Christian Church's Influence on the Medical Progress
The Christian Church was very powerful and had influence on many
things which you wouldn't imagine they would have, one being medicine.
The Church mainly hindered medical progress but we will see how it did
and see if it helped medicine in any ways.
When it came to developing new medical ideas the Church hindered its
progression. An example of this is when Roger Bacon, a 13th century
priest, was imprisoned for heresy after he suggested that there should
be a new approach to medicine and original research should be thought
of instead of using old ideas such as Galen's. The knowledge of the
anatomy was hindered as only one dissection was allowed per year and
this only dissection was carried out by the already knowledge teaching
assistant not the inexperienced students so they couldn't have a hands
on experience of the anatomy. Public health was hindered but
Cathedrals did have freshly pumped in water for toilets, fountains etc
but this idea wasn't spread into the community and the public weren't
allowed to use the Cathedral's facilities, so the Church were being
selfish with their medical improvement. When it came to training
doctors the church both helped and hindered its progress as they
encouraged doctors to train to improve knowledge but they hindered it
as they only allowed one dissection a year and only a select few who
could read were allowed to read selected books which were approved by
the church. The Church hindered the knowledge of medicine spreading as
usually only Priests and Monks could read so books couldn't be passed
on and the Church selected what people could read so the ideas that
were spreading were limited and the same. Caring for the sick was
slightly hindered by the church as only 10% of monks helped those in
need but this was the best they could do. The search for effective
treatments was hindered by the church as they believed that religion
was the cure for the sick. The believe that Saints could cure by touch
The Scientific Revolution, during the 16th and 18th centuries, was a time of conflict. It was not a hand-to-hand martial conflict. It was a conflict of advancement, similar to the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union. However, it was between the thinkers of the Scientific Revolution, such as Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, and the Roman Catholic Church. At the time, the Catholic Church was the most powerful religious body in Europe. It controlled everything from education to faith to finances. Thinkers like Galileo took the risk and went against the church. This is shown through the documents below. Those documents tell the story of Galileo and how he was forced to revoke his support of heliocentrism by the church. The documents below also show the struggle between faith and reason that existed during this era of advancement by hindering the flourishment of the sciences by stating that it did not agree with the Bible and naming these early scientists as heretics.
Ancient Medicine was Based on Belief in the Supernatural Ancient medicine covers medicine through Prehistoric, Egyptian, Greek and Roman times. Religion and belief in the supernatural were key factors in the development of ancient medicine. They influenced the way that people thought and the way in which they lived their lives. The supernatural could be used to explain aspects of medicine that people didn't understand at that time. Not everything was blamed on the supernatural, people did have some natural ideas about medicine and it's causes and treatments.
Before Hippocrates, as observed in the last chapter of the book, medicine and religion were closely related. The population believed that diseases had a supernatural cause or were divine punishments, so treatments consisted in going to temples and praying to the gods for help. However, the Hippocratic medicine distanced itself from religion, and Hippocratic writings argues that all diseases have natural causes. In fact, there is no mention of supernatural or magical properties in the treatments used by the Corpus writers. This secular approach can be seen in the text of Airs Waters Places, Chapter XXII:
Aquinas made an enormous effort to make logic and religion work together, ultimately choosing to drop his logical writing and commit himself to pursuing salvation. Aquinas’s efforts to link logic and his religion parallel today’s continued efforts to force religion into the sciences or to attempt the reverse. But his struggle also acted as a direct view into medieval western Christian culture; the western Christians repeatedly encountered problems in the academic realm with fitting Christianity and higher thinking together which, would occur for far longer than Aquinas’s time. But, if one looks at the struggle in less educated groups it mirrors Aquinas’s except, rather than fitting logic and religion together there is an effort to combine religions or religion and superstition together. Second to Aquinas as an example for religion’s effect was what I discovered whilst researching my presentation topic. I had been under the impression that, as in modern times, the medical focus would be anatomical or chemical. However, as most aspects of medieval culture are, the world of medicine was focused on the spirit. This spiritual focus remained through the middle ages and was catered to by humourism, astrology, and Christianity. While medicine’s focus did indeed limit it in some ways on a physical level, there were still great
Hippocratic medicine is one of Greece’s most ancient and lasting contributions to science and medicine, unlike today physicians depend more on equipment’s when diagnosing patients. Physicians in the Hippocratic era had nothing to depend on but where forced to create a journal system which explained the steps to curing based upon their common scientific theories of their time. Hippocrates is seen as the father of medicine even in our modern era, even though he lived before the birth of Christ. He worked on the assumption that all diseases and illnesses had a natural cause as well as a natural cure rather than supernatural one. It was Hippocrates who finally freed medicine from the shackles of magic, superstition, and the supernatural. (Greek Medicine: Hippocrates 2014)
There weren’t many trained doctors in Europe in the Middle Ages . In Paris in 1274 there were only 8 doctors and about 40 people practising medicine without any official training and they didn’t really understand how the body worked and why people got sick. When making a diagnosis doctors might consult medical books, astrological charts and urine samples. Some doctors believed disease was caused by bad smells or small worms, or the position of the planets or stars. They also charged very high fees, so only the rich could afford them.
