—“humors”—that were out of bal-
ance with each other, so that sick people needed to be rebalanced, per-
haps by bleeding them or making them vomit.
Medical knowledge and treatment in medieval times was usually
primitive and often horrifying. Historian Michael Livingston says, “Our
stomachs turn at an image of leeches growing fat on the warm blood of
the sick; our minds are horrifi ed by the fact that medieval doctors hon-
estly believed the best remedy for a patient might be
to open a vein and drain off quarts of precious blood; WORDS IN CONTEXT
our hearts ache to think of virulent diseases ravaging humors: Th e four
bodies while a physician recited incantations or a priest basic elements
that ancient
prayed for deliverance of the patient from pain.”3
Romans and
Nevertheless, Livingston also points out that the
Greeks believed
Middle Ages were a time of great progress, change, and composed the
discovery. By the end of the medieval era—which last- human body.
ed about a thousand years—physicians and scientists
were learning and innovating, and if they could not cure diseases, they
did comfort and reassure their patients as well as begin to develop the
knowledge and techniques that healed and protected people faced with
injuries, pain, and suff ering. Livingston believes that medieval physicians
should not be dismissed as ignorant. He says, “After all, their studies and
experiences led directly to the discoveries that shape modern medicine.”4
Th e story of medicine during the Middle Ages is a story of a slow but
inexorable evolution from a philosophical, spiritual, nonempirical expla-
nation of disease to a practical and scientifi c approach to understanding
sickness and identifying rational treatments.
9
CCHHAAPPTTEERR OONNEE
Magic, Mysticism,
and Miracles
In the early Middle Ages (from about 500 to 1000 CE), in the
Arab world and in the remnants of the old Roman Empire that
came to be known as the Byzantine Empire, civilization fl our-
ished. Ancient Greek and Roman medical knowledge was trans-
lated, studied, and expanded upon. Great Muslim and Jewish
physicians in the East studied and wrote of medicine and sci-
ence, although much of their ancient Greek and Roman knowl-
edge was unscientifi c, superstitious, and full of misinformation.
Islamic rulers and doctors established the world’s fi rst hospitals
and learned through observation to diagnose and try to treat dif-
ferent diseases. During the ninth century, for example, the Mus-
lim physician Ali Ibn Rabban al Tabari wrote an encyclopedia of
all known diseases. His famous student Abu Bakr Muhammad
ibn Zakariya al-Razi was the fi rst doctor to defi ne the diff erence
between smallpox and chicken pox and to explain that fever was
the body’s way of fi ghting illness. Other Islamic physicians were
especially skilled in diseases of the eyes—important because
blindness was a common affl iction at the time. In the tenth cen-
tury a doctor named Ammar ibn Ali al-Mawsili invented a small,
hollow needle to remove cataracts from the eyes with suction. In
the Islamic empire, medical education, knowledge, and innova-
tion were treasured and valued.
In Western Europe, where civilization deteriorated to the
point that the period has been referred to as the Dark Ages,
knowledge was forgotten. Th is period, according to historian
10