Medicine Middle Ages

The development of medicine has had a massive effect of the course of human history. Medical knowledge has lead to great leaps in population and greatly increased quality of life throughout history. Likewise the lack of or lose of medical science has also lead to great suffering and loss of life. Advancement in medical learning have come from all over the world. Knowledge from certain areas has endured and from other is only now beginning to be relearned. Ancient cultural practices, religious influence, and scientific advancements all play a part how medicine evolved in different part of the world. The societies of the medieval world were diverse in numerous ways, in regards to the medical field different cultures had very different approaches
Though both areas did gain medical knowledge from the Greeks and Romans it was often inaccurate, whereas the physicians of the Middle East built upon and corrected these mistakes in Europe they often became more confused. In Europe a good deal of medical knowledge was based on traditional information, spiritual influence, and social consensus. Medicine in Europe was strongly rooted in religion, illness was often blamed on evil forces or the will of God. Spiritual cures were also sought to cure sickness. An image of the plague in Lucca, Italy was created by Giovanni Sercambi circa 1400, the image shows what appear to be flying creatures who are shooting arrows down on to a group of people. This image does a good job of representing what people in western Europe often though of disease, with limited medical knowledge people, like the creator of the image would often blame illness on sinister dark forces and often attempted to treat it with religious methods. Some knowledge of herbal remedies also remained in Europe and there were some advancements made in medical science, and though religion wasn’t always helpful in gaining medical knowledge monasteries were often responsible for the very through writing and recording of what knowledge was gained during this
Most medicine of the Americas was based on traditional herbal remedies. Religion was also tied to healing and the use of herbal and natural remedies. Though medical knowledge would not have been considered as advanced as other areas the native people of the Americas possessed a great understanding of nature which allowed them to heal themselves quite effectively much like the Europeans earlier ancestors. Oral stories were used to record history in the America before the arrival of the Europeans resulting in a lack of documentation on the medical practices of the native people, however explorers did record their own encounters with the medicine of the Americas. A Spanish missionary named Bernardino de Sahagun recorded the importance of women as physicians of the Americas, he records how the physicians of the new world are knowledgeable of herbs, trees, and rocks as well as how to treat illness with these tools. Women in were often healers in more ancient cultures and in the new world this continued to be true. The importance of women in medicine also was also connected to another more unique aspect of medicine in the Americas, the importance of childbirth. One explorer Amerigo Vespucci described how casually women gave birth in the Americas, “They are very prolific in bearing children, and in