Despite what you might think, 
medicine in the middle ages wasn’t  
all silly superstition, pointless 
potions and fantastical folklore.
It’s true that medieval medics 
didn’t have things like vaccines  
or antibiotics, and it wasn’t clear 
to them what caused many kinds of  
disease. But even so, they drew on 
ancient wisdom, hands-on experience  
and good old common sense to try 
to keep people healthy and alive.
Most leading medical minds of the 
time relied on the teachings of  
three long-dead ancient Greeks - 
Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen.
Between them, these guys had some 
cracking ideas, as well as some  
that were a little more …crack pot.
In terms of medieval medicine, their most  influential theory was 
all about the importance of the four humours.
These humours were bodily fluids - 
blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Yum!
Most people agreed that keeping your 
humours in balance was the key to  
good health. And the key to knowing 
your humours was to study your pee.
And they really studied it – they’d 
look at its colour and consistency,  
and give it a good long sniff 
to work out what was what.
Even today, we still use urine to diagnose people,
but we don’t usually recommend 
blood letting, which was the most
common treatment of the middle 
ages. To rebalance your humours,  
medieval doctors would pop leeches onto 
your skin and let them suck your blood.
But they also recognised the 
benefits of general healthy living,  
and books of the time were 
full of advice about sleep,  
exercise and diet that is 
just as relevant to us today.
Medics were into their herbs as well as their humours.
Many ordinary people had a good knowledge 
of natural remedies, and specialist
apothecaries had their own shops in 
towns and cities. Monasteries had  
gardens where they grew plants like 
sage, mandrake, catnip and chamomile.
And some of the healing mixtures they 
used are still around today, like  
liquorice for coughs, ginger for bad 
stomachs and even snail slime for burns.
Medieval people were also deeply 
religious, and many believed that if  
you prayed to the right saints, they’d 
intervene on your behalf with God.
One practice was to visit a saint’s 
shrine and leave behind a bent silver  
penny, or to burn a candle of 
the same length as your affected  
body part. Even weirder were ‘birth 
girdles’ – parchments with images of  
saints on them, which were wrapped 
around women as they gave birth.
So, you had the four humours, plenty of 
herbs and a good dose of religion.
But major injuries clearly needed something 
a bit more substantial, and that’s
where surgeons came in – often in 
the form of the 'barber-surgeon’.
That’s right – barber. Back then, the 
same chap who’d cut your hair could  
also take out your teeth, stitch 
up your skull or lop off your leg.
They weren’t licensed doctors, but 
they could be pretty well trained.  
Skilled barber-surgeons might even try 
something called trepanning to treat  
seizures and mental illnesses. They’d cut a hole in your head,
expose the outer bits of your brain and, 
well, hope for the best. And remember,  
this was all without anaesthetic or sterilized equipment!
Medieval medicine had plenty of other 
issues. Governments barely intervened  
in public health, life expectancy 
was low, and doctors were helpless  
when faced with major epidemics 
and plagues like the Black Death.
But for all its strangeness, medieval 
medicine wasn’t as mad as it’s often made out to be.
It was based on some sophisticated principles, it could often be highly creative,
and sometimes it could even make a good deal of difference to people's lives.
