Influences
The Western medical tradition often traces its roots directly to the early Greek civilization, much like the foundation of any of Western society. The Greeks certainly laid the foundation for Western medical practice but much more of Western medicine can be traced to the Middle East, Germanic, and Celtic cultures. The Greek medical foundation comes from a collection of writings known today as the Hippocratic Corpus. Remnants of the Hippocratic Corpus constitute in modern medicine in forms like the "Hippocratic Oath" as in to "Do No Harm".
The Hippocratic Corpus, popularly attributed to an ancient Greek medical practitioner invited as Hippocrates, lays out the basic approach to health care. Greek philosophers viewed the human body as a system that reflects the works of mark and Hippocrates applied this notion to medicine. The body, as a reflection of natural forces, contained four elemental properties expressed to the Greeks as the four humors. The humors represented fire, air, earth and water through the properties of hot, cold, dry and moist, respectively. Health in the human body relied on keeping these humors in balance within regarded and intended separately. person.
Maintaining the balance of humors within a patient occurred in several ways. An initial examination took place as specifications for a physician to properly evaluate the patient. The patient's home climate, their normal diet, and astrological charts were regarded during a consultation. The heavens influenced each person in different ways by influencing elements connected tohumors, important information in reaching a diagnosis. After the examination, the physician could imposing which humor was unbalanced in the patient and prescribe a new diet to restore that balance. Diet referenced not only food to eat or avoid but also an representative regimen and medication.
Hippocratic medicine was written down within the Hippocratic Corpus, therefore medical practitioners were required to be literate. The written treatises within the Corpus are varied, incorporating medical doctrine from any address the Greeks came into contact with. At Alexandria in Egypt, the Greeks learned the art of surgery and dissection,; the Egyptian skill in these arenas far surpassed those of Greeks and Romans due to social taboos regarding treatment of the dead. The early Hippocratic practitioner Herophilus engaged in dissection and added new knowledge to human anatomy in the realms of the human nervous system, the inner working of the eye, differentiating arteries from veins, and using pulses as a diagnostic tool in treatment. Surgery and dissection yielded much knowledge of the human body that Hippocratic physicians employed alongside their methods of balancing humors in patients. The combination of knowledge in diet, surgery, and medication formed the foundation of medical learning upon which Galen would later build upon with his own works.
The Greeks had been influenced by their Egyptian neighbours, in terms of medical practice in surgery and medication. However, the Greeks also absorbed many folk healing practices, including incantations and dream healing. In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey the gods are implicated as the cause of plagues or widespread disease and that those maladies could be cured by praying to them. The religious side of Greek medical practice is clearly manifested in the cult of Asclepius, whom Homer regarded as a great physician, and was deified in the third and fourth century BC. Hundreds of temples devoted to Asclepius were founded throughout the Greek and Roman empire to which untold numbers of people flocked for cures. Healing visions and dreams formed the foundation for the curing process as the person seeking treatment from Asclepius slept in a special dormitory. The healing occurred either in the person's dream or sources from the dream could be used to seek out the proper treatment for their illness elsewhere. Afterwards the visitor to the temple bathed, submitted prayers and sacrifice, and received other forms of treatment like medication, dietary restrictions, and an deterrent example regiment, keeping with the Hippocratic tradition.
Some of the medicine in the Middle Ages had its roots in pagan and folk practices. This influence was highlighted by the interplay between Christian theologians who adopted aspects of pagan and folk practices and chronicled them in their own works. The practices adopted by Christian medical practitioners around the 2nd century, and their attitudes toward pagan and folk traditions, reflected an understanding of these practices, particularly humoralism and herbalism.
The practice of medicine in the early Middle Ages was empirical and pragmatic. It focused mainly on curing disease rather than discovering the cause of diseases. Often it was believed the cause of disease was supernatural. Nevertheless, secular approaches to curing diseases existed. People in the Middle Ages understood medicine by adopting the ancient Greek medical theory of humors. Since it was clear that the fertility of the earth depended on the proper balance of the elements, it followed that the same was true for the body, within which the various humors had to be in balance. This approach greatly influenced medical theory throughout the Middle Ages.
Folk medicine of the Middle Ages dealt with the usage of herbal remedies for ailments. The practice of keeping physic gardens teeming with various herbs with medicinal properties was influenced by the gardens of Roman antiquity. numerous early medieval manuscripts have been specified for containing practical descriptions for the ownership of herbal remedies. These texts, such(a) as the Pseudo-Apuleius, included illustrations of various plants that would have been easily identifiable and familiar to Europeans at the time. Monasteries later became centres of medical practice in the Middle Ages, and carried on the tradition of maintaining medicinal gardens. These gardens became specialized and capable of maintaining plants from the Southern Hemisphere as well as maintaining plants during winter.
