Lungs and stomach may be obvious but things like the spleen sounds difficult to figure out what they do.
In: 0
They literally guessed or juts didn’t know. Autopsies used to be considered disrespectful, so we juts guessed based on animals. Which you can guess how that worked out. They used to think emotion was the job of the heart. And even in modern medicine, for the longest time, people thought the heart would juts stop of you touched it. I also remember hearing something about the origin of blood, but I can’t remember.
But in short, they didn’t.
They read and believed Galen for over 1000 years. And he did what the others here have said.
“You got ghosts in your blood. We’re gonna drain half of it while you pray for salvation.”
Prior to the advent of modern science and dedicated study, they flat out didn’t know. The more obvious ones like the digestive tract and lungs were usually pretty spot on. A lot of the other ideas behind what the various organs did were wide ranging and usually wrong. And even if someone did get it correct or mostly correct, that didn’t mean that all “physicians” followed that person’s ideas or teachings.
People take modern medical technology and knowledge for granted. Its such a part of our lives that we like to think its been around for a long time. It really hasn’t. Penicillin’s discovery happened less than 100 years ago. Your chances of dying from infection prior to the 1870’s after receiving medical care was extremely high. Basic hygiene like washing your hands didn’t start catching on with surgeons till around that time. Actually sterilizing tools also took a while to convince the medical community around the same time (1880’s).
We’ve gone from amputating limbs with hand saws that weren’t cleaned after use on the previous patient to targeted cancer treatment and replacement limbs that can read your nerve signals in the time frame of about 150 years.
Latest Answers