The Impact of Christianity on Medieval English Medicine

PHYSIOLOGY

  •   Christianity was important in the acceptance of the authority of Galen, because he believed in one God, which pleased the Church.  This was important in ensuring the primacy of Galen in medieval medical teaching, but note that it thereby slowed progress in medical ideas. 

  •   Before the printing press, most books (including medical book) were copied by monks. 

CAUSATION

  •   Diseases such as leprosy were regarded as a punishment for the patient’s sin, epidemics as a punishment for society’s sins. 

  •   Epilepsy was widely believed to be caused by demonic possession or evil spirits entering the body; ergotism (a very painful disease caused by eating mouldy rye and called 'St Anthony's Fire') was believed to be a test of faith from God. 

  •   Non-Christians were blamed for disease: Jews might be accused of poisoning the wells; old women of casting bad spells. 

  •   The belief that disease was caused or at least allowed by God led to reservation about physicians and suspicion of surgery and experimentation, lest it harm the soul or body. 

TREATMENTS

  •   There were innumerable religious-only cures (such as saying the Lord’s Prayer to cure toothache).  Sufferers might go on a pilgrimage to a healing shrine, say a Mass, light a giant candle in church to bring the problem to God’s attention, and many saints were associated with various diseases (eg St Roch might cure the Plague). 

  •   Where a disease was regarded as a divine punishment, remedies might include praying for forgiveness, sitting in a sewer, exorcism or – in extreme cases – a gathering where people whipped themselves (‘flagellation’) in a public show of contrition. 

  •   Medieval people believed in the 'doctrine of signatures' – the idea that God had marked plants with signs that showed their therapeutic uses

PHYSICIANS, CARERS & HEALERS

  •   The Church was central in the foundation of Universities, and controlled what was taught, which often focussed on theological degrees; many university-trained physicians coupled a medicine degree with a theological degree. 

  •   In some dioceses (e.g.  York), physicians and surgeons had to be licensed by the Church, ensuring they were moral as well as trained. 

  •   Monasteries cared for the sick (see below) and would have a Herbalist, who would treat the brothers and people in the infirmary. 

  •   In convents and abbeys, where the nuns did all the nursing, nuns ran infirmaries and dispensaries and, according to the 17th century historian John Aubrey "did cure their poor neighbours". 

HOSPITALS

  •   After 1100, inspired by the Benedictine rule which placed care for the sick as a primary Christian duty, the number of hospitals rose rapidly. 

  •   The influence of the Church in the foundation of hospitals is seen in their names: St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London; St Leonard's Hospital in York.  Wards were built about an altar, and most hospitals included a chapel, and offered hospitality to pilgrims. 

  •   30% of English hospitals were owned and operated directly by the Church, staffed by monks and nuns from nearby monasteries.  Nuns and “chaste widows living in God’s service” carried out the practical care: feeding, cleaning, washing bed linen, ensuring warm, restful surroundings, and dispensing herbal remedies. 

ANATOMY & SURGERY

  •   In 1215 the Pope forbade clerics to cut the body; this was not to stop dissections (as is commonly believed), but it meant that university-trained physicians, most of whom also trained as clerics, avoided surgical work, which was left to the barber-surgeons, creating a division between surgery and ‘conservative’ (non-invasive) treatment which exists to this day. 

  •   Christian beliefs about the afterlife (eg bodily resurrection) added to the unwillingness of physicians to conduct dissections. 

  •   The Crusades, and the desire of families to being back the bodies of loved ones who had died, played a part in de-mystifying the corpse and paved the way for dissection. 

PUBLIC HEALTH

  •   Medieval monasteries developed routines of cleanliness/bathing/privvies which influenced the lifestyle of the wealthy. 

  •   There is no hard evidence of direct copying of monastic health systems, but the royal hospital of St Leonard's at York ran on similar lines to monastic hospitals, civic hospitals adopted a similar lay-out, and urban sanitation projects used the same architects, stonemasons, carpenters and engineers. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:  

YouTube

Medicine and Religion - EverLearner

The role of the Church in Medieval medicine - Andrew Morris:

both these presentations are pedestrian, but clear and helpful.