Daily Life During The Reformation (33 page)

TOBACCO

Tobacco was thought to have many medicinal uses; smoking
was supposed to prevent catarrh, alleviate fatigue, be a gentle laxative, and
to fortify the stomach. Application of the green leaves to the skin was
supposed to cure leprosy, kill lice, and heal wounds. Tobacco juice was also
used to make a dressing for cuts, bruises and burns, gunshot wounds, and to
cure the bites of venomous creatures when mixed with olive oil, turpentine,
wax, and verdigris. For colic, rectal injections of tobacco smoke were
employed.

RURAL MEDICINE

People in villages and small towns continued to visit local
men and women who practiced medical skills and cures handed down by example and
word of mouth through the ages. There was generally someone, even in a hamlet,
that had some knowledge of the benefits of herbs and spices that figured
largely into their remedies. Some ingredients could be obtained locally; others
were imported. In cities, apothecaries often blended plants for the desired
medicine that might consist of pepper, cloves, ginger, and China root, the
latter for gout. Imported ingredients could be expensive and unavailable to the
poor. For injuries such as a broken leg or arm the local blacksmith or barber
was called upon to set the injured limb.

BLEEDING

For rich and poor alike, bleeding was done to help rid a
patient of evil fluids in which disease flourished. Those who could afford the
process, sometimes had themselves bled four times a year. Others, much more. A
bleeding holiday was not unusual in which families and friends went in groups
to the public baths where surgeons opened their veins and allowed the blood to
flow. Taken from the elbow, chest, or from the basilic or temporal vein, it was
the most common treatment for releasing toxic humors. Every sickness had its
own specific vein. Letting of blood was thus used as a panacea since most
illnesses were thought to be the result of unclean substances in the body, the
bleeding casting them out to restore the natural equilibrium.

THERMAL WATERS

Others had great faith in the benefits of the waters of
thermal springs to be drunk at the source if possible. There, the patient would
be purged and then combine rest with bathing and drinking some two to three
liters of water daily.

HOSPITALS

Not many people went into hospitals, which were considered
mostly as places for the homeless and somewhere to die. Care was far from
adequate and sometimes as many as six people with a variety of illnesses, were
put in the same bed, which was seldom clean. In the sixteenth century, there
were five epidemics of the plague, and those who contracted it were not
admitted to hospital in England, for example, unless there were special houses
to confine them. Hospitals, themselves, usually financed by a charitable patron
or the town hall, were places where disease spread easily.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Many doctors thought they would have more chance of success
in curing the patient if they prayed before administering their treatment. The
Catholic Church in Europe continued to promote Galen’s anatomical ideas as
infallible, and its control over medical practice and training in the
universities remained strong. However, as the Renaissance took hold in Europe,
and inventions such as the microscope appeared, leading doctors began more and
more to investigate the anatomy and physiology of the body. Classical theories
were put to the test of thorough investigation for the first time. The ideas of
Galen were hard to overturn, however, since his theories had been the accepted
wisdom of the medical world for more than a thousand years. Even when he
appeared to be wrong, many doctors would doubt or ignore their own observations
and adhere to the time honored views.

A scholar who questioned old ideas, such as those of Galen
on the human body, went against the commonly accepted views and would acquire
many enemies. Nevertheless, there were a few men who found new paths forward in
the fields of medicine and science. Change was slow in the use of new drugs
such as the chemicals (e.g., mercury, antimony, and quinine) in the treatment
of disease.

DISSECTION

In the sixteenth century, dissection of the human body
became more common. Previously, the only dissections that had been permissible
were those undertaken on the corpses of criminals, and these had been carried
out purely to support Galen’s theories. By the sixteenth century, the main
pressure to maintain the general ban on dissection came from senior university
professors, who were afraid that the ideas of Galen (who experimented only on
animals) would be challenged by new discoveries. Andreas Vesalius, who distrusted
the teachings of Galen, made his own observations when he became professor of
surgery at the University of Padua in 1537. He taught his students using the
dissection of human corpses to illustrate anatomical facts. The tradition that
dissection should only be done while a professor read aloud the theories of
Galen was dropped. In the pioneering atmosphere of the Renaissance, dissection
was accepted as a means to develop new ideas and explain these to students.

GERMANY

To combat diseases in Germany, people followed the oral
traditions including a purging calendar (published in Nurnberg, 1496).
Physicians tended to think of medicine and their services as divinely inspired.
For all but a few, faith and prayers were the most important remedies for ill health;
but when all else failed, God allowed one more possibility, consult the doctor.
Many physicians, devout as any clergyman, considered plague to be God’s curse
on the wicked.

