dicine during the Middle Ages, medicine was finally free to be practiced openly with the church. In Muslim countries, medicine was regarded as very important, and doctors held a high status. In this period, doctors began to move away from a spiritual explanation for disease towards a system based on observation and diagnosis. They were influenced by the texts of Claudius and Hippocrates.Many of the medieval concepts that were developed further, to last through today were based on simpler Greek attitudes. Hippocratic found it important to study all human diseases within their reach, including the very difficult, and at the time, inexplicable sicknesses of sudden seizures and madness. They not only discovered exterior causes that interact with human anatomy and physiology, but they also used therapies that reversed a diseased condition with the same principles. "Opposites cure opposites"(cold for fever) was a far cry from the former "like cures like" (leeches, bloodletting) of sympathetic magic. They formulated questions that the West has continued to ask questions logically, such as "What makes this person sick? Do women get sick in the same way as men? "What is important here is the fact that these medical writers are asking not "Who causes this sickness" but "What stimulus causes this sickness in response?" The theory of the Four Humors developed by these greeks was an important step forward because it encouraged doctors to look for natural causes of disease and to provide natural treatments. Doctors in the Middle ages believed that the body contained four humors or fluids: phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile, and if these humors lost their natural balance, illness would result. Arguments that appeal to process (instead of blaming a careless or evil deity) still remain today.A few health conclusions made in the Middle Ages still hold ground today. A good example of a current concept that exists today which evolved from a medieva...
