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Below are some paintings. In past cultures, people often used pictures instead of writing because so few other people could read. If you wanted to get a message to the people, things like statues, stained glass windows, and paintings were the best choice. Remember, the Church was the main spiritual and social force in peoples' lives. Life was often "short and brutish", so everyone needed to be "right with God".

Medieval hospitals offered their patients comfort but not medical care. Here patients were fed, given a place to rest, and encouraged to pray for help from Heaven. Prayers have apparently worked for the patient in the upper right frame of the painting, since angels are helping his soul (the small person) to heaven as he dies. The patient in the lower right frame has not been as lucky - demons are receiving his soul.

This example shows how different interpretations can lead to different solutions. What we would call a mental disorder and medical condition, these people called possession - and the cure was removal of the evil so the person's soul could go to Heaven. Because they understood the situation so differently, it is hard for us, using their descriptions, to guess what mental disorders the patients had.

Today doctors sometimes use hot needles to "cauterize" blood vessels - basically sealing them up to stop the bleeding. At the time of this painting, doctors are using hot pokers for a different reason - to disrupt whatever evil forces they think cause the patients' problems. This painting shows us their recommendations on where to poke to treat elephantiasis (the standing man), asthma (top), and "Tertian" fever. [No, I don't know what Tertian fever is.]

The surgeries shown above are pretty dramatic, especially when you consider how often patients died from infections. How much pain would you have to be in to put up with this kind of treatment? But the alternatives were blindness or hemorrhaging. Patients needed some kind of relief or they faced serious problems.

Medieval surgery could be brutal and it rarely cured anyone, but it was better than the alternative. A person with a disability was no longer considered a productive member of their community - which often meant a life of begging. Because disabilities were considered a sign of imperfection, the Church frequently denied religious rites to people with disabilities, guaranteeing they would never go to heaven and everlasting life.

This 15th century painting - "St. Catherine Exorcising a Possessed Woman" - shows again how people tried to deal with mental illnesses in non-medical ways. The woman on the left is being restrained while Saint Catherine (kneeling) prays to exorcise the demon causing her possession. Notice how central the Virgin Mary is to the process of curing the mental illness: people thought that divine intervention was crucial to any cure. Also notice the other persons with disabilities waiting their turn to be cured, including the "lame", blind, and even a person with a possible head injury (the man with a bandage around his head).

Being possessed by a demon once again removed you from your community and church, assuring perpetual damnation, unless cured. The church had a responsibility to try to intervene - but there were no guarantees.

In the Middle Ages, medical treatment was usually a last resort sought out when nothing else would work. - and surgery was the last resort of medical treatments when all other therapies had failed. This picture illustrates a story about the amputation of a leg with cancer and the miraculous transplantation of a "dead Moor's" leg to replace it. Notice the angels helping the two Saints. People believed that, without divine intervention, patients would die from their surgery. Miracles were accepted as an important part of medical treatment.

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