The Christian ethical teachings are of high importance to the Christian tradition as they provide all Christian adherents with the guidance needed to make informed moral decisions in response to a wide range of contemporary ethical issues throughout their everyday lives. These teachings of Christianity are predominately established within the Christian Scriptures, however particular denominations, including Catholicism and Orthodoxy, accept the authority of a range of other sources in addition to these scriptures. Whilst the Catholic Church highly regards the “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, as well as Church documents, including “Gaudium et Spes” and “Evangelium Vitae”, the Orthodox Church takes heed of the “Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church”. The ethical teachings derived from these sources are based on the belief that the human person is an image of God with intellect, free will and power of self-determination, and they have a major influence on the choices made by Christian adherents in regard to the ethical issues of euthanasia and abortion.
to cover and care for all of mankind. Agape is the core of all a
Throughout history, conflicts between faith and reason took the forms of religion and free thinking. In the times of the Old Regime, people like Copernicus and Galileo were often punished for having views that contradicted the beliefs of the church. The strict control of the church was severely weakened around the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Old Regime ended. As the church's control decreased, science and intellectual thinking seemed to advance. While the people in the world became more educated, the church worked harder to maintain its influential position in society and keep the Christian faith strong. In the mid-nineteenth century, the church's task to keep people's faith strong became much harder, due to theories published by free thinkers like Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, David Friedrich Strauss, and others. These men published controversial theories that hammered away at the foundation on which the Christian church was built. As the nineteenth century progressed, more doubts began to arise about the basic faiths of the Christian church.
In the medival times, religion formed a big part of society. Their influence can be seen in arts and architcthure troughout that time period. Culture also took many forms but three main cultures over time merged to form a culture for a time period. The infusion of the classical culture, religious culture and pagan culture helped shape the Western culture of that period.
By 1979, the roots of the CoC were firmly in place. It was then that Chuck
Education from the Church has initiated structural learning which brought a gradual end to the barbaric era (Dark Ages). The Church’s legacy gained them the medieval reputation of society and this has influenced the reputation of the Church today.
The modern science view as well as the Scientific Revolution can be argued that it began with Copernicus’ heliocentric theory; his staunch questioning of the prior geocentric worldview led to the proposal of a new idea that the Earth is not in fact the center of the solar system, but simply revolving around the Sun. Although this is accepted as common sense today, the period in which Copernicus proposed this idea was ground-breaking, controversial, and frankly, world-changing. The Church had an immense amount of power, and was a force to be reckoned with; in the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, new scientific proposals and ideas were discouraged in many cases by the Church. A quote from Galileo’s Children does an excellent job summing up the conflict: “The struggle of Galileo against Church dogma concerning the nature of the cosmos epitomized the great, inevitable and continuing clash between religion and reason.” If evidence goes against scripture, the scientist is considered a heretic and is, like in Galileo’s case, forbidden to discuss the ideas any further. Galileo Galilei, who proposed solid evidence and theory supporting the heliocentric model, was forced to go back on his beliefs in front of several high officials, and distance himself from the Copernican model. This, luckily, allowed him to not be killed as a heretic, which was the next level of punishment for the crimes he was charged with, had he not went back on his beliefs. Incredible support was given through the young developing academies with a sense of community for scientists and academics; “Renaissance science academies represent a late manifestation of the humanist academy movement.” Since the Church was grounded traditionally evidence that went agains...
2. The Roman Catholic church did its best to regulate the belief of Catholic Christians from the early church to the Reformation, labeling some beliefs orthodox and some heretical. Discuss at least two examples of instances before 1500 in which the church attempted to control belief and then discuss the career of Martin Luther. Why was Luther able to successfully break with the church when previous dissenters were not? Be sure to support your answer with evidence from our class sources.
Although religions can be sometimes against the sciences theories, students or the future doctors can relate between them together to make it easier for their future patients. For example, the evolution theory is against the existence of God which makes science against religion. Studying the religions will make the students connect between what they know and the science to understand the others beliefs. For example, the bible clears that God created the universe and explains it day by day in Genesis. Also Muslims are forbidden to eat pork meat and after scientists tried to know why they discovered that the pig eats everything in front of them and that is not acceptable for Muslims. Furthermore some religions has conditions for medicines which effects the health of the people who practices those