How Much Continuity Was There from the Roman Period to the End of the Middle Ages in Medical Treatments and Home Remedies?

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How much continuity was there from the Roman period to the end of the Middle Ages in medical Treatments and home remedies? Medical treatments changed from the Roman Era to the middle Ages, however it did not improve. During the Roman era Galen came up with the opposite’s theory. He used hot peppers as a cure for cold; and cool foods such as cucumber as a cure for a patient with a fever. Many Romans also used to look to their many Gods to cure disease. Roman doctors looked more to prevent disease rather than for ways to cure it. However the Romans had a large number of remedies for illness. A Roman army doctor named Dioscorides assembled a list of over 500 herbal remedies, including unwashed wool for sores, egg yolk for dysentery and boiled liver for sore eyes. During the middle ages, people still used Galen’s ideas and Dioscorides book of herbal cures, along with religion. When the Romans left Britain, it became a Christian society, so rather than looking to a myriad of gods, people prayed and worshipped one God. People also started to blame the devil for illness. With this change in religion came new ideas on how to stop and cure disease. A group of people, known as flagellants would whip themselves and torture themselves, in the belief that if they punished themselves god would not need to punish them with disease or illness. The belief of the four humours was used right up until the renaissance. During the Middle Ages physicians would use bloodletting and purging of the body to restore the balance of the four humours. Bloodletting was commonly used as a treatment for plague around 1350. Home remedies were still used in the Middle Ages, but unlike the Roman Era when the father was in charger of the remedies, these were passed from mother to daughter within the household. Towards the end of the middle ages there were new trade links made and new ingredients

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