Physicians also gave sensible advice in many cases,
alerting people to the fact that disease was spread by physical contact and
cautioned people to avoid the afflicted, their houses, clothes, bed covers, and
so on. Ventilation was important in closed spaces, alcohol should be avoided, a
clean house maintained; one should eat lightly, bathe frequently, and stay warm
in winter with a continuous fire in the hearth. Like most people, they believed
in talismans such as sapphires to be worn in the streets to ward off disease.

The English traveler, Fynes Moryson, having fallen ill in
Leipzig, recounts that German physicians were very honest and learned. They
never took money until the cure was complete; and if the patient died, they
expected no pay. Apothecaries were few in the city; only those permitted by the
prince could practice. They sold drugs at a reasonable rate, and were careful
not to sell spoiled medicines. To prevent any fraud, imperial laws and local
decrees demanded that once a year physicians visit the apothecary shops and
destroy all out of date drugs no longer fit to be used.

QUACKS

Throughout Europe, medicine men roamed the countryside
stopping at hamlets, farms, and local markets to peddle their elixir promising
it as a panacea for just about everything.

Moryson noted that in Germany as in Italy, there were
quacks who professed to have special salves, oils for most ailments, and who
carried testimonials under seals of princes and free cities that attested to
the cures they had performed. These were mounted on walls and stalls in the
market place where they lectured on their skills in applying them. They pictured
drawings of cures, gall stones they had removed from patients, and teeth they
had extracted.

FRANCE

In sixteenth-century France, Montpellier’s School of
Medicine was internationally famous and highly respected. It was here that
Felix Platter, at age 15, was sent from his home in Basel to study. Felix was a
Protestant; and Montpellier, although known as a haven for Protestants, still
witnessed some violence and persecution as he noted when Bibles found in a
bookshop were publicly burned. German-speaking Protestant students generally
stuck together, as did the French-speaking Catholic students.

He attended four to six lectures daily. The first autopsy
he saw was on the body of a boy whose death derived from a stomach absess. A
professor presided, and the surgery was done by a barber-surgeon. A large,
attentive audience witnessed the event including some monks. At the conclusion
of his studies, Felix returned to Basel to become the foremost physician in that
town.

ENGLAND

The state of medicine and the diseases doctors endeavored
to manage or cure were no different than those on the European continent. There
as elsewhere, the major cause of disease was the absence of sanitation. London
and other cities had open sewers in the streets that also served as garbage
dumps, and animals and sometimes people defecated wherever they pleased.
Typhoid was spread from contaminated shared wells. As elsewhere in Europe, the
vast majority of people could not afford good doctors who, at any rate, would
not attend patients with plague, typhoid fever, and other highly contagious
diseases. Housewives kept on hand certain herbs and potions for family use that
were often the only remedies for illness among the poor. Not only were sewers
unhealthy places, but rivers and streams were often blocked by rotting garbage
and attracted multitudes of rats and mice. Again, as elsewhere, every
household, rich and poor, had its share of lice and fleas.

BARBER SURGEONS

Most barbers filled other functions besides cutting hair
and shaving beards. They also pulled teeth and performed surgical procedures,
occasionally including amputations. They treated trauma, set broken bones,
cauterized (sometimes with the use of a red-hot iron) or stitched up bleeding
wounds, and bled patients. If their services were not required by humans, they
often took care of sick animals.

Wounds were cleaned and washed with salted water as a first
aid measure. Splinting and traction were employed in the treatment of fractures.
In injuries of the mouth, which rendered the intake of food difficult or
impossible, nourishment was administered by means of nutrient enemas.

Barber surgeons were not doctors and needed only on-the-job
training, not a university degree. They were looked down upon by physicians
whose education was better and whose services were much more expensive.

Paoli Magni. At the Barber
Surgeon’s. 1854. A satirical engraving illustrating the many tasks performed by
barber surgeons. One could have wounds treated, blood let, teeth pulled, and
hair cut.

ANESTHESIA

Anesthesia was primitive and often not used at all. When
amputations or other procedures were performed, a patient’s hands and feet were
tied to the table, and various methods were tried to render him unconscious
including putting a helmet on him and delivering a solid blow to it with a
wooden hammer. Another procedure used sponges soaked in mandrake and belladonna
pressed against the mouth. In both cases, the odds of killing the patient,
instead of merely rendering him unconscious, were high. Shock and infection
frequently killed most of those who survived the surgery anyway.

DENTISTRY

In England, tooth decay was rampant among the upper classes
who consumed huge quantities of sugar, used in almost every dish—sweet or
savory. A large number of people, including the queen, had black teeth in a
seriously bad state of deterioration.

To combat this, many would dip their fingers into powdered
alabaster or ashes of rosemary leaves, which they rubbed onto the teeth. Other
methods included rinsing them with a solution of honey and burnt salt or with a
quart of vinegar and honey and half a quart of white wine boiled together.
Sometimes the teeth were rubbed with a mixture made of powdered pumice stone, brick,
or coral. This frequently removed stain, along with the enamel.