Medieval Medicine - comparing Muslim and Catholic knowledge and treatment of disease and infection

But 1 of the most important things the Muslims did that the Catholics didn’t do is collect Greek texts from writers like Hippocrates and Galen. The reason this is so good is because not all the anatomy stuff was right that the Greeks wrote but a lot of their herbal remedies and cures were right. At the same time we were carving crosses in people’s heads the Muslims were curing people with actual cures.

Question 2 out of 2

Both the religions Catholic and Muslim have been a great influence to the treatments of disease and infection because even though in the Catholic hospitals it was monks and nun’s curing the patients they did have some good herbal cures that had been passed down from generation to generation. The Catholic did have its bad side because it was monks and nurses curing the sick most of their cures were supernatural and only 10% of Catholics hospitals were actually built to cure the sick 47% housed the poor and elderly(they provided no medical care)31% of Catholic hospitals were leper hospitals (which provided no medical care) and the other 12% of hospitals gave shelter to poor travellers and pilgrims. The hospitals back then were not the same as hospitals today. There were a lot of good things about Muslim hospitals that were not in Catholic hospitals for example their hospitals gave a high proportion of hospital care also the hospitals were more purposefully built for example some of the bigger Muslim hospitals in cities like Cairo and Baghdad had  hospitals with a big ward, libraries, rooms for resting, and a proper kitchen so they could give their patients a proper diet.The most important thing the Muslims did that the Catholics didn’t do was they had proper doctors at the hospital and in the bigger hospitals they even had lecture’s so they could train medics. Also both the religions did have some similarities like both of their religions disallowed dissection and because of that surgery was not considered a useful skill to have. Also both of the religions thought that theories were more important  than practical procedures but one very bad thing both the religions did wrong was allow no criticism of Galen.  Many doctors throughout the years of Galen’s rule over medical knowledge tried to demonstrate new theories and some of their theories were actually right, but those doctors were shut down and thought of as lunatics because no one was allowed to question Galen and his methods.

In conclusion I think that the religion that had the most impact on the treatments of infection and disease was the Muslim religion because they used more actual cures and remedies unlike the Christian church that mostly used supernatural remedies.