Treatments

Did treatments in the Renaissance improve?

Diagnosis and treatment had not advanced much since the Middle Ages. Just as before, physicians did not know or understand what caused diseases or how to cure them.

In what ways were Renaissance treatments similar to previous periods?

Despite some advances, there will still 4 main aspects of continuity witnessed in Renaissance medicine.

• ❖ People were still superstitious. It was believed that the touch of a king could cure people of diseases like scrofula.
• ❖ Doctors still hadn't understood the link between dirt and disease.
• ❖ There was continuity in ideas about what caused disease: for example, miasma.
• ❖ Herbal remedies remained popular.
• ❖ Bloodletting was still used as a treatment.

How did treatment change during the Renaissance?

There were 4 key changes that happened to medicine during the Renaissance period.

• ❖ Galen no longer dominated scientific thought, as doctors began to challenge his ideas.
• ❖ Technology was gradually advancing so that new inventions, like the microscope, helped make more discoveries.
• ❖ Alchemy became popular, as people began to look at using chemicals for cures, rather than balancing the humours.
• ❖ The Theory of Transference became popular. This suggested that a disease could be transferred through contact with a plant or animal. People might rub a vegetable on their ailments, in the hope that the vegetable would catch it and take it away.