How effective was pre-17th century medicine? I imagine they could suppress basic things like a cold, but could they efficiently fight things like a heavy flu or food poisoning? The nobles and the wealthy must have had their own healers, but what did commoners do?
Honestly the whole humorism thing must have killed an enormous amount of people.
>>1334783
> suppressing the common cold
No medicines really do anything for the common cold even today. The best thing is rest and stay hydrated and maybe have a acetaminophen.
There's a heap of medications that we still use today that have their origins back to classical civilisation, for example there's gout medication that was used by the Egyptians. A lot of anatomical knowledge is also super old. The Cescerian is from a couple centuries BC. But to be honest most surgery would've been worse than unless before anaesthesia, transfusions, and antibiotics.
Source Pharmacy student
>>1334783
Depends. If you were an upper-class Greek or Roman citizen or a rich Muslim during the Golden Age it could be damn good.
They were much better at physical injuries like cuts, stab wounds and broken limbs. They learned quickly through practice how to heal those, and they definitely knew about infection, not exactly how it happened but that it did and how to stop it.
>>1335270
>How to stop it
Not before antibiotics, they didn't. All they knew was that pus was bad and that removing pus was good. Surgery was a crapshoot, if you get an infection you die, if you don't you might survive. The first person to be treated with penicillin died due to an infected rose prick while tending for his garden. Trauma was more common, yes, but it was also more lethal.
As for clinical stuff, well, most people died before reaching the peak age for cancer, but surgical treatment was well-known back then (and killed about as much people as the cancer itself). Infarction was just "sudden death". Serious pneumonia was also pretty much a death sentence. Before corticosteroids, any serious autoimmune disease meant an early grave. Before rehydration was discovered, cholera and other diarrheas were a major source of death for cities and armies alike (more soldiers died from diarrhea than from wounds). Malnutrition was rampant (thus low immunity and higher susceptibility to infection), and so were vitamin diseases (scurvy for those who didn't eat fresh foods, etc). Syphilis was really common and really deadly. Any skin disease (vitiligo, impetigo, anything) was called Leprosy and got you ostracized. Basically, if you were sick with anything, you were fucked, unless you were rich enough to buy some comfort until you die.
The first major play of pharmaceutical industries was to kill off all the witches. With magic gone, the common cold became more and more common. 200 years later, NyQuil PM is introduced.
I think doctors started washing hands and linnens before/between open surgeries and child birthing sometime in the 1750's.
>>1335364
>I think doctors started washing hands and linnens before/between open surgeries and child birthing sometime in the 1750's.
More like late 19th century (!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
When in doubt, mercury.
>>1334783
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469963/table/T1/
>>1335431
Actually honey was preferred for a lot of wound stuff and surgery, modern research has shown it's both anti-inflamtory, antiseptic and has enzymes that promote healing.
>>1335364
>common cold is the result of witches being removed from society
>not the industrial revolution where population density skyrocketed in certain areas
oookayy...
