How The Diseases Were Caused And Cured

          Q1: How were these diseases caused and how were they cured?
    These diseases were caused by bacteria, viruses, and microorganisms.  So through fleas, or even just breathing the contaminated air. The doctors had no tools to see deep inside the body and no tests.  So the doctors would have to go through alot just to find out what the disease is, when today with all of our tools we could know right away.  If the patients were males, the doctors examined them, but if it was a female the doctors listened to the verbal descriptions of the patients sufferings to see what there diagnose is.  Also, the doctors looked at the patients breathing, pulse, and heartbeat.  The body was said to have 4 body humors: phlegm, yellow bile, blood, and black bile.  If you were ill, the humors were out of balance.

Any disease you had could be cured by food, rest, exercise, massage, accurate physical therapy, or of course medicines.  This is everything we would use today.  The only thing that is different is we had tools and tests to examine the disease right away so the patient can get treated.

Diagnosis

Q2:  How are people diagnosed?

          All these people in the medieval times lived all over, and each place you lived there was a different disease.  Those living close to marshy land and bad, nasty water could easily get malaria.  Country people faced health hazards all the time like rats, birds and other creatures that dropped right into their food from the roof.  Also back then, most people didn’t really have indoor toilets so they had outdoor ones which led to killer diseases including typhus, cholera, and dysentery.  Lastly, poor diet and coarse clothing causes skin related diseases like scurvy, scabies, and scrofula.

          All of these diseases including small pox, measles, leprosy, scarlet fever and many more killed thousands of people.  This cause affected that Eras feudalism structure to crumble because of the huge loss in population.

Symptoms

 

Q3: What were the symptoms for these diseases?

          The symptoms can be high temperatures, headaches, different urine color, coughing, inflammation, severe stomach aches, diarrhea, breaking out with red spots, lack of balance and many more.  So all these symptoms are what we get today when were sick, except we get it in different ways, not because we dont have indoor toilets or because rats fall in our food.  Blood from a healthy person was sweet, but blood from a sick person was bitter or sour. 

The doctors discovered this by bloodletting.  Which was used with large worm like creatures that bit through your skin and sucked blood.  This is how they figured out if your blood was sweet or sour.  If i lived in the medieval times, everyday i would try my best not to get sick because there were some bad consequences.

Surgeries and Medicine

Q4:  Did they have surgeries?  If so, did they have medicine to put the patients to sleep?

          Yes, they did have surgeries but they were very dangerous!  If I were living back then I would definitely not want to have one and I’ll tell you why!  First of all, the patients stayed awake during the operation.  So the majority of the people died of shock or pain before the surgery was even finished.  Although, the doctors did have pain relievers, they still didn't work that very well.

There were no cures and those who survived the operation often ended up getting an infection anyways.  So I just don’t get why they even had surgeries, there was no point and it just put the patient through more pain then they needed to be in.  But luckily, surgeries were only performed last, if all other treatments had failed.  So the main problem of surgeries back then was the pain.  If they had pain relievers then most people would survive but without them, it’s almost impossible.

Pain Relievers and Surgeries

Q5:  What were the most common surgeries & what kind of pain relievers did the doctors have?

          The most common operations were minor ones with surgeons removing cataracts from eyes, reseting broken bones, adjusted dislocated bones, and repairing hernias.  Even though these were minor operations, they still created lots of pain which brings me to pain relievers.  The surgeons used plants and herbs for pain relief, which included mandragora, the root of the poisonous mandrake plant.  Also, the Cannabis, opium and a poisonous herb called deadly nightshade were used.  Today, we have so much more to help us with pain and better tools and better ways of doing things and helping people when there sick or hurt.  So it just makes me think how badly it would hurt to get a surgery done back then, when the plants and herbs barley even worked, so basically there pointless. 

Surgeons also cured soldiers on battlefields.  They dug bullets out of wounds, sealed torn flesh, and amputated limbs.  Surgeons would also help the wounds by pouring boiling oil on it which burned the skin.  So many soldiers bled to death or died from infection!  So once again, whats the point of pouring boiling oil onto the skin, if in the long run you will just be hurting yourself more?

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