7 Facts About Medieval Medicine

Ouroboros (Serpiente alquimica) drawing from a late medieval Byzantine Greek alchemical manuscript. Public Domain

Disease is as ancient as the first man’s morning breath and twice as foul.

Since time immemorial, we’ve been scratching our heads, trying to make sense of why our bodies betray us with such gleeful regularity.

The Greeks had it all figured out but the rest of Europe, in its infinite wisdom, decided to take a collective nap and forget the lot.

Meanwhile, the Arab world scooped up the discarded pearls of Galen and Hippocrates, polishing them to a fine sheen in Arabic and Hebrew.

In the Islamic realm, medical minds bloomed like desert flowers after a rare rain. They sliced and diced with newfound finesse, erected hospitals that would make a Roman bathhouse blush, and even let the fairer sex dabble in the art of healing.

But Europe was too busy cowering under its collective bed sheets, trembling at the thought of demons, devils, and the occasional draft.

Every sneeze was a portent of doom; every stubbed toe was a sign of the impending apocalypse. Their piety was matched only by a paralysing fear of everything that went bump in the night.

1. Hospitals Were Run by Monks and Nuns

Hospitals, such as they were, resembled monastic fight clubs more than places of healing. People believed all disease was either a divine smackdown for sin or the handiwork of witches and demons.

But then along came the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, who decreed that every cathedral and monastery should have a hospital attached. He also insisted they establish schools where medicine could be taught.

Inside these abbeys, monastic medicine blossomed, becoming the go-to for health care for everyone—from commoners to nobles and clergy.

In those monastic infirmaries, surgery was a crude affair, a bit of “touching and cutting,” mostly dealing with traumas like lacerations, dislocations, and fractures.

For more complicated wounds or injuries, the monks, known as infirmarians, often had to call in the big guns—experienced local bonesetters or even barber surgeons.

2. The Urine Flask

The urine flask became the golden chalice of medieval medicine.

A vessel of such import that by 900 AD, Isaac Judaeus had penned a veritable ode to its diagnostic prowess.

In those monastic infirmaries, a carnival of the macabre unfolded daily. The monks would bathe you (a novelty in itself), bleed you dry as a martini, and scrutinise your bodily emissions with the intensity of a jeweller examining a suspect diamond.

3. Monks Ensured No One Should Be Left to Die Alone

And let’s not forget the deathbed vigils, those merry affairs where monks would gather around the dying, muttering prayers and reading scripture by guttering candlelight. All to ensure a proper passing.

Many a monk paid for this devotion with his own life, catching whatever ungodly plague had felled his patient.

A noble sacrifice, no doubt.

4. Local Women Healed Until They Were Hunted as Witches

In the villages, wise women and men brought new life into the world and tended to the poor, until some in the 14th and 15th centuries decided they must be in league with the devil.

And so, these healers found themselves taking an unexpected trip to meet their maker, courtesy of local witch-hunters.

5. Doctors Not Highly Trusted!

Doctors weren’t necessarily held in high esteem back then, even by their wealthiest patrons.

The medieval physician, with his predilection for bleeding patients with leeches, often left them weaker and more miserable than before.

Yet the humble peasant, with his collection of magic stones, herbal concoctions, and whispered prayers, might very well find himself better off than the rich man. A quaint irony that the unlettered villager had a better shot at recovery than the lord in his manor, entrusting his life to the dubious hands of medieval medicine.

6. Barbers Didn’t Just Cut Hair

Barbers didn’t just snip and trim; they wielded knives for more than shaving. These barber-surgeons plunged into the gory business of medieval operations.

Wars, ever-present and merciless, gave these men ample opportunity to hone their craft. They treated wounds and broken bones with an expertise born of necessity.

Broken bones were set in plaster, wounds sealed with egg whites or doused in old wine to stave off infection.

They wielded alcohol and plants like mandragora to knock patients into oblivion or dull the pain enough to slice them open.

These fellows could do more than just stitch you up. They’d lop off diseased bits, like a gall-bladder gone rogue, and they weren’t above slicing open a woman’s belly to pluck out a baby in a grisly Caesarean section.

All this in a world where life was a relentless battlefield, and the line between barber and surgeon was as thin as a blade.

7. You Could Get Your Tooth out at the Local Market

The medieval market was a place of commerce and crude dentistry. Where one might procure a cabbage and lose a molar in the same breath.

A realm of rotting fish and fresh extractions, where the difference between grocer and tooth-puller blurred like ale-addled vision.

There were the dentatores, practitioners of oral affliction, strutting about with their Arab-learned ways. Wielding fearsome files and forceps like instruments of exquisite torture.

They'd scrape and stuff and wire a person’s mouth shut and even fit false teeth of ox-bone for the discerning palate.

But for the common man, the hoi polloi, the unwashed masses—it was the market or bust.

You’d find some cheery chap with biceps like tree trunks and a penchant for yanking. A swift pull, a gush of blood, and you'd be on your merry way, minus one troublesome chomper.

And if the fair was too distant, there was always the local barber. Jack of all trades, master of none. He'd trim your whiskers, lance your boils, and pull your teeth with equal enthusiasm and dubious skill.