Posted on 07/27/2007 3:05:20 PM PDT by blam
Enlightened Medicine Found in Dark Ages
By Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience
posted: 23 July 2007 08:42 am ET
The way sick people are treated is a reflection of the prevalent cultural norms, and in the Dark Ages, being sick was much more common than today, so people accepted and dealt with ill people on a daily basis."
People living in Europe during early Medieval times (400—1200 A.D.) actually had a progressive view of illness because disease was so common and out in the open, according to the research presented at a recent historical conference.
Instead of being isolated or shunned, the sick were integrated into society and taken care of by the community, the evidence suggests.
"The Dark Ages weren't so dark," said University of Nottingham historian Christina Lee, co-organizer of the second conference on Disease, Disability and Medicine in Early Medieval Europe. "The question we should be asking is whether illness was actually seen as a problem. What was classified as a disability? What was an impairment? The answer can't be generalized." The views presented challenge traditional views of Dark Age attitudes being unenlightened and guided by the unscientific doctrines of the church.
Daily diseases
Treatment of the sick in the Dark Ages is poorly understood today, because none of it was governed by law or written down, Lee said, but assuming that it was backwards and steeped in superstition would be a mistake. Being sick was much more common back then, for one thing, so people accepted and dealt with ill people on a daily basis, she said. "Parents, neighbors and friends all tried to get each other to a place of healing," Lee told LiveScience. "It was a community affair."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
What you need is a good bleeding.
Quarantine would have helped out for the part "...because disease was so common and out in the open...".
Don’t take this personally, but the ‘dark-ages’ life expentancy was about half what it is today. The infant mortality rate was probably 1/3rd to 1/2 what it is today.
While I do think there may have been some practices that should be reviewed for some uses today, for the most part I don’t buy into the main gyst of this article.
It would be a lot easier to say that nearly all medical practices in the ‘dark-ages’ were abominable, than to make the premise that things weren’t all that bad.
It wasn’t even common practice to wash your hands between patients while treating open wounds before the 19th century. Wound infection rates were cut from something like 90% to around 5% by this simple practice.
Nah, I’m not quite buying what’s being sold here.
good God, blam. Our historians are placing PC upon our history.
“We all need to think a little more Medieval. We’re quite arrogant...”
Perhaps I am wrong, but maybe this is just part of the “We all need to return to a more primitive lifestyle to save the earth” mantra.
Oh, by the way, this article was written by Heather Whips. She sounds lovely.
The Dark Ages were more inclusive, don’t you see. And we, your intellectually superior liberal democrats intend to take you back to those idyllic times. Of course, we will have to suffer through with modern medical practices, can’t allow societies leaders to sucumb to some annoying epidemic.
From Goethe’s FAUST
OLD PEASANT
Ay, truly! ’tis well done, that you
Our festive meeting thus attend;
You, who in evil days of yore,
So often show’d yourself our friend!
Full many a one stands living here, 660
Who from the fever’s deadly blast,
Your father rescu’d, when his skill
The fatal sickness stay’d at last.
A young man then, each house you sought,
Where reign’d the mortal pestilence. 665
Corpse after corpse was carried forth,
But still unscath’d you issued thence.
Sore then your trials and severe;
The Helper yonder aids the helper here.
ALL
Heaven bless the trusty friend, and long 670
To help the poor his life prolong!
****
Through numberless receipts to blend.
A ruddy lion there, a suitor bold, 705
In tepid bath was with the lily wed.
Thence both, while open flames around them roll’d,
Were tortur’d to another bridal bed.
Was then the youthful queen descried
With varied colours in the flask;— 710
This was our medicine; the patients died,
“Who were restored?” none cared to ask.
With our infernal mixture thus, ere long,
These hills and peaceful vales among,
We rag’d more fiercely than the pest; 715
Myself the deadly poison did to thousands give;
They pined away, I yet must live,
To hear the reckless murderers blest.
After ***** the speaker is FAUST.
Turns out now, the "enlightened" were not all that much better. It is all a matter of perspective.
Acetominophen was around?
Archaeology and solid historical research has exploded many myths concerning the Middle Ages. For one thing, it seems that most English peasents were actually literate by the 1300s. Also, key Medieval inventions made the modern world possible: crop rotation, horse harness, mechanical clock, magnetic compass, lenses, corporations, banking, printing press, wood-pulp paper, distilling, scientifically based cartography, and city charters granting liberty to all burghers.
A brace of anal leeches would do him good methinks.
Get that pestilential blood OUT!
This is Her Hillery!ness’s problem also, stagnnt essence.
I find it strange, seeing that the travials that we went though that our life span was not shorter.
In any case he needs to get to the barber soon.
now have to go Early Medieval on your a$$!
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I’m not so sure about that. The Roman physician Galen was, when...about the third century or so, was making huge strides in improved medicine. He didn’t know what germs were but he figured out the cleanliness bit about surgery. If I’m not mistaken he even sterilized his tools with fire, perhaps not knowing why it was better, but seeing the better result.
I’d question those infant mortality rates too. Life-expectancy statistics are rife with the common error of letting very high infant mortality skew the averages downward. As it turns out, people that survived childhood tended to often live just about as long as people do now.
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