The Aztecs had a sort of humoral system the same way the ancient greeks (and later medieval Europe) did using "hot" or "cold" ingredients to treat different ailments. Despite the psuedo-scientific foundation,, the Aztec's still approached their treatments from an empirical, evidence based perspective, and as such actually had medical treatments that were effective. They also had extremely complex encyclopedias of plants and kept horticultural gardens to stock for this reason as well as just recreational, decorative botanical gardens such as in the imperial palace of Texcoco, one of the 3 ruling cities of the Aztec empire. Cortes himself said in a letter to Charles V to not to bother to send doctors over, as the Aztec ones were far better, and Aztec horticultural and botanical texts were later adapted by Europeans and influenced later texts of the same nature and by taxonomists during the scientific revolution. They (most Mesoamerican cultures, really, but especially the Nahuas, who composed most of the core Aztec cities) were also OBSESSED with sanitation and cleanliness: Even commoners bathed using steam baths and the roots of plants as soap multiple times a week; in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, there were a fleet of civil servants that swept streets, washed buildings, and collected waste daily. Dual channel aqueducts were used to bring fresh water into the city, with one pipee being turned off and cleaned while the other was active, and multiple dikes were built across the lake it and other core cities were built on to keep fresh water on one side and the brackish water of the lake on the other, away from Tenochtitlan. Gardens with flowers and other sweet smelling plants were located in communal public spaces and in noble homes to stave off smells, and feces collected by the civil servants were used as fertilizer, while urine was handled by the city's sewage system. Earlier cities in the region, such as Palenque and Teotihuacan (which, like Tenochtitlan, would have been in the top 5 largest cities in the world during their heydays, with Teotihuacan having a population of 100k to 150k and covering 60 square kilometers around 400ad, and Tenochtitlan having a population of 200k to 250k as of 1519, on par with Paris and Constantinople at the time, the largest cities in europe), both of which pre-date the Aztecs by 1000 years, also had flush toilets and sewage and other waterworks systems. There's a great, easy to understand free tto download paper called "Public health in Aztec society" that goes over this, if anybody wants to read about it.
"Back in my day we would pay true doctors to stick a knife in you and let you bleed out the things making you sick. Now all they do is make you pay for ingestible chemicals and bandages to cover up wounds. Grow a pair and chop off that broken leg, and while your at it drain the plague out of that now gaping wound."
India. A form of cataract surgery, now known as 'couching, was found in ancient India and subsequently introduced to other countries by the Indian physician Sushruta (ca. 6rd century BC), who described it in his work the Compendium of Sushruta or Sushruta Samhita
Here's what's freaking amazing about crash course (all of them) it destroys and preconcieved notions of separation between human being and human culutres. its what we need please keep not forgeting to be awesome
When I took a class on early modern england, one of the subjects the professoer covered was how theyd racticed medicine, and she stressed that there was a silent but significat difference between teh theory of medicine and the practice of medicine. I was pleased to see the point brought up even by inference in this video, another fine job!
Many Scholars had books called At Tibb an Nabawi. Notably Imam Ibnul Qayyim, Imam Suyuti, as well as ibn Tulun or Imam Dahabi. Abu Bakr Ar Razi was one of them.
@@ramind10001Al-Razi was a devout muslim saying that Al-razi didn't like Islam is like saying the Vikings worn Hornes, yes it's a popular belief but it's untrue. the misconception stems from a quote of an unknown atheist in a book writing by Abi Hatim Al-Razi and that somehow was mixed up with Abu Bakr Al-Razi.
"The treatments don't always work, symptoms never lie." would be the House MD quote and a good summary of Al-Razi's work philophy. These pop culture references help making learned stuff stick. If you got teachers among your friends, show 'em this channel. They'll love it
People trying to science when there wasn't science yet. I just feel bad whenever I read about one of these early scientific type thinkers struggling in the dark. But I also feel heartened that there have always been inquisitive minds, and there will always be. I personally wouldn't say there was much of an increase in quality of healthcare from antiquity till the scientific revolution. People were operating under a veil of profound ignorance and it could be fairly stated that depending on what system was popular at a given time you would end up worse of by going to a doctor. And it isn't the fault of the doctors either. These would be people trying their hardest to be "healers of men". I remember seeing ancient Roman surgical tools that looked allot like what we might use today (clamps and scalpel like objects). This shows that the trade was real and practiced by professionals. And you can easily see it starting on animals and moving on to humans over time. But just imagine having to go to a surgeon in a time when disinfecting tools wasn't a thing. When people didn't really know what the various organs were for. When most people including doctors thought life was a force and death could cause miasma's most easily imagined as evil air like you might see in children's cartoons. A time when the ideas that became professional wisdom were mostly there due to their intuitive nature or because of the authority of it's proclaimer. Rather than it's accuracy. Just imagine what humanity could have achieved by now had we put the basic method of science into action around 2500 years ago. (peer review and empiricism)
Agree, scientific progress via the scientific method is a real and valuable thing. It doesn't have to negate efforts and accomplishments by people in the past but calling historical medical systems and modern evidence based medicine both science is a false equivalency.
