Godoy 1

Estefany Godoy

Mrs. Ramirez

CSU ExpositRW

23 April 2018

The practices of medicine have become more advanced and changed over time since the

medieval times. There used to be a time in which the lack of science induced improper medical

procedures that caused harmful infectious. Today's medical practice are much better at guranting

that a person will live a longer life than those from the medieval times, so in this research paper

we will be discussing those medical practices from the ancient times such as bloodletting,

tempanation,animal drug ointments and skull cures.

An example of one medical practice would be bloodletting that had begun with the ancient

Egyptians and sumerians including that was a sickness cause by small amounts of bad blood in

the body. The romans were the ones that had more of use for it because they had a predictions

that the human body had four substances called the “humours” and those were yellow bile, black

bile,phlegm and blood and that they all needed to be in balance to maintain a healthy life. For

example some patients would catch a cold or a fever so the doctor guessed that there was an

overflow of blood so the procedures turned out to have a choice to cut the patient's vein and

drain their blood. These procedures had immediately come to a stop when it was more likely

leading to death because of blood loss otherwise it was doing more harm than good. But using

leeches to bloodlet are still being used today.

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A secondary example of what the early egyptians and early romans used was the animal drug

ointments like reptile blood, dead rodents, rotten food,animal saliva, and mud. Sometimes when

a woman or man will lose their libidos they would use the saliva of a cow to see if she would

perform will in these actions. But the egyptians would use animal and human feces for lesions

and injuries, their properties of being able to heal were celebrated for. While these might've of

worked they have led to infections diseases that caused lots of deaths among the people.

When a person is suffering from headaches, migraines, stomach pains and ulcers, the doctor will

precedes you will cannibal remedies such as blood, flesh, and bones from humans who are dead.

The romans believed that these remedies would cure all types of stomach and cerebral problems

and that they are injesting the deceased person's spirit so they can be well and live long. The

cures were given to different symptoms such as a person having a headache would have eaten a

skull while a person with a stomach problem would be eating flesh of the human body.

Executions were often being made so the ones who needed the most help would attend these

hoping they would have a chance to be well again.

A third example would be called trepanation which is a medical practice that takes a drill to a

humans skull in meaning to cure illnesses. The romans and egyptians had formed the procedure

because of the witchcrafts that were believed to be going on that time and a way to release bad

spirits when a person was sick or mentally ill. In today's more advanced medicine practices this

procedure is still used to clean out bone fragments and cure epilepsy while the patients who had

these producers had survived.

The fourth example would be that the ancient doctors believed that a woman's uterus was an

animal and that it would fall apart on a woman who had abstiene her whole life scared that it
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would cause suffocation or illusions. So what the romans did to fix this problem they would

force al the woman to marry young and bear children, but for an older woman that assumed to

not have a uterus was made to have therapeutic baths and physical massages on her thighs with

pleasant smells so the uterus will show again.

The fifth example would be that all romans and egyptians thought that illnesses were caused by

demons and being punished by the gods for making mischief from your past. The doctors were

only priest and exorcists while their speciality was being magic. When a patient would grind

their teeth while they slept they assumed that a deceased person from that family was trying to

get into contact with them. The cure to this was to have the patient sleep with a human skull and

kiss it seven times for a week.

The last type of medical procedure from the medieval times is the use of mercury ointments to

cure illnesses and liquid mercury to increase lifespan and visibility, as well as being used to cure

sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea,herpes, and syphilis. Although some of the

patient who used this treatment claimed that the ointment had successful cured them but those

patients had serious kidney and liver failure due to the heavy metal poisoning.

Many romans and egyptians only had a short lifespan and unhealthy lifestyles because they had

no knowledge of science. Due to their improper medical practices and not having sanitations to

keep the virus causing bacterias that would cause illnesses away had killed almost every ancient

human that has ever lived. Some of these procedures are still being used in more developed

countries but for more necessary rare occasions or illnesses, in today's knowledge of science the

patient has a sanitized room and while in surgery they are not likely to feel any pain due to the

athnestics we have today. The diseases then were often more common among the middle ages.
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citations

Andrews, Evan. “7 Unusual Ancient Medical Techniques.” ​History.com​, A&E Television

Networks, 25 Mar. 2014,
www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-unusual-ancient-medical-techniques.

ruse, Audrey. “Medicine.” ​Ancient Roman History​, 2004, www.unrv.com/medicine.php.