Because the Church opposed any practice of bloodletting, certain medical practices were carried out by barbers who were also known as surgeons. These practices included bloodletting, or phlebotomy, and dentistry. Medieval barbers also performed work we associate with barbers today, including haircutting and shaving, and were included among the lower urban class, a nice irony considering the prestige of surgeons in modern culture.
Bloodletting, or phlebotomy, was a medical practice common throughout the nineteenth century. The practice was based on the belief that many illnesses were caused by an excess of blood, which caused an imbalance of humor in the body. Consequently, people were frequently bled in an attempt to restore the balance of bodily fluids and to purge the illness.
An elfshot is a disease believed to have been produced by the immediate agency of evil spirits.
The foetus, also spelled "fetus," is the young of an animal while it is still developing in the egg or womb, especially during the later stages of development, where the indentifiable characteristics of the animal become apparent. In Middle English, the term "fetus" also denoted the action of the bringing forth of the young, the process of birth.
An herbal is an authoritative manual which aids in the identification of of plants (herbs) for medicinal purposes. Many herbals from the medieval period drew largely from Dioscorides and Pliny. At times, the illustrations in herbals became highly ornate, sometimes ceasing to resemble the plant in question at all while incorporating vague mythological notions. In addition, many herbals were concerned with the doctrine of signatures, the use of plants to cure human ailments on the basis of supposed anatomical resemblances.
Hippocrates lived c. 460-377 B.C. He is named as the author of the vast Corpus Hippocraticum, a diverse collection of texts that were created by multiple authors. It contains books on diet, surgery, disease, the elements, and (unexpectedly, perhaps) the relation of climate to social structures. For an overview of this corpus, see Ackerknecht. 56-58. The famous "Oath," a version of which is still taken today, stresses the patient's right to secrecy, respect for life, and the integrity of the physician's office.
A humor, also spelled "humour," was, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, one of the four fluids of the body that were thought to determine a person's temperament and features. The four cardinal humors were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy (black bile). Ideally each person had a balanced mixture of the four; a predominance of one produced a person who was sanguine, (Latin "sanguis," meaning "blood"), phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic. Each of these complexions had specific characteristics; the choleric person, for example, was not only quick to anger but also yellow-faced, lean, hairy, proud, ambitious, revengeful, and shrewd. By further extension, "humor" eventually came to denote an unbalanced mental condition, a mood or unreasonable folly or vice. Humoralism, or humoral pathology, is the belief that all diseases were related to the disordered state of the four bodily humors.
An infirmary, or in the Middle English form, "fermery," is a building for the treatment of the sick and/or wounded, traditionally the sick-quarters in a religious establishment, a school, workhouse, or other institution. In the Middle Ages, most monasteries contained an infirmary, headed by an infirmarian, a monk who was especially knowledgeable in the powers of plants and herbs, and of classical medical practices.
Jet is a form of lignite (soft coal) known for its black color and relative hardness. Jet, when set on fire, was used to scare off snakes, to resist evil, and to detect certain forms of illness (e.g., epilepsy).
Lammas was a harvest festival held in England on Aug. 1, when bread baked from the first harvested wheat was consecrated at Mass. It also commemorated the day on which St. Peter was released from prison.
A leech is a small worm with sharp teeth and suckers at either end of its body. Land leeches feed off of the blood of mammals. Some species of the land leech have been used medically for centuries to treat such problems as mental illness, tumors, skin disease and gout through the process of bloodletting (also known as "leeching"), and their use also figured importantly in the field of humoralism (see humoralism, humors).
This is a common medieval expression for the priest, who is seen as healing sin, the sickness of the soul, the way the physician heals illness and diseases of the body.
Medicus is the Latin word for physician and the common form in early medieval period; later physicians were known as "physicus," a term that suggests "that the terminology reflects a rising conviction that the fully trained physician should be something of a natural philosopher as well" (DMA 8:248).
The oratory John of Hexham visited is called "clymeterium" in Bede's Latin, the only instance of the word; it is translated as "prayer-house and church" ("gebaedhus and ciricean" in the Old English version of Bede's History, a small hut, perhaps, where the bishop went to read and pray, especially in Lent (Bede, Book 5, Ch. 1). The oratory was in a remote area not far from John's church, so it is not part of the regular ecclesiastical architectural structure and could be something like the small house King Alfred discusses in the Preface to his Soliloquies; see the Monastery module, Link 5, for references.
In the early Church, a patriarch was a bishop on whom the canons conferred jurisdiction over all the bishops, including metropolitans (bishops of cities), and over the clergy and people of a territory. Traditionally, only five patriachies existed, and these regions of control were granted to the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
A penitential is a list of sins with penances attached in graded order of severity. Penitentials or handbooks of penance were written in both Latin and in the vernacular in England by the tenth century; Latin examples of the texts were known already in the eighth. A penitential was intended for use by the priest in hearing private confession; it categorizes sins and specifies that penances should be assigned according to the ability of the sinner to perform them. The texts are extremely useful indices to medieval morality, even though some of there provisions could be traditional and indirect rather than direct references to medieval behavior. Chaucer's final Canterbury Tale, the Parson's Tale, is based on a Latin penitential. See the Penance module for more information on penance and penitentials.
Piles is another term for the disease commonly known as "hemorroids," the irritation of the veins and/or mucus membrane of the rectal area. An irritation of great discomfort, the remedy of which was much discussed throughout both the medieval and Renaissance medical journals.