Nowadays, when you’re feeling unwell, you can v isit a clean hospital and receive tried-and tested-treatments from a doc tor with years of medical training. We of ten take this moder n medicine for granted, but our ancestors throughout histor y were not qu ite so luck y when it came to health care. In medieval England for example, poor hygiene and filthy living cond itions meant that disease was ver y com mon.
However, with little k nowledge of the human a n atomy, many illnesses were attr ibuted to w itchcraf t, demon s, the will of god or even the positions of celestial bodies. Trepanning, which involves drilling a hole into the skull, was prescr ibed to allow the disease-causing evil spirits t rapped inside to esc ape. Others believed that diseases were caused by the fluids in the body becoming unbalanced, so bloodletting – draining the blood from a particular part of the body – was thought to restore that balance to normal levels.