5:56 just saying Marcus Aurelius was a total badass who had a an immense understanding of discipline and self control. He was probably the most powerful and rich person in Rome during the time, but, he still had such a strong control over himself that he never abused his power (at least from stories I’ve heard of him). If you have the time I would recommend you read his book “Meditations” it had an immense impact on me and can help you have great control over your actions and reactions to to things. Anyways that’s all I had to say I just like the fact that he was very briefly referenced in this video and figured I could leave a comment about him.
I came into this skeptical that it would do the subject justice - but I think Crash Course did a really good job here! My only remaining criticism is fairly substantial, though. To answer Hank's question about what a medieval person would think of medicine, it would NOT be what a book told you. The medical practices discussed in this episode concerned the academic world and the wealthy. What about the medicine of the poor or of indigenous people? Most of the world's medical wisdom was systematically destroyed through globalization over the last few centuries. This isn't a political rant, but just a fact of colonialism and global market systems. As land was taken from the poor and from indigenous cultures and they were left to starve or simply killed off, they took their unwritten knowledge with them. The witch trials were explicitly destroying traditional medical practices, usually passed down orally by women. This created a space for new markets to occupy just as purging the people of the Americas created space for new settlements. It wasn't until the start of the 21st century that medicine started turning back to surviving indigenous cultures for help in finding new treatments. Some of this knowledge has been preserved and is used by established medical facilities today, while some if deemed ineffective, or worse, unprofitable. Most of this knowledge comes bundled with religious and cultural practices as well, which makes then tricky to work with. Now I don't expect Crash Course to cover much of this content because there's not a lot we know about the medical practices of the majority of the human race (outside of those who had scribes and scholars), but it's definitely worth noting as an aside that most historical medical practices have been lost due to the violence committed against its practitioners. Medical technologies of the past may have been far more sophisticated than we'll ever know. This probably represents the single greatest loss of knowledge in human history and it's a shame that nothing was said about it in this episode. Now that I'm done with that, I want to say again, that this episode was still really good. It's just such a big topic that you could do an entire series on the history of medicine.
N Boul. I've never gone deeply into those subjects but when discussing ancient medicine, Greeks and Romans are usually the center of discussion. Probably because they hold the most surviving ancient writings about medicine, I may be wrong, just a ancient medicine student. I would imagine middle eastern medicine to have been a practse passed down orally. In class we briefly went over ancient Asian medicine as well. Additionally, Greek/Roman medicine directly led to and influenced modern medicine so that's why it's I guess more "relevant" but a more global scope on ancient medicines and diff time periods would be dope! But DEFinately more than one course lol!
From my understanding, I took a ancient medicine course, it was more dry-wet-hot-cold rather than earth-water-fire-air, according to some "authors" of the corpus. They are related but in Hippocrates time it was more about the former and like u said, how diet and environment affected said elements or as the corpus calls them, "qualities". It was also pointed out in the corpus at one point that this was not an exhaustive list of variables, just the most important ones, to their belief (others mentioned were sweetness, sourness, hardness, etc).
The worst thing about Aristotle is not that everything he said was wrong. The worst thing is that people, untill today (cfr five senses) but definitly in history, just rolled with it.
Yep, he was impressively advanced for his time and actually carried out empirical research. It's just that people treated him as an absolute authority and refused to moved past his ideas.
interestingly, TCM stands for "Traditional Chinese Medicine" which is the form of medical system Mao created in the Great Leap Forward. He also killed many practitioners of classical Chinese medicine. Some practitioners escaped to Taiwan, but most of the practice we call TCM today isn't actual "traditional," but more of the biomedical model Mao created to westernize.
I've finished reading World Without End just a few weeks ago and having a hard time reconciling what you just described with the medicine in there. In the book the authority figures seemed more interested in reading and parroting the theories of earlier authors without much interesting in experimenting or arguing.
Those book are good regarding architecture but not so much else. Like how in Pillars of Earth they wanted to leave the child to die on mothers grave even though there were plenty of orphanages in middle age Europe.
But there was not one within a few miles area, cuz it was winter and they had no food or money to keep the child alive. I just got done reading both of these books in the last month or so.
TLDR: It is a book meant to entertain, so i believe the medical authority was written in this way to cover one school of thought (old books know best) vs the other (experience knows best) as the conflict between these two makes for most of the novels story. When reality may have been quite different. SPOILER WARNING!!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!! To continue with the videos medical advancement onion analogy, those religious authorities (mainly Godwyn) thought that the onion was finished, how could we know more than those super smart ancient scholars? and if the remedy still does not work it is apart of God's plan since these guys who trained at universities are all priests. You are probably right they would of been more experimental and argumentative with medicine, however this is a novel meant to entertain and by having them being so closed minded it opens up that role, mainly for Caris. The best example of this I think is when Gwenda has her first child and continues to bleed a lot after the afterbirth comes out the priest physician just tells her to drink rose water. As the video tells us it was suppose to help with her imbalance of humors. But Caris cannot accept that and goes to a women who might have seen this before. Who hasn't read the texts but has practical experience and perhaps experimented with this type of thing. Mattie Wise comes and instead of thinking a drink will cure Gwenda she shoves her hand up there and helps close Gwendas womb. What really drives this home for me is that at the beginning of Pillars of the Earth Tom Builders first wife dies from this, Tom didn't know what to do and even if he had professional help she still would of likely died. It was only an experimenting argumentative upstart who had knowledge that the reliable texts didn't know. Hopefully Caris wrote this down when she published her own medical book adding another layer to our onion.
