I've been working away in my "Apothecary," creating oils and tinctures and syrups, much in the way they did in the olde days. I have been studying and researching how they used to make use of herbs and plants in the Medieval ages, and why.
Here's a post on how.
And here's some info on why.
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Notes on Medieval Medicine
The ancient four humors theory may have origins in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, but it was the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC) who developed it into a medical theory. Before this time, the gods were looked to for answers, but during this time, people began to apply science. He believed certain human moods, emotions and behaviors were caused by body fluids (called "humors"): blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.
Humors, per the author’s notes found in Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica [pg. 5]:
Diseases and cures are linked to the four qualities – hot, cold, dry, moist – of which two are often dominate in varying degrees. Medical practice aims to balance these two qualities, with some of the applications following the “like cures like” theory, and others using quite opposite qualities to bring the patient back to health.
The Humors go back to Greek philosophers Hippocrates (c.460 – 370 b.c.e.), Plato (427-348 b.c.e.) and Aristotle (384-322 b.c.e.). Although they had differences in general they saw health as an equilibrium of the body as determined by the four humors.
Natural functions, such as sneezing, were thought to be the best way of maintaining health. When there was a build-up of any one humor, or body fluid, it could be disposed of through sweat, tears, feces, or urine. When these natural systems broke down, illness occurred, a condition called "dyscrasia."
Each of these humors was believed to be associated with one of the four elements which, when combined in various proportions, make up all things:
· The humor of Blood, associated with the liver and with Air, which is the hot and moist element. A person in whom blood predominates is said to be "sanguine," from the Latin "sanguis" (blood).
· The humor of Yellow Bile, associated with the spleen and with Fire, which is the hot and dry element. A person in whom yellow bile predominates is said to be "choleric," from the Greek "khole" (bile).
· The humor of Black Bile, associated with the gall bladder and with Earth, which is the cold and dry element. A person in whom black bile predominates is said to be "melancholic," from the Greek "melas" (black) and "khole" (bile).
· The humor of Phlegm, associated with the lungs and brain and with Water, which is the cold and moist element. A person in whom phlegm predominates is said to be "phlegmatic," from the Greek "phlegmatikos" (abounding in phlegm) .
Medieval doctors stressed prevention, exercise, a good diet, and a good environment. One of the best diagnostic tools was uroscopy, in which the color of the patient's urine was examined to determine the treatment. Other diagnostic aids included taking the pulse and collecting blood samples. Treatments ranged from administering laxatives and diuretics to fumigation, cauterization, and the taking of hot baths and/or herbs.
Performed as a last resort, surgery was known to be successful in cases of breast cancer, fistula, hemorrhoids, gangrene, and cataracts, as well as tuberculosis of the lymph glands in the neck (scrofula). The most common form of surgery was bloodletting; it was meant to restore the balance of fluids in the body. Bloodletting was a popular method of restoring a patient's health and "humors." Early surgery, often done by barbers without anesthesia, must have been excruciating. Some of the potions used to relieve pain or induce sleep during the surgery were themselves potentially lethal. One of these consisted of lettuce, gall from a castrated boar, briony, opium, henbane, and hemlock juice--the hemlock juice could easily have caused death.
Temperaments
The temperament theory has its roots in the ancient four humors theory. It was though that each of the "humours" gave off vapors which ascended to the brain; an individual's personal characteristics (physical, mental, moral) were explained by his or her "temperament," or the state of that person's "humours." The perfect temperament resulted when no single one of these humours dominated.
Galen (AD 131-200) developed the first typology of temperament in his dissertation De temperamentis, and searched for physiological reasons for different behaviors in humans. He mapped them to a matrix of hot/cold and dry/wet taken from the Four Elements. In The Canon of Medicine, Avicenna (980-1037 AD) extended the theory of temperaments to encompass "emotional aspects, mental capacity, moral attitudes, self-awareness, movements and dreams."
By 1600 it was common to use "humour" as a means of classifying characters; knowledge of the humours is not only important to understanding later medieval work, but essential to interpreting Elizabethan drama.
Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654) disregarded the idea of fluids as defining human behavior. Later others did as well and all theorized on the four temperaments and greatly shaped our modern theories of temperament as being biologically based.
There could also be "balance" between the qualities, yielding a total of nine temperaments. The word "temperament" itself comes from Latin "temperare", "to mix". In the ideal personality, the complementary characteristics or warm-cool and dry-moist were exquisitely balanced. In four less ideal types, one of the four qualities was dominant over all the others. In the remaining four types, one pair of qualities dominated the complimentary pair; for example; warm and moist dominated cool and dry. These latter four were the temperamental categories Galen named "sanguine", "melancholic", "choleric" and "phlegmatic" after the bodily humors. Each was the result of an excess of one of the humors that produced, in turn, the imbalance in paired qualities.
(One of the most popular today is the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, whose four temperaments were based largely on the Greek gods Apollo, Dionysus, Epimetheus and Prometheus, and were mapped to the 16 types of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
Astrology also played an important part in Medieval medicine; most educated physicians were trained in at least the basics of astrology to use in their practice.
This precious manuscript of 190 parchment leaves, written mainly in a steady Caroline minuscule, originated in England, perhaps in Hereford. The original composition can be dated to around 1145. The manuscript consists of more than forty widely varying texts. They cover the spectrum of medical learning as it was defined in the Middle Ages and illustrate a pivotal moment in the history of medicine. Though there is much in medieval medical theory and practice that we find fantastical, laughable, or horrifying, the adoption of the Hippocratic corpus invigorated attempts to explain disease by natural causes and to base healing on rational principles.
Fol. 148v.
The core treatise is the Hippocratic Aphorisms, the trunk from which sprang the theoretical and practical branches of the "Art of Medicine." Theory is represented, albeit sketchily, by anatomy, here primarily the conceptual "division of the body"; physiology, constructed around humors and temperaments; and nosology, with an inventory of diseases and their causes. Practical medicine figures more prominently in texts on diagnosis, particularly on reading pulses and urine; prognosis, in the Hippocratic tradition as well as by astrology and divination; and therapeutics, with several synopses for quick reference. Treatment branches out into dietary advice; plasters and other remedies, for afflictions ranging from migraine to snake bite; magical cures, remarkably few; herbals, glossaries of medicinal substances, and tables of weights and measures; and, ultimately, manual intervention by bloodletting and surgery.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/medieval/medievalhome.html
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