Medical Tools

My last entry about medical progress sparked a fun exchange with a reader of this blog, so I thought I'd have some more fun with the topic.

This photo is a picture of historically-accurate medical tools from the Renaissance period. These belong to the Barber-Surgeon at the Bristol Renaissance Faire and his show is one that I've always enjoyed. One learns fascinating things.

Did you know that in Renaissance times it was illegal to extract a tooth? As the mouth was the organ a person used to affirm devotion to God, or to her Majesty who was God's representative on Earth, there were laws against changing it. Instead, the Barber-Surgeons developed a tool called a "goat's foot" that was used to go under a bad tooth and snap the root. After a few days, the tooth would fall out naturally.

There were actually all sorts of limits the medical professionals of the time had to deal with. For example, the only herbs that could be used to treat a disease had to be local herbs from the place where the disease had arisen. You couldn't import exotic herbs or medicines. It was thought that God, in His wisdom created the disease in a particular place, and therefore God would have put the substances He wanted used to treat that disease in the same place.

Strange, fascinating stuff. It reminds me that medical care isn't as "scientific" as some would think. Not in the Renaissance and not today. Every day in my work I see physicians going about their craft using instinct and sometimes simple guesswork to help their patients. The books don't have all the answers. In fact, the best medical workers use their intuition all the time. The official term for this is "Clinical Wisdom," and it's an indefinable quality possessed by the best heath-care workers.