Calculus II and Crash course playing in the background (along with a Tribe called Quest)... OMG Crash Course Hip Hop with Q-Tip make it happen please.. Back to HW!!! Yo, I'm out like Buster Douglas, I say peace to MC Trouble Rest in peace
Translational medicine can help with the research, work of healing and various reimbursement pathways. These realities without tearing down… can work better and help providers have more rewarding work and better process with community engagement.
"In [the traditional Chinese medical] system, humans are small pieces of one vast organism called 'The Entire Dang Universe'." Is that actually what the ancient Chinese called it? I wish it were. Because that would be funny.
KingsleyIII No...in China,we called it as Dao,which means the rules of the world ,the invisible,untouchable and insensible power which drives the world
All living things with in this system are composed of five elements: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. Life was linked to the movement of special fluids, which was the objects of medical treatments. Life was ultimately built but of a smaller number of elements and good health meant balancing fluids and elements in the right way. And also Trotula became foundational to gynecology and all other topics related to women's health. But you might got know that this foundation text on women's health was written by a woman. Because her identity was systematically written out of history until the late 20th century.
Y’all check out sawbones, a podcast about medical history hosted by a doctor (and her husband) they talk about all the gross and weird stuff we used to do as medicine. They talk about all these doctors & more!
Ancient and Medieval medicine worked for millions people. They understood their bodies as bounded by rules. Medical system allowed people to make sense of bodies and health . Disease means inbalance , thus healthcare means restoring balance by through living bodies , called qi . We would learn all abput how to move qi around using acupuncture and acupressure, herbal therapies , exercise and prescription diets . This disease of children , those of the elderly , mentl diseases , diseases of the sense organs , surgery , poisons and antidotes and aphroslaus.
Linda Vilma Ole This video is very knowledgeable especially for those students who are planning to be a doctor someday, this video is very fascinating that make us aware about the history of healing or medice. It talks about the ancient and medieval medicine worked. First of all through this video I have a knowledge about the early medical worked is to make sense the body and healthcare. Because of the early medical worked by our ancestor it becomes more develop through this modern era because there are many people nowadays who were studied about the life, the diseases and the symptoms of the diseases. That ideas came from the ancient ages that was recorded so been a long time it will developed and more developed into much better. That's why I thumbs up tp this video. I love the content:)
Life is a universal property of human, links to the movement of special fluid, ultimately built out of a smaller number of elements. And good health meant balancing fluids and elements in the right way. This video shows that if you are interested in studying medicine you should not depend on a single book to be your references as your guide in learning to treat people. You should always read a lot of books and know different methods in treating your patient for you to know what is the best thing to do to. We know that some people doesn't believe in medical treatment, as a physician, you must know what are some alternative treatment for the patient aside from medical treatment.
THESE INFORMATIONS KNOCK MY HEAD UP! As a human being who is so bemused in Science especially in medicine, I would say that this video has vast information of people who also has kazillion information about medicine in their head. I honestly couldn’t express what I felt during the entire video, maybe saying my heart pumps too much blood causing my head to ache and my fingers to get cold while taking my notes about the video and even while typing my comment. These thinkers from different places and different time in Medieval period were able to acquire so much knowledge although they lacked tools (technology per se) and law to support them. I mean, they were able to give us human anatomy without actually dissecting a human being for it was against ethical code before, and many more knowledge that even in present day would require much effort, time, energy and money just to be acquired. Aside from having their own observations, gathering of evidence, and experimentation individually, they also utilized ideas from different thinkers of different space and time. However, they never let their models, whom they are very fond of, to distract them from the truth of life. Nullius in verba indeed. These awesome and historic people kept on working their way up to the truth of life. But what I admire the most, though I admire all of them 100 to the power of 100, is Ibn Sina/Avicenna ‘s The Canon of Medicine where it has everything that I want to know about medicine, which is everything. Gosh! To participate in Scholasticism is so much delightful!
Careful observations and comparison to animals was like the stepping stone of science in the area of medicine. I think it was very hard and limited for their doctors and physicians to gain new knowledge about the human body since human dissecting was illegal. Still, their work and discoveries was a great help for their descendants in understanding and learning more about medicine. Also, gender equality was a big problem in their time which is very upsetting. Overall, i learned a lot from this video.
8:53 I think that 'al-qanun' means 'the law'. This would mean that the name of the book would 'the law in the medicine', rather than 'the canon of medicine'. Just a hypothesis = )
Arthur Kondaraki True, the human body has them around certain organs. Galen wrongly assumed humans would have them in places common to sheep. Hank's script wasn't as clear as it could have been about making that connection.
Good thing I live in our time.. I can't imagine living in a past era.. "well it seems that Carl won't make it, Simon get the sword!.. I'm sorry Carl, with hostile natives around, you won't make it.."
You forgot to mention the most important Arab physician Al-Zahrawi, who invented modern surgery and some of his works are still used today in surgery, and even important is that from reading his books, Europe slowly began to borrow books on medicines from the east in masses and slowly began to come out of the dark ages.
