James Hannam in his Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages launched the Scientific Revolution makes a solid point about medicine in the 14th C. Of the three methods of healing available, only one did not harm. Learned doctors would bleed you, make you vomit, or otherwise drain an excess of a humor from your body (this was because of their new advanced knowledge they had gotten from Galen and the Greeks via the Arabs); the local healer would give you ointments and medicines - emetics were prominent here as well - based on the appearance of the plants they came from, which were a clue to what part of the body they were supposed to heal* via sympathetic influences; or you could go to church or a saint's shrine and pray. People would often use more than one method. As bed rest was often a prescription of the first two, they may have provided some benefit. Not more than would have happened if you had put yourself on bed rest, though. Psychological effects were likely equal among the three. Visisting a saint's shrine was your best bet. At least it wouldn't hurt you. And if you believe in prayer, you know there might be more beyond that.
Patients often complained that they weren't being bled or drained enough and remonstrated with their doctors about it. They really believed that part about the humors.
*Walnuts were for the head, because if you crack open the "skull" you see two hemispheres that look like a brain. It's obvious, really. It should have worked.
I suspect that doing no harm (in that time frame) is also what got homeopathy its start.
ReplyDeleteHomeopathy in the technical meaning is from some German around 1800*, but based on that same idea of sympathetic medicine that had been around since the Greeks and was very big in the Middle Ages. In the more expansive meaning, of alternative, natural treatments, homeopathy is much newer, only taking on that meaning in the last few decades.
ReplyDelete*And I am proud to say I was on that: https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2012/09/german-pagan-all-natural-origins.html
They could set bones, pull teeth, and amputate gangrenous limbs. I can't think offhand of many other common treatments that didn't do more harm than good before anesthesia and blood-typing ushered in the age of modern surgery, and then of course antibiotics.
ReplyDeleteI'm still skeptical of modern treatments, but I have to admit that they're doing absolutely amazing things now, especially with laparoscopic surgery, and with trauma treatments.
AVI, I do not understand homeopathy in relation to natural, pagan, or German cultural origins as in the post you linked. Perhaps I'm just dense (wouldn't be the first time). Homeopathy is based on "like cures like" and does so only at extreme dilutions. It's not at all like naturopathy or herbal medicine -- which might have actual active ingredients. There are no active ingredients in homeopathy. It's water or sugar pills. It doesn't suggest dietary regimens or propose healthy practices such as exercise.
ReplyDeleteSamuel Hahnemann rightly determined that practices such as bloodletting often did more harm than good. Unfortunately his thinking was derailed when he discovered that cinchona bark caused symptoms of malaria in himself while "curing" malaria in others. From there, he misinterpreted the work of Anton von Storck's work on dosage of poisonous herbs to finally conclude that any infectious or poisonous substance could cure its corresponding disease if sufficiently diluted and shaken.
It's a litmus test for me. If one "believes" in homeopathy, I question their thinking in other areas.
Your answer is more thorough and better, but I would still include the sympathetic medicine angle of "like cures like" as an essentially "natural" outlook. The medievals believed that God had given clues as to the uses of plants in the shapes or imagined shapes, colors, or other attributes of plants. Liverwort, for example. The progressive dilutions of true homeopathy were founded on there being some essence in the ingredients that remained. Or so I have thought.
ReplyDeleteIt is another of those perfectly good theories on the surface that might have worked. But it didn't, yet people clung to it anyway. We see something similar in anti-vaxxers saying "but natural solutions are better than man-made chemicals" in principle. Sometimes it becomes part of their Christianity, that God prefers us to use "His" solutions rather than inventing our own. Not a bad theory. But it doesn't work, so we move on.
Of course, the most dangerous form of homeopathy is the attempt to improve oneself through self-worship.
ReplyDelete