To be qualified as a physician a person had to train for 10 years - more than today, despite the brutal simplicity of the job at the time. Barbers were allowed to let blood and pull teeth, while apothecaries prepared and sold medicines.
Quite complicated battlefield surgery was performed, but with no antiseptics patients were at risk of infection including gangrene and septicaemia.
It was believed that the body contained 'humours' (yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm) that had to be kept in balance. This explains why blood-letting was very widely used, along with purgatives and poultices designed to draw out impurities.
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