M&M

M&M

(Medicine in Middle Ages)

Introduction

In this article you’re going to travel through time and visit the Middle Ages. You will loads of things about medicine in that times. You’ll see the difference between medicine uses, materials… in two different religions: Christians and Arabs.

Did you know that there’s a big mistake in Robin Hood’s film related to arabic religion?

COMPARISON OF MUSLIM AND

CHRISTIAN MEDICINE.

There was such a big difference between Muslim and Christian medicine. Muslims were the best doctors in the world. Lots of apprentices of all the world went to the muslim territories to learn this “art”, because doctors in the other religions did not exist. For example, in Christian culture, they prayed for the ill people, and God was supposed to treat them. The supposed doctors, if we could call them like that, were the barbers. They did at much an amputation, and they didn´t treat the illneses as in the Muslim world.

While in the Christian “medicine” they prayed and hoped that God made a miracle, in the Muslim medicine they worried about the ill people and they tried to treat them as good as they could. They had hospitals, were they showed to the apprendices all they needed to know. They studied how to treat and how to prevent deseases, but we will explain this later. On the other hand, Christians didn´t have places to study medicine. In fact, most part of the barbers were part of a street market, which moved from place to place, earning money swindeling to the people . There was a master who taught an apprendice, which will become the next barber.They had such a different view of the medicine, and they did different things.

CHRISTIAN MEDICINE IN THE 

MIDDLE AGES

At the beginning of the middle ages people had a lot of fear to death. This was because there were a lot of epidemics and diseases in those days which didn’t have any type of cure, this caused the people to distrust the doctors and they prefer to do magical rites and having sobrenatural beliefs.

This is why people thought that christian religion was a really good idea.

In the christian religious medicine they didn’t think about the healthy problems or about doing any research to know the causes of the diseases, as they thought it was the will of God, so the just prayed and hoped they would became better.

If you were a doctor and didn’t prayed to God or to Jesus and you tried to give some medicine to the one who was sick you could be put into jale.

Could muslims apply surgery in Robin Hoods movie?

In the movie we can see how Azeem (the arabic character) helps a woman on labour with surgery (doing a caesarean section).But, during many time in history muslims couldn’t apply surgery, so, should Azeem be allowed to do surgery? To answer this question we first need to know the movie occurs in around the year 1160. During this time muslims could apply surgery, but couldn´t practice in dead bodies as they can now a days, so they weren't skilfull doctors. But still the surgery he does, a caesarean section, ended up in dead for the mother until the year 1500 were the first woman survived to this surgery, so the woman in the film shouldn't have survived.

ARABIC MEDICINE IN THE

MIDDLE AGES

The Arab or Islamic world, which arises parallel to Byzantium, was the

fundamental stage of medicine and science during a good part of the

Middle Ages. In the first stage, which comprises approximately the centuries

VIII and IX, incorporated the medical saber of Greek origin, combining it with

some elements of classical medicine from India and Rome. This meant an UN

extraordinary effort of translation into Arabic of medical works that were

written mainly in Greek and Latin. In this way, the

Mastery of the Galen system in Islamic medicine and, later, in the

European that depended for several centuries on works in Arabic. At

Muslim Empire distinguishes two Caliphates: Baghdad and the

of Córdoba

Arab medicine was intimately linked to religion and to the uses and

customs of society and culture. It was a classic Hippocratic medicine,

although it had some common features with Medieval medicine

The most outstanding advances contributed by Arab medicine were the

construction of hospitals, new clinical observations, especially in

infectious and ocular diseases, and the extension of the pharmacopoeia.

promoted public health, advocated central control of medicine.

ROLL OF APOTHECARIES

In the future there will be more medicaments like paracetamol or penicillin. But in the times of Robin Hood there weren’t so much types and advances in medicaments so all was made with herbs and an apothecary was the person who tried to make the herbs an effective medicament.


Also we'll observe a change in the medicine in Europe because of the medicine schools which had extended the knowledge in the field. When the Christians started to explore the medicine and considering the religion didn’t affected at all the health they improves significantly the medicine, while the muslims had lots of religious prohibition so the apothecaries extended their knowledge and started which will drive to a strong industry in Europe.
All of their work was sell to noble riches, because the medicines were expensive. Apothecaries had to read the stars, because it changed the prognostic of an illness if they were aligned. Religion was usually associated with medicine. The apothecaries could also produce poison but as some books and written registers show, there were forbidden. Apothecaries were usually a fundamental part of stories like in Romeo and Juliet or Azeem in Robin Hood.

Conclusion

Now, that you have already visited the Middle Ages, you come back to this age. Medicine has changed a lot since the Middle Ages. Back then people could die of a desease that now you just have to take a small pill to cure it.

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