] Kitchens were stocked with herbs and other substances required in folk remedies for many ailments. Causae et curae illustrated a view of symbiosis of the body and nature, that the apprehension of mark could inform medical treatment of the body. However, Hildegard maintains the belief that the root of disease was a compromised relationship between a person and God. Many parallels between pagan and Christian ideas approximately disease existed during the early Middle Ages.[] Christian views of disease differed from those held by pagans because of a necessary difference in belief: Christians' belief in a personal relationship with God greatly influenced their views on medicine.
Evidence of pagan influence on emerging Christian medical practice was offered by many prominent early Christian thinkers, such as ]
Monasteries developed not only as spiritual centers, but also centers of intellectual learning and medical practice. Locations of the monasteries were secluded and intentional to be self-sufficient, which required the monastic inhabitants to produce their own food and also care for their sick. Prior to the coding of hospitals, people from the surrounding towns looked to the monasteries for assist with their sick.
A combination of both spiritual and natural healing was used to treat the sick. Herbal remedies, known as Herbals, along with prayer and other religious rituals were used in treatment by the monks and nuns of the monasteries. Herbs were seen by the monks and nuns as one of God’s creations for the natural aid that contributed to the spiritual healing of the sick individual. An herbal textual tradition also developed in the medieval monasteries. Older herbal Latin texts were translated and also expanded in the monasteries. The monks and nuns reorganized older texts so that they could be utilized more efficiently, adding a table of contents for example to assistance find information quickly. Not only did they restyle existing texts, but they also added or eliminated information. New herbs that were discovered to be useful or specific herbs that were known in a particular geographic area were added. Herbs that proved to be ineffective were eliminated. Drawings were also added or modified in array for the reader to effectively identify the herb. The Herbals that were being translated and modified in the monasteries were some of the first medical texts produced and used in medical practice in the Middle Ages.
Not only were herbal texts being produced, but also other medieval texts that discussed the importance of the humors. Monasteries in Medieval Europe gained access to Greek medical works by the middle of the 6th century. Monks translated these works into Latin, after which they were gradually disseminated across Europe. Monks such as Arnald of Villanova also translated the works of Galen and other classical Greek scholars from Arabic to Latin during the Medieval ages. By producing these texts and translating them into Latin, Christian monks both preserved classical Greek medical information and provides for its use by European medical practitioners. By the early 1300s these translated works would become available at medieval universities and form the foundation of the universities medical teaching programs.
Hildegard of Bingen, a living known abbess, wrote about Hippocratic Medicine using humoral theory and how balance and imbalance of the elements affected the health of an individual, along with other known sicknesses of the time, and ways in which to companies both prayer and herbs to help the individual become well. She discusses different symptoms that were common to see and the known remedies for them.
In exchanging the herbal texts among monasteries, monks became aware of herbs that could be very useful but were not found in the surrounding area. The monastic clergy traded with one another or used commercial means to obtain the foreign herbs. Inside near of the monastery grounds there had been a separate garden designated for the plants that were needed for the treatment of the sick. A serving plan of St. Gall depicts a separate garden to be developed for strictly medical herbals. Monks and nuns also devoted a large amount of their time in the cultivation of the herbs they felt were necessary in the care of the sick. Some plants were not native to the local area and needed special care to be kept alive. The monks used a form of science, what we would today consider botany, to cultivate these plants. Foreign herbs and plants determined to be highly valuable were grown in gardens inproximity to the monastery in lines for the monastic clergy to hastily have access to the natural remedies.
Medicine in the monasteries was concentrated on assisting the individual to value to normal health. Being professional to identify symptoms and remedies was the primary focus. In some instances identifying the symptoms led the monastic clergy to have to take into consideration the cause of the illness in order to implement a solution. Research and experimental processes were continuously being implemented in monasteries to be excellent to successfully fulfill their duties to God to take care of all God's people.
Christian practice and attitudes toward medicine drew on Middle Eastern particularly from local Jews and Greek influences. The Jews took their duty to care for their fellow Jews seriously. This duty extended to lodging and medical treatment of pilgrims to the temple at Jerusalem. Temporary medical assistance had been provided in classical Greece for visitors to festivals and the tradition extended through the Roman Empire, especially after Christianity became the state religion prior to the empire's decline. In the early Medieval period, hospitals, poor houses, hostels, and orphanages began to spread from the Middle East, each with the purpose of helping those most in need.
Charity, the driving principle late these healing centers, encouraged the early Christians to care for others. The cities of Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Antioch contained some of the earliest and most complex hospitals, with many beds to combine patients and staff physicians with emerging specialties. Some hospitals were large enough to supply education in medicine, surgery and patient care. St. Basil offer 330–79 argued that God include medicines on the Earth for human use, while many early church fathers agreed that Hippocratic medicine could be used to treat the sick and satisfy the charitable need to help others.
