Medieval Health Care: Bloodletting, Primitive Surgery, and How Surprisingly Good Doctors Could Be Despite Knowing Almost Nothing

History Unplugged Podcast · Mar 1, 2018 · 50m

The Middle Ages were a terrible time to get sick. There was no sanitation inside cities and hardly any in rural areas. The common way to relieve pain amongst sick people was to inflict more pain upon them, and then hope to the stars for a bit of luck. Monks with little to no experience, aside from castrating animals and having access to a few medical books, performed surgery on human beings. The medicine was basic, and the terrible illness that plagued those times was complex.

Yet people came up with surprising ways to cope with illness in this time. In this episode I discuss...Theriac…