While it is true that Imperial Rome banned human dissection, to claim all following states did the same is incorrect, as it's a well known fact that in the Middle Ages, human dissection was ongoing with no major laws against it in Europe - there were laws obviously against grave robbing but this was apart from any ban on dissection proper. People like Leonardo Di Vinci had access to bodies and was even invited by a Pope to do some human dissecting in Rome.
I am interested in proposing a History of Science curriculum for my school district. Is there a decent textbook that summarizes the main concepts of a would-be History of Science class? 😄
Even in modern days with modern scientific medicine methodology, studying those traditional medicine can be useful. Since I am Chinese, I have two Chinese examples for this: 1) Modern diagram of human nervous system and ancient acupuncture diagrams agree to a high degree, and 2) Chinese herbal medicine can be used as a way to direct the search of medicinal molecules, and a Chinese female scientist Tu Youyou got a Nobel for that.
I'm a greek girl studying medicine in english in a medival italian university. This feels strange.
Rozalia Mouz God, I love Europe! :D
It sounds very European ^^
Yay for Europe, I'm Italian I hope you're having a good time studying here 😊
Fucc Europe
Rozalia Mouz that sounds wonderful! Enjoy your time, study hard and enjoy the little things. 😊
"Long ago the four humors live together in harmony, but then everything change when the yellow bile attacks..."
Led by the Liver and Gallbladder
My takeaway from this is that Crash Course: Deep Fried Everything is coming.
DFTBA t-shirt for this please
As part of a series on cooking? Sounds like a plan!
Crash Course cooking with Gordon Ramsey
Carakav I
Chef Hank's Cornucopia of Corndogs!
The Aztecs had a sort of humoral system the same way the ancient greeks (and later medieval Europe) did using "hot" or "cold" ingredients to treat different ailments. Despite the psuedo-scientific foundation,, the Aztec's still approached their treatments from an empirical, evidence based perspective, and as such actually had medical treatments that were effective. They also had extremely complex encyclopedias of plants and kept horticultural gardens to stock for this reason as well as just recreational, decorative botanical gardens such as in the imperial palace of Texcoco, one of the 3 ruling cities of the Aztec empire.
Cortes himself said in a letter to Charles V to not to bother to send doctors over, as the Aztec ones were far better, and Aztec horticultural and botanical texts were later adapted by Europeans and influenced later texts of the same nature and by taxonomists during the scientific revolution. They (most Mesoamerican cultures, really, but especially the Nahuas, who composed most of the core Aztec cities) were also OBSESSED with sanitation and cleanliness: Even commoners bathed using steam baths and the roots of plants as soap multiple times a week; in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, there were a fleet of civil servants that swept streets, washed buildings, and collected waste daily. Dual channel aqueducts were used to bring fresh water into the city, with one pipee being turned off and cleaned while the other was active, and multiple dikes were built across the lake it and other core cities were built on to keep fresh water on one side and the brackish water of the lake on the other, away from Tenochtitlan.
Gardens with flowers and other sweet smelling plants were located in communal public spaces and in noble homes to stave off smells, and feces collected by the civil servants were used as fertilizer, while urine was handled by the city's sewage system. Earlier cities in the region, such as Palenque and Teotihuacan (which, like Tenochtitlan, would have been in the top 5 largest cities in the world during their heydays, with Teotihuacan having a population of 100k to 150k and covering 60 square kilometers around 400ad, and Tenochtitlan having a population of 200k to 250k as of 1519, on par with Paris and Constantinople at the time, the largest cities in europe), both of which pre-date the Aztecs by 1000 years, also had flush toilets and sewage and other waterworks systems.
There's a great, easy to understand free tto download paper called "Public health in Aztec society" that goes over this, if anybody wants to read about it.
Jabberwockxeno thanks for the recommendation! I find the topic of Mesoamerica very interesting. Just downloaded that paper
bool bro
Thanks for that. Always been interested in Central south American ancient civilizations. It's hard to find much info about it.
This is lovely, thank you.
Jabberwockxeno fascinating
"A persistent cough you say? Must be all that pesky excess blood in your system, let me get my knife. I'll have you fixed up lickety split."
"Back in my day we would pay true doctors to stick a knife in you and let you bleed out the things making you sick. Now all they do is make you pay for ingestible chemicals and bandages to cover up wounds. Grow a pair and chop off that broken leg, and while your at it drain the plague out of that now gaping wound."
That should work
HI HI
India. A form of cataract surgery, now known as 'couching, was found in ancient India and subsequently introduced to other countries by the Indian physician Sushruta (ca. 6rd century BC), who described it in his work the Compendium of Sushruta or Sushruta Samhita
Here's what's freaking amazing about crash course (all of them)
it destroys and preconcieved notions of separation between human being and human culutres. its what we need please keep not forgeting to be awesome
Where do I go to fund the Crash Course Deep Fried Everything series?
When I took a class on early modern england, one of the subjects the professoer covered was how theyd racticed medicine, and she stressed that there was a silent but significat difference between teh theory of medicine and the practice of medicine. I was pleased to see the point brought up even by inference in this video, another fine job!
