Ever wonder how sick people were treated in the middle ages without going to a hospital?
Well, taking a look at some of the practices from the Medieval Era, there really is only one conclusion: medieval medical practices are amazingly terrifying! One of the most interesting and horrifying practice was bloodletting.
Usually, most doctors would carry around astrological calendars and/or almanacs to use the position of the stars before they would diagnose a patient. But when the doctors could diagnose the patient, bloodletting was a preferred method of treatment.
Bloodletting started around 1000 B.C.E. in Egypt, but it became truly famous throughout the Middle
Ages with the help of physicians that documented the process. One of the physicians that wrote about the medieval medical practices was Hildegard of Bingen, who worked at the monastery of Disibodenberg.
The practice of bloodletting was based on how women's periods worked, "purging the body of bad humors." This stupefies me, because a woman's menstrual cycle and her womb were almost evil to men, yet they want to use the same methodology. Humors not only included blood, but other bodily fluids, such as, black and yellow bile and phlegm. While bloodletting was a dangerous practice, because many people did die from it, one of the benefits that came from the bloodletting was lowering blood pressure. By temporarily lowering the amount of blood in the body, blood pressure would reduce.
While the idea of someone cutting my arm to let out the bad stuff, or using leeches to help make me healthy again scares the life out me, people in medieval times really helped make great strides in medicine. By documenting how practices like bloodletting worked, they were able to evolve medical practices.
*Fun fact: George Washington died from bloodletting in the late 18th century. He had a sore throat, so they drained almost 4 liters out of him.*
Check out the website:
http://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/medicine-diagnosis-and-treatment-in-the-middle-ages
Oh my goodness! Sara that is insane!! This is so interesting and terrifying, and it makes you really think about how much health care has evolved over time! Thank goodness we have found better ways of treating illnesses because this bloodletting sounds highly dangerous. How did they come up with how much blood to let drain out, or what is a women was already on her period and they performed this bloodletting and she died because she lost too much blood?! I guess this is just another reason the average age of people dying was so low at this period in time!!
ReplyDeleteI think blood letting is a terrible idea, I also wonder who thought it would be a good idea to drain people to cure their illnesses.
DeleteWow, that's crazy to know. Bloodletting would never have been the way that I would have gone with medical procedures. I wonder if they had other practices that they did that were even more absurd, but this one was giving the best results back. With this going on for almost every medical procedure there would have to be a special place that they put the blood when they were done cause thats not really something that you just wanna throw outside in the grass!
ReplyDeleteWell, as Dr. Mann points out below, they did use leeches, which is just as skin-crawling as letting people drain you. I would be interested to know what they did with the blood, but considering what was happening during the plague, it is highly probable that they were throwing it out in the streets. They did that with their chamber pots, what is stopping them from tossing out blood too? Yuck.
DeleteOf course, we still use some medieval medical practices--herbal medicines and leeches and other remedies. See if you can find out more about this--the manuscript illustrations from medieval medical books are fascinating!
ReplyDeleteOf course, we still use some medieval medical practices--herbal medicines and leeches and other remedies. See if you can find out more about this--the manuscript illustrations from medieval medical books are fascinating!
ReplyDelete