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Medieval surgery

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   Ages      anaesthetic      anatomy      antiseptic      barber      bleeding      countryside      dislocated      dissection      expensive      haircutting      lost      mistakes      opium      pain      Roman      schools      scientific      simple      son      surgery      wealthy   
Some of the ideas of the Greeks were ignored or after the fall of the empire. However, Arab doctors had studied Greek books which had been translated into Arabic. They wrote their own books on and these were used by medieval surgeons. They copied the Arab idea of stopping by using a cautery iron so that the iron could scorch the hole.

There were two kinds of surgeon in the Middle - the surgeon and the barber surgeon. The surgeons were sometimes educated and but it was still seen as a more manual type of work and therefore was not as respected. Therefore it was often left to the barber surgeons. The surgeons were not formally trained. They usually helped the poor in the towns and most people in the They did , tooth pulling, blood letting and a lot of unusual jobs.

Surgery needs a good understanding of and gradually from 1300 this had started to improve. Some public of a limited number of corpses was permitted in the medical . However the lecturer read from his book and often failed to use the dissection to advantage. Dissection was done by a demonstrator as it was manual work and not suitable for the master hence were made.

The mistakes of medieval anatomy went unchallenged. There were also problems in that books were scarce and too for a student to own and this limited learning.
The main problems in surgery are and infection. Medieval surgeons attempted to deal with both. Hugh of Lucca and his Theoderic used wine to clean the wounds - it acted as an . However their idea was not adpted. There were several attempts to deal with pain by drugging the patient with and hemlock but these did not work very well. A recipe for an by John of Ardenne included hemlock, opium and henbane. In carefully controlled doses this may have worked -but it was likely to kill.
Surgery was and external such as removing cataracts or dealing with broken or limbs. The treatment of wounds generally improved but new and more ingenious methods of removing weaponry went alongside more technical weapons which caused further injuries.