Correction :
Alrazi didnt write a prophetic medicine (al-tib al-nabawi) , Ibn Alqaim who was a theologian wrote it.
Nice episode 👍🏻
O 2 Exactly. Alrazi did write a book called "Altib Alrouhani" - The Spriritual Medicine - though, I guess that's how they were confused.
He says Al-Razi wrote 'about' the topic of Prophetic Medicine.
Many Scholars had books called At Tibb an Nabawi.
Notably Imam Ibnul Qayyim, Imam Suyuti, as well as ibn Tulun or Imam Dahabi. Abu Bakr Ar Razi was one of them.
O 2 yea cuz I remember that al-razi wasn’t a fan of islam
@@ramind10001Al-Razi was a devout muslim saying that Al-razi didn't like Islam is like saying the Vikings worn Hornes, yes it's a popular belief but it's untrue. the misconception stems from a quote of an unknown atheist in a book writing by Abi Hatim Al-Razi and that somehow was mixed up with Abu Bakr Al-Razi.
Shout out to Gregory House
Do you know if that is just a joke, or if it is fact?
Jan Cillié Louw Quite probably a joke. But a good one at that.
I'm intrigued too.
"The treatments don't always work, symptoms never lie." would be the House MD quote and a good summary of Al-Razi's work philophy. These pop culture references help making learned stuff stick. If you got teachers among your friends, show 'em this channel. They'll love it
Love the series in general but this episode takes the cake (I am a doctor so I may be a little bit biased). So many Gregory Houses
"A woman figuring out how a woman's body works? That's just silly! Let's just write her out of this history book."
I cannot but recommend the episode on surgery from the podcast ‘How it began’ to delve a little deeper into the history of medicine.
CrashCourse helped me maintain A's in every subject besides math and gym all through high school 😂. Great work as always.
People trying to science when there wasn't science yet. I just feel bad whenever I read about one of these early scientific type thinkers struggling in the dark. But I also feel heartened that there have always been inquisitive minds, and there will always be. I personally wouldn't say there was much of an increase in quality of healthcare from antiquity till the scientific revolution. People were operating under a veil of profound ignorance and it could be fairly stated that depending on what system was popular at a given time you would end up worse of by going to a doctor. And it isn't the fault of the doctors either. These would be people trying their hardest to be "healers of men".
I remember seeing ancient Roman surgical tools that looked allot like what we might use today (clamps and scalpel like objects). This shows that the trade was real and practiced by professionals. And you can easily see it starting on animals and moving on to humans over time. But just imagine having to go to a surgeon in a time when disinfecting tools wasn't a thing. When people didn't really know what the various organs were for. When most people including doctors thought life was a force and death could cause miasma's most easily imagined as evil air like you might see in children's cartoons.
A time when the ideas that became professional wisdom were mostly there due to their intuitive nature or because of the authority of it's proclaimer. Rather than it's accuracy.
Just imagine what humanity could have achieved by now had we put the basic method of science into action around 2500 years ago. (peer review and empiricism)
Agree, scientific progress via the scientific method is a real and valuable thing. It doesn't have to negate efforts and accomplishments by people in the past but calling historical medical systems and modern evidence based medicine both science is a false equivalency.
Progress stagnated after the Peloponnesian War in Greece and began to pick up during the Dark Ages with the founding of universities
These have been the videos I have been waiting for each week. I love them!
5:56 just saying Marcus Aurelius was a total badass who had a an immense understanding of discipline and self control. He was probably the most powerful and rich person in Rome during the time, but, he still had such a strong control over himself that he never abused his power (at least from stories I’ve heard of him). If you have the time I would recommend you read his book “Meditations” it had an immense impact on me and can help you have great control over your actions and reactions to to things. Anyways that’s all I had to say I just like the fact that he was very briefly referenced in this video and figured I could leave a comment about him.
AND HIS NAME IS IBN SINA!!!!!
yep he talked about him
*G O O P Y! A high-school expression? Who’s ASKING? Bangkok Johnnie CarSanook Media THAILAND*
I have been waiting like 3 years for someone else to make this joke.
Like John Sina ? Kidding 😁
We only have artist depictions of him because we can't see him
I really like the modified theme song
I came into this skeptical that it would do the subject justice - but I think Crash Course did a really good job here!
My only remaining criticism is fairly substantial, though. To answer Hank's question about what a medieval person would think of medicine, it would NOT be what a book told you. The medical practices discussed in this episode concerned the academic world and the wealthy. What about the medicine of the poor or of indigenous people?
Most of the world's medical wisdom was systematically destroyed through globalization over the last few centuries. This isn't a political rant, but just a fact of colonialism and global market systems. As land was taken from the poor and from indigenous cultures and they were left to starve or simply killed off, they took their unwritten knowledge with them. The witch trials were explicitly destroying traditional medical practices, usually passed down orally by women. This created a space for new markets to occupy just as purging the people of the Americas created space for new settlements.
It wasn't until the start of the 21st century that medicine started turning back to surviving indigenous cultures for help in finding new treatments. Some of this knowledge has been preserved and is used by established medical facilities today, while some if deemed ineffective, or worse, unprofitable. Most of this knowledge comes bundled with religious and cultural practices as well, which makes then tricky to work with.
