To What Extent Had Medical Knowledge And Treatment Improved From

To what extent had medical knowledge and treatment improved from 1350 to1590? Medical knowledge has progressed through time. In the middle Ages people did not yet know of important medical concepts and because of their deprivation of knowledge and true understanding in areas such as simple surgery many wrong assumptions were made. However medical progress was clearly seen in the Renaissance period in which many people such as Da Vinci, Pare and Vesalius contributed to medical reform in both knowledge and treatment. In this essay I will be discussing the extent of medical improvement in terms of knowledge and treatment from the middle Ages to the Renaissance. Significant improvements and medicine were evident through the Renaissance. An example of a major advance would be the better understanding of Human anatomy. In the Middle Ages Laws on Dissection were harsh but due to leniency in the Renaissance towards laws such as these, dissections became more accepted. Galen could only dissect animals and due to this there were much confusion. However this was changed in the Renaissance as people began to dissect and experiment on Human bodies rather than animals. This meant that people could study the body in detail and many mysteries were opened up. Researchers such as Andreaus Vesalius could explore the body in detail and requests were made to artists to draw the body. Due to this bodies could be drawn in detail and artists such as Da Vinci could make anatomical drawings. Also, due to the relaxation of law on dissection people such as Vesalius were able to write books in which the human body was accurately explained in detail: De Humani Corporis Fabrica – On the Structure of the Human Body. This meant that accurate medical knowledge could be spread and wrong assumptions and beliefs could be destroyed helping Doctors and Surgeons to create better treatments and theories. Books like these introduced the ‘hands-on’ approach and encouraged physicians to carry out surgery themselves instead of letting barber-surgeons carry out the brutal business. Overall this shows that one of the major improvements in medicine was peoples views on dissection which helped to lead to many new discoveries and not only opened up medical knowledge but equally opened up knowledge on treatment; knowing where parts of the body were and how they were linked to other parts of the body meant that Doctors could improve treatments and make ones that actually worked. For example knowing that the jaw bone was one instead of two bones meant that Surgeons may have been able to dispose of incorrect and ineffective treatments used on the jaw. Another major improvement in terms of treatment is the use of ligatures, introduced by Pare. This ended painful and dangerous surgery such as cauterization. Another important improvement was that people challenged traditional and accepted ideas. In the middle ages the Church accepted the ideas of Galen’s. Nobody questioned what the Church had laid down as they would be severely punished. However during the Renaissance people such as Vesalius started to question these beliefs. For example Vesalius dissected bodies and found that many ideas of Galen were wrong such as the one of the Jaw bone being two bones instead of one. Also, belief in the 4 humors was also criticized. This shows how this change was positive and was a major improvement in medicine. Questioning would mean that ignorance to the truth would be slowly abolished and Doctors/Surgeons were able to make correct interpretations and accurate findings meant that effective treatments could also be made. Other individuals such as Harvey also proved some of Galen’s findings, such as blood is not made in the liver and it is not burned.

Mariam H

To what extent had medical knowledge and treatment improved from 1350 to1590? As the understanding of the body increased so did the development of medicine. A lot of breakthroughs in herbal medicine were being made. For example apothecaries began to experiment with distant plants brought by people such as Columbus. The bark of the Quina tree was thought to have contained a special property which treated Malaria. Overall the evidence shows that many medical breakthroughs in knowledge and treatment were made from the middle Ages to the Renaissance. On the other hand improvement in medical knowledge and treatment was also halted by many aspects. Progress was slow as people still made ‘medicines’ or potions influenced by the supernatural e.g. worms and newts were used. Superstition still played a part of cures. For example Charles II still touched sick people to ‘cure’ them. Also, causes of disease were still not found; Doctors were still unaware of germs hence why they could not make cures for disease using their discoveries. Cures were still based on the 4 humors thus blood letting and purging were still common. This slowed down the progress of treatment. Overall this shows that there were still factors of knowledge and treatment that stayed the same in the Renaissance which slowed down progress. In conclusion, the Renaissance was an era of great progress in medical knowledge and treatment. However there were still aspects of medical belief that remained the same. In terms of how much medicine improved from the end of the middle Ages to the renaissance, it seems, from the evidence that the progress of medical knowledge was much faster than the progress of treatment. Many doors were opened up for Doctors to know more about the human body but the knowledge they gained was not used effectively to come up with successful cures. They successfully identified how the human body worked but yet could not identify appropriate cures. Some successes were made in treatment such as Pare’s discovery of Ligatures but generally progress in this area was much slower than the rapid fluctuations in medical knowledge.

Mariam H