Basics
As the populations of medieval towns and cities increased, hygienic conditions worsened, leading to a vast array of health problems. Medical knowledge was limited and, despite the efforts of medical practitioners and public and religious institutions to institute regulations, medieval Europe did not have an adequate health care system.
Medicine was often a risky business. Bloodletting was a popular method of restoring a patient's health and "humors." Early surgery, often done by barbers (doctors of the time) without anesthesia, must have been excruciating.
Treating
Medical treatment was available mainly to the wealthy, and those living in villages rarely
had the help of doctors, who practiced mostly in the cities and courts. Remedies were
often herbal in nature, but also included ground earthworms, urine, and animal excrement.
Many medieval medical manuscripts contained recipes for remedies that called for hundreds
of therapeutic substances--the notion that every substance in nature held some sort of
power accounts for the enormous variety of substances. Many treatments were administered
by people outside the medical tradition. Coroners' rolls from the time reveal how lay
persons often made sophisticated medical judgments without the aid of medical experts.
Surgery
Performed as a last resort, surgery was known to be successful in cases of breast cancer,
fistula, hemorrhoids, gangrene, and cataracts, as well as tuberculosis of the lymph glands
in the neck (scrofula). The most common form of surgery was bloodletting; it was meant to
restore the balance of fluids in the body. Some of the potions used to relieve pain or
induce sleep during the surgery were themselves potentially lethal. One of these consisted
of lettuce, gall from a castrated boar, briony, opium, henbane, and hemlock juice--the
hemlock juice could easily have caused death.