Health and Medicine

Medical knowledge was very limited during the Middle Ages. No one knew about germs or how disease was spread. In towns, an open sewer ran down the middle of the street and people tossed garbage, dead animals, and human waste into it every day. No one bathed on a regular basis, contributing to skin diseases and further spreading of germs. Illness was surrounded by mystery and superstition. Doctors possessed little real knowledge to help cure people and there were no hospitals for the sick.  Barbers usually doubled as surgeons and "a good bleeding" was almost always their treatment. The "bad blood" was drained by leeches placed on the patient. When someone was sick, their friends and relatives prayed to the Saints to heal them and provided the sick person what comfort was available. There were also folk cures that peasants used, but at the risk of being labeled a witch and being burnt at the stake.

There were many plagues and epidemics in medieval Europe. Many people died very young of illnesses like cholera, dysentery, influenza, measles, and mumps. Leprosy was especially prevalent in Europe, and lepers were shunned wherever they went. The most famous plague was the Bubonic Plague or Black Death, that struck Europe in 1348 and killed 25 million people in one year.

Medical science did make some advances however. At Bologna University, doctors made the first human dissection in an attempt to understand how the body works. Two medical schools, on in Salernum, Italy and one in Montpellier, France, gave serious instruction in medicine, and their graduates were highly trained in the treatment of wounds.

Hospitals were initially built out of white-washed wooden buildings, but eventually became large marble structures that reviled the palaces of the day.

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