Now I don't expect Crash Course to cover much of this content because there's not a lot we know about the medical practices of the majority of the human race (outside of those who had scribes and scholars), but it's definitely worth noting as an aside that most historical medical practices have been lost due to the violence committed against its practitioners. Medical technologies of the past may have been far more sophisticated than we'll ever know. This probably represents the single greatest loss of knowledge in human history and it's a shame that nothing was said about it in this episode.
Now that I'm done with that, I want to say again, that this episode was still really good. It's just such a big topic that you could do an entire series on the history of medicine.
I'm glad we had so many different ways to learn dangerous false medical ideas all over the world!
"Why are deep-friend Oreos bad for me..." WHAT?????? (weeping softly)
I try to show my friends these vids and they die from boredom. I find that sooooo crazy.
I really hoped that he was gonna touch on western African medicine and also medicine from medieval western cultures.
N Boul. I've never gone deeply into those subjects but when discussing ancient medicine, Greeks and Romans are usually the center of discussion. Probably because they hold the most surviving ancient writings about medicine, I may be wrong, just a ancient medicine student. I would imagine middle eastern medicine to have been a practse passed down orally. In class we briefly went over ancient Asian medicine as well. Additionally, Greek/Roman medicine directly led to and influenced modern medicine so that's why it's I guess more "relevant" but a more global scope on ancient medicines and diff time periods would be dope! But DEFinately more than one course lol!
I've got a raging academic rn
On the next episode: lupus. Proceeds to wait forever for the episode.
So are textbooks also like ogres?
Train Jackson unlike a parfait
You mean they stink?
From my understanding, I took a ancient medicine course, it was more dry-wet-hot-cold rather than earth-water-fire-air, according to some "authors" of the corpus. They are related but in Hippocrates time it was more about the former and like u said, how diet and environment affected said elements or as the corpus calls them, "qualities". It was also pointed out in the corpus at one point that this was not an exhaustive list of variables, just the most important ones, to their belief (others mentioned were sweetness, sourness, hardness, etc).
Nice video though! Thank u
The worst thing about Aristotle is not that everything he said was wrong. The worst thing is that people, untill today (cfr five senses) but definitly in history, just rolled with it.
Yep, he was impressively advanced for his time and actually carried out empirical research. It's just that people treated him as an absolute authority and refused to moved past his ideas.
That is one of the reasons behind Galileo's trial, he spoke against many ideas of Aristotle and people were not ready yet to move on.
Frahamen ...I may just be tired after 17 hrs of work but I am ether missing something in your statement or ....what???!!??
Hyped AF for alchemy.
homeiswonderland *Chemistry
there was a medical/ comedy show, called House. the main character was Gregory House, MD. he had a bad leg, and took valium all the time.
Please, keep the avatar the last airbender references coming! Love them!
"And his name was X which also happened to mean Gregory House" should be a meme.
We want references for the claims that Abu Bakr Al Razi and Hippocrates of Kos both mean Gregory House!
That almost flew over my head
interestingly, TCM stands for "Traditional Chinese Medicine" which is the form of medical system Mao created in the Great Leap Forward. He also killed many practitioners of classical Chinese medicine. Some practitioners escaped to Taiwan, but most of the practice we call TCM today isn't actual "traditional," but more of the biomedical model Mao created to westernize.
There's a movie about Ibn Sina and medieval medicine called The Physician. It's an interesting movie worth checking out.
I've finished reading World Without End just a few weeks ago and having a hard time reconciling what you just described with the medicine in there. In the book the authority figures seemed more interested in reading and parroting the theories of earlier authors without much interesting in experimenting or arguing.
Those book are good regarding architecture but not so much else. Like how in Pillars of Earth they wanted to leave the child to die on mothers grave even though there were plenty of orphanages in middle age Europe.
But there was not one within a few miles area, cuz it was winter and they had no food or money to keep the child alive. I just got done reading both of these books in the last month or so.
TLDR: It is a book meant to entertain, so i believe the medical authority was written in this way to cover one school of thought (old books know best) vs the other (experience knows best) as the conflict between these two makes for most of the novels story. When reality may have been quite different.
SPOILER WARNING!!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!! SPOILER WARNING!!!!
To continue with the videos medical advancement onion analogy, those religious authorities (mainly Godwyn) thought that the onion was finished, how could we know more than those super smart ancient scholars? and if the remedy still does not work it is apart of God's plan since these guys who trained at universities are all priests.
You are probably right they would of been more experimental and argumentative with medicine, however this is a novel meant to entertain and by having them being so closed minded it opens up that role, mainly for Caris.
The best example of this I think is when Gwenda has her first child and continues to bleed a lot after the afterbirth comes out the priest physician just tells her to drink rose water. As the video tells us it was suppose to help with her imbalance of humors. But Caris cannot accept that and goes to a women who might have seen this before. Who hasn't read the texts but has practical experience and perhaps experimented with this type of thing. Mattie Wise comes and instead of thinking a drink will cure Gwenda she shoves her hand up there and helps close Gwendas womb.