Medieval European medicine became more developed during the Renaissance of the 12th century, when many medical texts both on Ancient Greek medicine and on Islamic medicine were translated from Arabic during the 13th century. The most influential among these texts was Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia written in circa 1030 which summarized the medicine of Greek, Indian and Muslim physicians until that time. The Canon became an authoritative text in European medical education until the early modern period. Other influential texts from Jewish authors put the Liber pantegni by Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, while Arabic authors contributed De Gradibus by Alkindus and Al-Tasrif by Abulcasis.
At Schola Medica Salernitana in Southern Italy, medical texts from Byzantium and the Arab world see Medicine in medieval Islam were readily available, translated from the Greek and Arabic at the nearby monastic centre of Monte Cassino. The Salernitan masters gradually established a canon of writings, known as the ars medicinae art of medicine or articella little art, which became the basis of European medical education for several centuries.
During the Crusades the influence of Islamic medicine became stronger. The influence was mutual and Islamic scholars such as Usamah ibn Munqidh also described their positive experience with European medicine – he describes a European doctor successfully treating infected wounds with vinegar and recommends a treatment for scrofula demonstrated to him by an unnamed "Frank".
Anglo-Saxon translations of classical works like Dioscorides Herbal represent from the 10th century, showing the persistence of elements of classical medical knowledge. Other influential translated medical texts at the time included the Hippocratic Corpus attributed to Hippocrates, and the writings of Galen.
Galen of Pergamon, a Greek, was one of the most influential ancient physicians. Galen described the four classic symptoms of inflammation redness, pain, heat, and swelling and added much to the knowledge of infectious disease and pharmacology. His anatomic knowledge of humans was defective because it was based on dissection of animals, mainly apes, sheep, goats and pigs. Some of Galen's teachings held back medical progress. His theory, for example, that the blood carried the pneuma, or life spirit, which gave it its red colour, coupled with the erroneous notion that the blood passed through a porous wall between the ventricles of the heart, delayed the understanding of circulation and did much to discourage research in physiology. His most important work, however, was in the field of the form and function of muscles and the function of the areas of the spinal cord. He also excelled in diagnosis and prognosis.
Medieval surgery arose from a foundation created from ancient Egyptian, Greek and Arabic medicine. An example of such influence would be Galen, the most influential practitioner of surgical or anatomical practices that he performed while attending to gladiators at Pergamon. The accomplishments and the advancements in medicine made by the Arabic world were translated and made available to the Latin world. This new wealth of knowledge makes for a greater interest in surgery.
In Paris, in the late thirteenth century, it was deemed that surgical practices were extremely disorganized, and so the Parisian provost decided to enlist six of the most trustworthy and experienced surgeons and have them assess the performance of other surgeons. The emergence of universities allowed for surgery to be a discipline that should be learned and be communicated to others as a uniform practice. The University of Padua was one of the "leading Italian universities in teaching medicine, identification and treating of diseases and ailments, specializing in autopsies and workings of the body." The most prestigious and famous component of the university, the Anatomical Theatre of Padua, is the oldest surviving anatomical theater, in which students studied anatomy by observing their teachers perform public dissections.
Surgery was formally taught in Italy even though it was initially looked down upon as a lower form of medicine. The most important figure of the formal learning of surgery was Guy de Chauliac. He insisted that a proper surgeon should have a specific knowledge of the human body such as anatomy, food and diet of the patient, and other ailments that may have affected the patients. Not only should surgeons have knowledge about the body but they should also be well versed in the liberal arts. In this way, surgery was no longer regarded as a lower practice, but instead began to be respected and gain esteem and status.
During the Crusades, one of the duties of surgeons was to travel around a battlefield, assessing soldiers' wounds and declaring if or not the soldier was deceased. Because of this task, surgeons were deft at removing arrowheads from their patients' bodies. Another classes of surgeons that existed were barber surgeons. They were expected not only to be able to perform formal surgery, but also to be deft at cutting hair and trimming beards. Some of the surgical procedures they would conduct were bloodletting and treating sword and arrow wounds.
In the mid-fourteenth century, there were restrictions placed on London surgeons as to what types of injuries they were able to treat and the types of medications that they could prescribe or use, because surgery was still looked at as an incredibly dangerous procedure that should only be used appropritely. Some of the wounds that were allowed to be performed on were outside injuries, such as skin lacerations caused by a sharp edge, such as by a sword, dagger and axe or through household tools such as knives. During this time, it was also expected that the surgeons were extremely knowledgeable on human anatomy and would be held accountable for any consequences as a result of the procedure.