During medieval times, very little was known about the human body and how it worked, because it was illegal to cut open a human body.
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| Patients attending physician, 13th century | photo credit: welcome images |
Therefore, their treatments for illnesses and injuries rarely worked. If a person did become better, it was usually not because of their treatment, but because they naturally healed. One of the beliefs of medieval medicine was the Four Humours*. The Four Humours were phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. If something was wrong with you, doctors thought it was because there was something wrong with one of your humours.
The surgeries performed during the Middle Ages were ill conceived and very dangerous. There were two different types of surgeons, the barber and more advanced surgeons. The barber would not only cut hair, like barbers today, but would pull teeth, do bloodletting, stitch wounds, and remove tumours. The more advanced surgeons could do bladder stone removals, advanced dentistry, and bone setting. Surgeries were very painful, because anaesthetics were so expensive, so people would usually get drunk and bite down on a piece of wood. There were some odd cures for illnesses as well. For example, to treat a stuffy nose, you would stuff onion and mustard up your nose. Wise women, also known as midwives, were women who used natural things to cure illnesses. Because they were women, if their techniques for healing people were odd, they could be accused of witchcraft.
*Four Humours
Four temperaments is a proto-psychological theory that suggests that there are four fundamental personality types, sanguine (optimistic leader-like), choleric (bad-tempered or irritable), melancholic (analytical and quiet), and phlegmatic (relaxed and peaceful).
