The Good Ol' Days
It’s been a long road to get here. The scope of modern medicine is now far more extensive than it was 100, 50, or even 20 years ago. Many new practices and treatments have been developed within the last decade alone, and yet there is still far more to be discovered. One thing, however, is clear: we have learned a lot over the years. We know what causes infectious diseases, we know that the heart isn’t actually the center of emotions, and we also know that cleanliness and hygiene is a good thing. This came, of course, through years of hard work and research, and also a shift in public attitude, i.e. an increase in the population’s scientific literacy. While this is certainly a good thing, it still begs the question, how were people treated before this shift? What was the world like before we knew many of the things we know today concerning health and wellness? To answer that question, let’s look at the world during the Middle Ages, a time before this kind of knowledge, and the consequences that time period’s medical practices and public perception had.
The Middle Ages were a time between approximately 500-1500 AD. This came after the fall of Rome, and, as such, much chaos followed in Europe because of the fact that the supreme governing body was now gone. Of course, this event affected only Europe, which was considered the center of technological achievement. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, things were still going strong, and an ancient type of medicine known as Ayurveda (using herbs in particular mixtures) was keeping many people in India very healthy, in fact many people still use it today, although there is much debate over it these days. But in Europe, things like, reading, writing, and education became less important when people were struggling to survive the riots, wars, raping, and pillaging of the time. So much of the ancients’ knowledge was lost. Most knowledge of medicine was based on bits and pieces of teachings from philosophers like Aristotle, who said that all illness is caused by an imbalance of the body’s four “humors”. These humors were really just body fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. The doctors thought that in order to treat someone, you had to determine which of their humors was out of balance, usually done by examining their urine by its color, smell, and even taste. After a doctor determined which humor was out of balance, they had to “balance” it. This is where practices like bloodletting come from. Bloodletting is a process in which a doctor makes a cut on a patient’s arm or places a leech on their skin to allow them to bleed for a while, and thus take away any “excess” blood. There were similar processes to remove excess bile and phlegm. What the doctors didn’t know was that all those body fluids were necessary in the amounts that were naturally present, and that removing them could make a bad situation even worse, especially in the case of blood. Blood carries oxygen and nutrients which we need to live, along with an army of pathogen-fighting white blood cells. Not to mention that the ancients from whom this information was taken were typically a lot more hygienic than the average person from the Middle Ages. In those days, it was perfectly normal to throw garbage, leftovers, and even human excrement out into the streets. People rarely bathed, and nobody knew about germs. That’s why there was no concern about things like washing hands, even for doctors while they performed surgery. In fact, surgeons were likely to have used the same knife for two surgeries without having washed it in between! Even Aristotle, who lived centuries before, would have been no stranger to regular bathing! In fact, the ancient civilizations valued cleanliness even if they didn’t necessarily understand why it was helping them. The people of the middle ages didn’t know what they were doing wrong, so of course they continued with their obscene medical practices. This would not, of course, have been such a problem if Europe’s population had been aware of the value of cleanliness and hygiene, but, because they were not, doom was imminent.
According to Doctor’s Review, 1348 was probably the single worst year to have been alive in Europe before the 20th Century. This is the year trade ships, loaded with rats and fleas, entered Europe with an unwanted passenger. Those rats carried a deadly pathogen, Yersinia pestis. This bacteria causes the Black Death, a plague that is thought to have killed one third of Europe’s population. The disease was able to spread easily after people were bit by the rats. The disease can be spread through the nasal fluids of anyone who sneezes, as well as bodily wastes. So remember how people threw their excrement into the streets? That didn’t help anyone. Some accounts suggest that whole families could wake up in the morning, and then all be buried that very night. The disease’s symptoms spread fast, and the doctors weren’t able to pinpoint a cause or a cure. They kept letting blood and doing surgery, but nothing helped. They began to try feeding victims different mixtures of herbs, thinking that some old knowledge of these medicines would help. In fact, a few even thought that daily doses of Opium or Mercury could actually be beneficial to one’s health, even though they are both extremely harmful. But Yersinia pestis can only be treated with powerful antibiotics, which is something they just didn’t have. After all, they didn’t even know that germs were a thing. It is thought that many of the doctors’ practices killed more people than they helped.
At the end of the day, we have to realize a few things concerning Middle Age medicine and its less than satisfactory results, the chief among them being the importance of scientific literacy. Yes, it is true that the Europeans of the era had virtually no knowledge of germs, viruses, or other pathogens, however they were still far less healthy than their Roman ancestors who valued cleanliness like their lives depended on it. If more people were aware that a cleaner society provides for less opportunity for disease to spread, then the black death might not have affected as many people as it did. But the aftermath of the disease was actually a good thing. After the plague, people began to realize the connection between a lack of cleanliness and disease. So they started to make an effort to sanitize the world around them, even if it just started with properly disposing of human waste. Eventually, the scientists who made this link between cleanliness and disease discovered germs, and that they can cause disease as a byproduct of their metabolism. And from them, we got the current basis of medical knowledge concerning infectious diseases. And that’s another important lesson as well. Science is about learning from one’s mistakes, and realizing that for every failure, there is something to be taken away if only we know how to look and are unafraid to admit our shortcomings. At the end of the day, while we may laugh at how people were treated back in the day, we ourselves also have a lot to learn. And maybe in a future where things like cancer, HIV, and other deadly diseases have a quick and easy cure, the people of that time will look back on us and think, “What were they thinking?”
Source:
Newman, Simon. “Doctors in the Middle Ages.” The Finer Times. The Finer Times, n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2015.
“Medieval Doctors.” BBC News. BBC, n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2015.
“Middle Ages Doctors.” Lordsandladies.org. Siteseen Ltd., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2015.
Rosenhek, Jackie. “Doctor’s Review: Medicine on the Move.” Doctor’s Review. Parkhurst, Oct. 2011. Web. 21 Dec. 2015.