Health

To be ill, wounded or unhealthy was not something to look forward to if living in the middle ages. The Christians believed a sickness was a punishment from God for sinful behaviour, which practically meant that on top of your disorder you were (often, not always) now a sinner and had to plead for forgiveness. People would pray, do good deeds and go on a pilgrimage (holy journey), eager to once again become healthy.

A lot of illnesses were not very extreme, although were dealt with in ways regularly leading to bigger problems and often resulting in a painful death. The Christians of the middle ages had barely any knowledge on how to cure people, whereas the Islam’s took their time to find out the remedies and were more advanced.

According to health by medieval Christianity, there were four humours (in comparison to there being four elements – water, earth, fire, air) blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Theory stated that:

1.     Blood – if you were hot, feverish an bad tempered, you had too much blood and they would bleed you by placing leeches on you or cutting part of you open to get rid of some excess blood.

2.     Black Bile – if you were slow, sluggish and depressed they would give you a purgative (making you go to the toilet a lot) to release some black bile that was causing it.

3.     Yellow Bile – if you were bad tempered and feeling nauseous, you had too much yellow bile, so you were required to vomit a lot.

4.     Phlegm – making you hot and sweaty would cure you from being unhappy and tearful which was apparently the result of too much phlegm in your body.

They also believed doing some horrifying surgery was the solution! Barber-surgeons were often unskilled and worked as barbers and surgeons performing disgusting operations such as:

·      Trepanning – where a hole was literally drilled into your skull to release evil spirits. Some operators also used to cut pieces of the brain out, or in some cases were the brain was taken out for a better look! Patients had trepanning done to them if they were going mentally ill or even just from a simple headache, although this regularly ended in death.

·      Blood letting – this is where blood was let out of your body to release evil spirits or bad blood. Leeches or knives were used.

·      Cauterization – where the part of your body that was causing your sickness was cured by a red hot poker being held on the spot.

Pilgrimage was also very common for general illnesses where people were told that going to your holy shrine would express your love for God and he would forgive your sins and make you healthy.

Surgery was very expensive so peasants were not able to afford them, which meant if they were sick, they would spend their money on visiting an apothecary who worked with herbs and natural medicine.