What really drives this home for me is that at the beginning of Pillars of the Earth Tom Builders first wife dies from this, Tom didn't know what to do and even if he had professional help she still would of likely died. It was only an experimenting argumentative upstart who had knowledge that the reliable texts didn't know. Hopefully Caris wrote this down when she published her own medical book adding another layer to our onion.
Ibn sina’s book actually directly translates to: the law of medicine, not canon as in the weapon. “qanun” in arabic means “law”.
Wow really ? I just had my exam on this today smh
Oh... oops.
- Nick J.
Idon'tbelieveyou.gif
Redbad of Frisia you are right
Exam in what?
Redbad of Frisia haha I had my gcse history of medicine exam yesterday. You can believe me or not I don’t mind :)
Calculus II and Crash course playing in the background (along with a Tribe called Quest)... OMG Crash Course Hip Hop with Q-Tip make it happen please.. Back to HW!!! Yo, I'm out like Buster Douglas, I say peace to MC Trouble Rest in peace
Translational medicine can help with the research, work of healing and various reimbursement pathways. These realities without tearing down… can work better and help providers have more rewarding work and better process with community engagement.
Gonna be honest here. 'Entire "Dang" Universe' took me an embarassingly long time to "translate".
lmao the first time I watched this I thought it was a Chinese word...
"In [the traditional Chinese medical] system, humans are small pieces of one vast organism called 'The Entire Dang Universe'."
Is that actually what the ancient Chinese called it? I wish it were. Because that would be funny.
KingsleyIII No...in China,we called it as Dao,which means the rules of the world ,the invisible,untouchable and insensible power which drives the world
sander leung1 The entire Dao universe xD
not to be confused with the sacred Chao universe as dictated by Eris. it is the principle of Order and Disorder.
All living things with in this system are composed of five elements: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. Life was linked to the movement of special fluids, which was the objects of medical treatments. Life was ultimately built but of a smaller number of elements and good health meant balancing fluids and elements in the right way. And also Trotula became foundational to gynecology and all other topics related to women's health. But you might got know that this foundation text on women's health was written by a woman. Because her identity was systematically written out of history until the late 20th century.
Y’all check out sawbones, a podcast about medical history hosted by a doctor (and her husband) they talk about all the gross and weird stuff we used to do as medicine. They talk about all these doctors & more!
Coming April 1st, 2019, Crash Course: Deep Fried Everything!
One of the Thought Bubble's Italies between the fetuses and the uteri doesn't move. Also, that was a fun exercise in pluralization.
Hank Green reading all those Arabic names in his accent is the cutest thing ever ♥
Correction: Ibn Sina book canoon of medicine translates to law of medicine from the Arabic word قانون or Qanoon means law.
لكن كلمه قانون اصلها يوناني و معناها : قواعد او اصول
I have a passion for medical history and the evolution of medical architecture. I struggle to find good learning resources hhh.
Atleast Dr Steven Strange made a cameo in this video, though you guys overlooked his contribution to the mystic sciences.
Joseph Gray Aaaaaqqa
An excellent summary... Thank you....
Ancient and Medieval medicine worked for millions people. They understood their bodies as bounded by rules. Medical system allowed people to make sense of bodies and health . Disease means inbalance , thus healthcare means restoring balance by through living bodies , called qi . We would learn all abput how to move qi around using acupuncture and acupressure, herbal therapies , exercise and prescription diets . This disease of children , those of the elderly , mentl diseases , diseases of the sense organs , surgery , poisons and antidotes and aphroslaus.
Linda Vilma Ole This video is very knowledgeable especially for those students who are planning to be a doctor someday, this video is very fascinating that make us aware about the history of healing or medice. It talks about the ancient and medieval medicine worked. First of all through this video I have a knowledge about the early medical worked is to make sense the body and healthcare.
Because of the early medical worked by our ancestor it becomes more develop through this modern era because there are many people nowadays who were studied about the life, the diseases and the symptoms of the diseases. That ideas came from the ancient ages that was recorded so been a long time it will developed and more developed into much better.
That's why I thumbs up tp this video. I love the content:)
Life is a universal property of human, links to the movement of special fluid, ultimately built out of a smaller number of elements. And good health meant balancing fluids and elements in the right way.
This video shows that if you are interested in studying medicine you should not depend on a single book to be your references as your guide in learning to treat people. You should always read a lot of books and know different methods in treating your patient for you to know what is the best thing to do to. We know that some people doesn't believe in medical treatment, as a physician, you must know what are some alternative treatment for the patient aside from medical treatment.
THESE INFORMATIONS KNOCK MY HEAD UP!
As a human being who is so bemused in Science especially in medicine, I would say that this video has vast information of people who also has kazillion information about medicine in their head. I honestly couldn’t express what I felt during the entire video, maybe saying my heart pumps too much blood causing my head to ache and my fingers to get cold while taking my notes about the video and even while typing my comment.
These thinkers from different places and different time in Medieval period were able to acquire so much knowledge although they lacked tools (technology per se) and law to support them. I mean, they were able to give us human anatomy without actually dissecting a human being for it was against ethical code before, and many more knowledge that even in present day would require much effort, time, energy and money just to be acquired. Aside from having their own observations, gathering of evidence, and experimentation individually, they also utilized ideas from different thinkers of different space and time. However, they never let their models, whom they are very fond of, to distract them from the truth of life. Nullius in verba indeed. These awesome and historic people kept on working their way up to the truth of life. But what I admire the most, though I admire all of them 100 to the power of 100, is Ibn Sina/Avicenna ‘s The Canon of Medicine where it has everything that I want to know about medicine, which is everything. Gosh! To participate in Scholasticism is so much delightful!
