[QUOTE=DrDeth]
What’d you’d have to be *really *careful about is religion. In certain areas and times, you’d be bound to make a mistep and off to the Inquisition with you! Do you all knwo the right prayers- in Latin? :dubious:
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The Inquisition didn’t exist in the middle ages, at least not as some sort of omnipresent heresy-hunting institution. There was an inquisition set up against the Cathars in 12the century Languedoc, but it was limited in duration and focus. And there’s never been an inquisition in England, which is where this thread is talking about.
There also wasn’t really much danger you’d be called a witch. The big witchcraft fears and witch hunts didn’t start until the Rennaisance.
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner]
Stranger on a Train writes:
> . . . in 2079, all bioethicists were rounded up and sent to a camp in the
> Sandwich Islands . . .
Hawaii is going to revert to its old name of the Sandwich Islands? Forget about medical advances. This is a more interesting prediction than anything medical.
[/QUOTE]
Frank Herbert made a similar prediction - in the Dune appendix notes on the Orange Catholic Bible and the Council for Ecumenical Translation, there’s a poem called Brown Repose.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
. I’m really hoping to find out what kind of drugs could be rendered from raw materials, but it doesn’t sound like it would be all that much.
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Better study medieval herbalism. I think that the understanding and use of medicinal herbs was more advanced than people here realize. You might also want to check out Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael mystery series. The protag is a former soldier turned monk, working in the monastery herb gardens. Ellis Peters was known for her historical research, so if you can discover some of her sources, that may help.
If your protag is a modern-day herbalist – and there are a fair number – or a pharmacologist or chemist who grows medicinal and culinary herbs (and there is quite a bit of overlap) as a hobby – s/he might come up with some interesting concoctions. Getting hold of anything not locally grown would have been costly, however.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
The Inquisition didn’t exist in the middle ages, at least not as some sort of omnipresent heresy-hunting institution. There was an inquisition set up against the Cathars in 12the century Languedoc, but it was limited in duration and focus. And there’s never been an inquisition in England, which is where this thread is talking about.
There also wasn’t really much danger you’d be called a witch. The big witchcraft fears and witch hunts didn’t start until the Rennaisance.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, some of you are being pretty harsh on the high middle ages (NOT the dark ages, thank you very much). Fitting in in general would be the trickiest bit (especially to play the part of a learned physician), but unless you actively make some enemies in the church, or actively spread herterodox theology, there’s no one lying in wait to spring upon your differences.
The real religious intolerance in Europe didn’t come until later.
[QUOTE=OslerKnew]
As a family physician, I’ll wade in here with a different perspective. Much of what I do, 'tis true, has to do with drugs and technology - sending me back in time would indeed limit that. But, there is much to healing that has nothing to do with technology. While diseases of modern day require the drugs and technology to manage, there is no substitute for the ancient art of medicine - what’s that you say? Listening to the whole story given by the patient, taking the time to understand the symptoms as they exist for the patient, putting the pieces of the puzzle together before dashing off to order the latest diagnostic study. There is a lost art to physical exam skills (percuss for a pleural effusion, listening for a friction rub, having a patient valsalva to accentuate the murmur of outflow obstruction, setting a patient’s urine sample out for the bees to check for diabetes, recognizing the appearance of a women’s cervix with pregnancy). In fact, diagnosis of many medical states doesn’t require the customary CT scans/MRI/biomolecular lab studies. We are slaves to the technology, but don’t need to be. A little secret here - much of our common every day medical problems will heal themselves, those that don’t will either kill us or make our immune systems stronger. Send me back to the 13th century with my current state of medical knowledge, and I will be able to tell you which of those will likely kill you, and which of those will make you stronger. And, although I won’t be able to swoop in and order your cardiac catheterization, or prescribe your statin to reduce your cholesterol, or order your mammogram to find your breast cancer early, or order your IV antibiotics to treat your pneumonia, etc. etc., I will still be able to understand your plight as a human being, suffering with illness that frightens you, baffles you, and threatens your life. And with that, I will be a healer of your spirit - don’t discount how important that really is. And, oh yes, I will still be able to perform a tracheostomy when your throat closes off from allergy to a bee sting, I will be able to provide rotating tourniquets when you are drowning in your own pulmonary edema, I will be able to deliver your baby and breathe life into her when she doesn’t take her first breath as she is supposed to do, and I will be able to amputate your gangrenous limb before it claims your life. Still lots of important things we can do…
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Dr. Osler, where do you practice? I want you for my doctor! And you for my parents, and for everyone I care about. You sound like the real thing.
People most likely knew that their water was unhealthy, and that’s why they drank ale or wine. Probably one of the reasons why bathing was so limited, in addition to all the reasons cited in other threads (what hard work it was to heat water, make soap, etc.). So persuading people to wash their hands with boiled water or distilled alcohol would not be so hard. Getting servants away from their other duties to boil sufficient quantities of water (and keeping the previously boiled water clean), and distilling sufficient alcohol to use for cleansing purposes might be more problematic. If you have enough servants, you could do it.
If you’re interested in the Black Death, surely you meant the mid-14th century, not the 13th?
Maybe the best thing (for a lasting effect) would be to teach the scientific method, to give people the tools to understand, test and verify some of the facts you’d be layin’ on 'em, like circulation of blood, disease pathogens, what the internal organs actually do, etc. It wouldn’t be hard to make a simple microscope (or a compound microscope if you know how).
I don’t know what to do about Prince Edward’s dropsy, though.
[QUOTE=Baldwin]
If you’re interested in the Black Death, surely you meant the mid-14th century, not the 13th?
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Yeah, I was thinkimg “1300’s” and it came out as “13th Century.” My bad. I’ve been reading Philip Ziegler’s The Black Death (widely regarded as the definitive book on the subject) and become very interested in the period. I know better than to mix up the “hundreds” with centuries. I don’t how I let that slip by.