Still the perception that the average citizen has about the Middle Ages is that they were dark times, with many calamities, illiterate populations and a substantial setback in terms of the medical advances that Antiquity had brought. All this is nothing more than a priori that places medieval times in a position of inferiority compared to other moments in history. However, a detailed analysis reveals that many of the achievements of Medicine that are still valid today emerged in the Middle Ages. Here are the Top 10 Medical Advances of the Middle Ages .
1. Hospitals
In the fourth century of our era, the concept of a hospital, that is, a place where patients could be treated by doctors with specialized equipment, was in its infancy in some parts of the Roman Empire.
Later, in the West, the monasteries were the centers where the first hospitals arose to serve travelers, transients and the poor. Meanwhile, in the East, in the Arab world, hospitals emerged in the 8th century. In them there was a significant number of doctors who were specialized in differentiated subjects and separated from each other in different areas.
2. Pharmacies
The first pharmacy was opened to the public in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, in the year 754. These offices dispensed medicines and medicinal remedies prepared by an apothecary on the prescription of a doctor.
In the 12th century they arrived in Europe and from then on the pharmacist became one of the reference professionals in cities.
3. Glasses
We do not know who was the inventor of glasses, an optical instrument that made it possible to correct vision problems, but by the end of the 13th century they were already well known in Italy. Giordano of Pisa delivered a sermon in 1305 in which he spoke of the invention of glasses twenty years earlier. Years later, in 1352, the first representation of a person wearing glasses appears; we find it in a fresco by Tommaso da Modena in which Cardinal Hugo de Provence appears.
4. Anatomy and dissection
Medieval physicians had a deep understanding of human anatomy. In 1315 the Italian physician Mondino de Luzzi performed a public dissection for his students and occasional spectators who wanted to attend this event.
A year later, he would write his work Anathomia corporis humani , which is the first known manual of Anatomy and dissection.
5. The teaching of Medicine in universities
The rise of universities in Europe brought with it important changes in the practice of Medicine. In these institutions the doctors received their training; therefore, they gradually became the main centers of medical knowledge. The first laws dictated on standards in medical education were promulgated by Federico II in 1231 and these were a starting point for the future of both Medicine and the professionalization of doctors.
6. Ophthalmology and Optics
Ibn al-Haytham, an 11th-century scientist, founded a new explanation of vision through his research on optics and the anatomy of the eye. In his Optics Book he raised his work and it became the most important research work in this field for several centuries.
Arab doctors were pioneers in advances in Ophthalmology. One of them was the invention of the first syringe to extract a cataract from the human eye.
7. Wound cleansing
Certain ancient medical writers believed that a certain amount of pus should remain in wounds during surgery, as they believed that this might help them heal. However, a 13th-century surgeon, Teodorico Borgognoni devised an antiseptic method.
It consisted of cleaning the wounds with gauzes dipped in wine as a disinfectant and then suturing them and causing them to heal faster. He was also the pioneer of anesthesia in surgery. His patients became unconscious after he placed a sponge soaked in opium, mandrake, or hemlock under their noses.
8. Cesarean section
During the Middle Ages, caesarean sections were performed but they were performed once there was evidence that the mother had died or had no chance of surviving; there were even cases where the baby was also dead.
It is around the year 1500 when he knows the first record in which we are told that a woman and her child had survived a caesarean section. This operation was performed on his wife by a Swiss farmer named Jacob Nufer. We also know that this woman had five more children, including twins, and that the baby delivered by C-section lived to be 77 years old.
9. Quarantine
As a result of the arrival of the Black Death, certain groups of patients began to be isolated from the rest of the people so that the disease would not spread.
In Ragusa, present-day Dubrovnik (Croatia), several mandates were issued in 1377 that, in order to combat this plague, ships must remain in port for 30 days before passengers could set foot on land.
For overland travelers this period was extended to 40 days, quaranta in Italian. The measures were a success and that is why they were implemented in other places in Italy and Europe from then on.
10. Dental amalgams
Dental amalgams came from medieval China. In a text from the year 659 details are given about the first use of this substance for dental fillings, which was composed of a base of silver and tin. This technique was not used in Europe until the 16th century.