Don’t try it at home – treatments and doctors from the Middle Ages

Middle -age treatments include the use of crushed testicles to help women capture and mix boiled apples with mercury rubbed into the body to destroy lice.

Dr. James Freeman handed translations of their recipes next to the original manuscripts as part of the Curious Cures exhibition of the University of Cambridge Library As the BBC presents.

« It was not just about superstitions or blind tests and mistakes, but they were guided by complex and sophisticated ideas on the body and the effect of the wider world, even the universe, » he added.

The ‘4 liquids’

« The medical understanding of the Middle Ages was based on the idea of ​​’four juices’. »

Dr. Freeman, a library’s medieval manuscript curator, stresses that medieval manuscript studies are very important for health: « The body contains four liquids – black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm, and when these four are in balance. »

« But when they are out of balance, or altered, or concentrated on a part of the body where they should not be, it causes illness. »

The role of the doctor was to « understand your inner nature – pulse and color, texture, smell, and even the taste of your urine. »

As soon as they understood this, they could adjust a treatment for their patients.

Popular Wisdom in Medicine

However, very few doctors had university training and most people were based on monks or barbaric surgeons, pharmacists and herbalists, as well as home treatments.

Thus, while many of the manuscripts are academic medical textbooks, Dr. Freeman said: « Educated doctors also copied therapies that are very similar to those found in more folk medical collections – the boundaries between learned and folk medicine are completely cloudy. »

An example is a seemingly proven treatment for rhinorrhea.

« The author of a collection of 15th -century medical remedies recommends dipping a man’s testicles in cold water and vinegar – and if necessary, to repeat this process again, » says Freeman

Medicine, Magic and Astrology

Books include illustrations that reveal how medieval people believed that the human body was working, based on ancient Greek texts that were again discovered by Arabic sources.

The « bleeding » was also a medieval practice, designed to cleanse the body from excess or imbalance of the juices, and the blood was received from different veins depending on the nature of the patient’s disease.

« An additional element was that it had to be done according to specific astrological indications – if the Moon is in a meeting with Aries, do not open a vein on the head, for example, » said Dr. Freeman.

« Science, medicine and magic coexist, so the exhibition presents some manuscripts that have amulets on them to exploit divine or occult power. »

Treatment for toothache, medieval type

Richard Tennand, a monk who probably studied at the University of Oxford, wrote about the following ritual:

• Repeat our father and Ave Maria while cutting your nails.
• In the fifth nail repeat the symbol of faith.
• Repeat with your other hand with both legs.
• Wrap your cut nails on a clean linen cloth and bury it in a tree of ole
• You will be protected by toothache

In the manuscript, which is exposed, he tells how he learned the doctor from a monk named John Limmington, who had learned it from an elderly woman.

Some of the medical advice are included in a beautifully illustrated manuscript belonging to Henry I ‘mother.

« Instead of examining the treatment of diseases, the copy of Elizabeth’s ‘A Regime for the Body’ is considering maintaining and regulating your health – things such as balanced nutrition, good sleep, exercise and rest. »

A beginning for gynecological

A copy of « A Regime for The Body » in the mid -15th century, which belonged to the queen of Henry VI Elizabeth of York, was a guide to a healthy life and a good diet.

The manuscript was originally written in 1256 about the Beatrice of Savoy, a Provence Countess, by her doctor and includes funds for flirting, sex, pregnant women care and how to take care of a newborn baby.

Which brings us back to why the crushed testes of weasel may have been considered to cure female infertility.

The recipe records that they should be burned in a container, combined with the juice of a plant and the result is placed within a woman for three days.

« Most likely there is some kind of medical idea behind it – that this particular part of an animal cures the same part of the human body, » said Dr. Frimman.

« But there is no explanation to the recipe, which is often the case with these types of treatments. »