Excruciating ways of healing medieval medicine (18+).

Recently, I drew attention to medieval history. Today it's turn to medicine. These are fucking rigid ways of healing that were practiced by medieval healers. This is a little effective and painful treatment that brought a lot of pain to the sick.

Warning: this message contains graphical and textual materials (including foul language) that can shock the people who are weak-minded. If you are one of them, I do not recommend reading this message. I warned you.

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1. Surgery - a zone of blood, pain and unsanitary conditions

It's no secret that in the Middle Ages, healers had a very weak idea of ​​the anatomy of the human body. For this reason, patients had to endure terrible pain. At the same time, little was known about painkillers and antiseptics. In a word, not the best time to become a patient, but ... if you value your life, the choice was not great ...

Surgeons in the early Middle Ages were monks because they had access to the best at the time medical literature - which was most often written by Arab scientists. In 1215, the pope forbade monks to practice medicine. The monks had to teach the peasants to perform not very complicated operations on their own. Farmers who previously knew how to castrate bulls had to learn to perform operations. These were various surgical interventions from the extraction of sick teeth to operations with cataracts of the eyes.

But there was also a success. Archaeologists at excavations in England discovered a skull of a peasant, dated around 1100. And apparently, his owner hit something heavy and sharp. With a more thorough examination, it was discovered that the peasant had an operation that saved his life. He was given trepanation - an operation when a hole is drilled in the skull and fragments of the skull are taken out through it. As a result, the pressure on the brain weakened and the man survived. You can only guess how it hurt!

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2. Belladonna: strong painkillers with possible fatal outcome

In the Middle Ages, surgery was used only in the most neglected situations - under the knife or death. One of the reasons for this is that a truly reliable anesthetic, which could alleviate painful pain from severe cutting and chipping procedures, simply did not exist. Of course you could get some strange potions that relieve pain or sleep for a while, but who knows what the unfamiliar drug dealer will give you ... Such potions often were a brew from the juice of various herbs, bile castrated boar, opium, whitewash, juice hemlock and vinegar. This "cocktail" was mixed into the wine before giving to the patient.

In the English language of the Middle Ages, there was a word describing an anesthetic - "dwale" (pronounced dwaluh). The word it means belladonna.

The hemlock juice itself could easily lead to death. "Anesthetic" could also lead a patient into a deep sleep, allowing the surgeon to do his own thing. If they are much overdone, the patient could even stop breathing.

Paracelsus, a Swiss medic, was the first to think of using the ether as an anesthetic. Nevertheless, the broadcast was not widely accepted and used it often. Again to apply it began 300 years later in America. Paracelsus also used laudanum, an opium tincture, to relieve pain.

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3. Witchcraft: Pagan rituals and religion as a form of treatment

Early Medieval medicine most often represented a rattling mixture of paganism, religion and the fruits of science. Since the church gained more power, holding pagan "rituals" has become a punishable crime. Among such punishable crimes, perhaps, was the following:

"If the healer, when approaching the house where the patient is lying, sees a lying stone next to it, turns it over, and if he [the healer] sees under him some living creature - whether it's a worm, an ant or another creature, then the healer can with certainty to assert that the patient will recover. "(From the book" The Corrector & Physician ", English" The Supervisor and the Medic ").

Patients who ever contacted the patients with the bubonic plague were advised to conduct penance - was that you confess all your sins and then say the prayer prescribed by the priest. By the way, this was the most popular way of "curing". The patients were told that, perhaps, death would pass if they correctly recognized all their sins.

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This is a great material. Looking at the faces of these unfortunate patients, you can safely judge that the medicine of those times was damn harsh.