Source 7
This is part of a letter from the Prior of the abbey Christchurch, Canterbury, to the Bishop of London, 28 September 1348:
"Terrible is God towards the sons of men...He often allows plagues, miserable famines, conflicts, wars and other forms of suffering to aris, and uses them to terrify and torment men and so drive out their sins. And thus, indeed, the realm of England, because of the growing pride and corruption of its subjects, and their numberless sins...is to be oppressed by the pestilence"
The church also hindered medicine in the medieval period because they taught supernatural causes for example illnesses and conditions miraculously healed by Jesus in the Bible. Usually he just touched someone to heal them. In the Middle Ages the Church promised that Jesus and the saints could still heal people:
CONDITION NUMBER OF HEALINGS
Blindness 5
Deafness 1
Dumbness 1
Epilepsy 1
Leprosy 2
Crippled Hand 1
Paralysis 2
Swollen legs 1
Bleeding 1
Death 3
Unspecified 4
Evil spirits 9
Another supernatural cause which hindered medicine was to;
"Write these words on the jaw of the patient. 'In the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, Amen + Res + Pax + Nax + In Christo Fillio.' then they thought the pain would cease at once. Another supernatural cause was that the King would cure scrofula (a disease of the skin) by laying his hand upon the diseased man.
The church again hindered medicine in the medieval period by holding back new knowledge. Roger Bacon - a thirteenth century priest. He suggested that a new approach to medicine was needed. He said that doctors should do their own original research instead of learning from the books of ancient writers such as Galen. Church leaders put him in prison for heresy. This nineteenth century engraving shows him smuggling his work out of prison.
Source 1
Hindering medicine is shown by this medieval illustration of someone caught by a priest illegally dissecting a body. Dissection was banned by the Church until the fourteenth century.
Source 5
This is a picture of a teacher watching over a dissection.The teacher read out to the students parts of Galen's books. At the same time the body was dissected to show the students what Galen meant. The church allowed only one dead body a year to be used, so the students spent most their time reading Galen's books. The teacher thought that Galen was right about everything.
Source 6
The pope and his bishops were afraid that new ideas would challenge the power of the church. Every new idea was checked to make sure it did not challenge the Bible.
Source 9
The christian chuech taught that it was part of people's religious duty to care for the sick but it was not until the 1100s that it actually took many practical measures to encourage this teaching. You have already seen that in the eleventh century the church started to open up medical schools where the ideas of Galen were taught. It also began to set up hospitals set upby nuns and monks. These were not hospitals as we would understand them today. Nearly 1200 places called hospitals have been identified in medieval England and Wales but only 10 per cent of them actually cared for the sick. The others were called hospitals because they provided hospitality for visitors. So overall i think that the church HINDERED medicine in the medieval period.
By Natasha Hailey
Mr Williams
History