Careful observations and comparison to animals was like the stepping stone of science in the area of medicine. I think it was very hard and limited for their doctors and physicians to gain new knowledge about the human body since human dissecting was illegal. Still, their work and discoveries was a great help for their descendants in understanding and learning more about medicine. Also, gender equality was a big problem in their time which is very upsetting. Overall, i learned a lot from this video.
I'm so looking forward to Crash Course: Deep Fried Everything! XD
Micro aggressions and small decisions over time based in fear or hurt… jurisprudence is an illustration of reinforcement. Energy translates ya’ll.
Very interesting information presented in the video, especially how medicine different across the world. Thank you Crash Course!
Crash Course: Deep-Frying HYPE!!!
A parent could pretty much educate a child completely just using CrashCourse vids.
What is the relationship between Complexly and PBS Digital Studios? Why do some channels overlap both companies?
You should just deep-fry all the existing and upcoming Crash Course series. I can't wait for Crash Course Deep-Fried Everything.
crash course do love their avatar the last airbender reference. i approve.
Deep fried Oreos!? I will be looking for that at the county fair!😉
Something about this lecture makes me feel at home.
*We're still waiting for that Deep Fried episode...*
8:53 I think that 'al-qanun' means 'the law'. This would mean that the name of the book would 'the law in the medicine', rather than 'the canon of medicine'. Just a hypothesis = )
The word "canon" was in Latin meaning: rule
and it came into Arabic to become قانون or qanun
There are three "rete mirabilis" in the human body: one arterial is pituitary net, and two venous are hepatic and renal nets.
Arthur Kondaraki True, the human body has them around certain organs. Galen wrongly assumed humans would have them in places common to sheep. Hank's script wasn't as clear as it could have been about making that connection.
The theme at the begining always reminds of Zappa's St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast.
"Made it so goopy?" That got me to laugh
Trota of Salerno... a good candidate for the author of the Voynich manuscript
this was one of my favourite subjects in school history
I really appreciate the avatar symbols for the elements
Different pieces of knowledge to explain medicine. From China to Italy to Greece. Thanks
I am freakin PUMPED for the next episode on alchemy
I think you guys should do a series on medicine
Not going to lie I would watch crash course deep fried everything.
Good thing I live in our time.. I can't imagine living in a past era.. "well it seems that Carl won't make it, Simon get the sword!.. I'm sorry Carl, with hostile natives around, you won't make it.."
You forgot to mention the most important Arab physician Al-Zahrawi, who invented modern surgery and some of his works are still used today in surgery, and even important is that from reading his books, Europe slowly began to borrow books on medicines from the east in masses and slowly began to come out of the dark ages.
Amazing stuff
...Wait....Deep fried things including Oreos is bad....for you?????? nnnnnnnnoooooooo
Nathan Platt. Not really, except in excess.
whew. I would be in trouble if so
but what is the definition of excess?
follow the church of Roadrunnerism, where gravity doesn't exist if you are completely ignorant of it's existence.
Thank you
The Gregs of history
Hi there
Besides India, the other topics get trampled under. The Turkish led medicine was followed by Europeans for over 400 years and was not mentioned once.
Deep Fried Things Be Awesome!
Please make a CC Deep Fried Everything T-shirt!!!!
this theme song is so much less stressful
I saw all those Avatar: The Last Airbender symbols, Crash Course... Well played!
While it is true that Imperial Rome banned human dissection, to claim all following states did the same is incorrect, as it's a well known fact that in the Middle Ages, human dissection was ongoing with no major laws against it in Europe - there were laws obviously against grave robbing but this was apart from any ban on dissection proper. People like Leonardo Di Vinci had access to bodies and was even invited by a Pope to do some human dissecting in Rome.
Iron sharpens iron
The inventor of cataract surgery was Sushruta, the father of Surgery.
I am interested in proposing a History of Science curriculum for my school district. Is there a decent textbook that summarizes the main concepts of a would-be History of Science class? 😄
You should make a crash course about how to make a crash course
So many countries contributed to medicine! I barely can remember these theories
musical icon was surely a reference there.
Deep Fried Oreo's are made with love :) just saying.
Swell analogies Hank!
Deep fried oreos are awesome but so incredibly rich that its hard to have more than one of them at a time
Aight, fess up, who’s the AtLA geek on the team? ;)
5:21 if he is Jimi Hendrix shouldn't he be playing a lefty guitar?
the five "elements" in TCM are NOT elements, but phases of change.
Even in modern days with modern scientific medicine methodology, studying those traditional medicine can be useful. Since I am Chinese, I have two Chinese examples for this: 1) Modern diagram of human nervous system and ancient acupuncture diagrams agree to a high degree, and 2) Chinese herbal medicine can be used as a way to direct the search of medicinal molecules, and a Chinese female scientist Tu Youyou got a Nobel for that.