Prehistoric medicine

A recap

Aims of this revision session

By the end of this revision lesson you should

• Understand the problems we have with the evidence and prehistoric medicine

• Describe the main features of prehistoric medicine

• Compare and contrast prehistoric medicine and aboriginal medicine and to draw some conclusions

Prehistoric times

• Prehistoric means before history but really means before written history

• As a result we have very little evidence and as a result have to make educated guesses about what life was like for people in prehistoric times

• Usually refers to the people who lived before 10 000BC

Problems with the evidence

• We only have archaeological evidence – problem is it cannot tell us the whole story

• We also have cave paintings and other finds

• One way that we can find out evidence is to look at people around the world who lived similar lifestyles to prehistoric people until relatively recently

Lifestyle of prehistoric man

• Hunter gathers• Followed the animals that they

hunted• Did not farm• Rarely lived beyond 30 years• Did not write things down• Used flint and had a basic

understanding of the world• Very religious – blamed spirits

for good and bad things

Practical ideas

• Have evidence that they used herbs and spices to treat diseases

• Evidence that they may have healed broken bones using casts and splints

• Used berries to cure common conditions such as constipation and diarrhoea

Medicine men

• Prehistoric men used medicine men to help them to get rid of the evil spirits that thy thought caused disease

• Used lucky charms to help• Used chants and magic

spells to help people to get better

Trepanning

• PH man performed this operation without anaesthetic – removed a piece of the skull to relieve pressure on the brain

• We know that people survived because we have found skulls where the bone has started to grow back

• Evidence of early knowledge of surgical techniques

• Yet this reason was done for supernatural as opposed to natural reasons

• They did in order to create a hole through which an evil spirit (which they thought caused the disease) could escape.

• Also did surgery to remove cysts and moles

The aborigines

• These are the original inhabitants of Australia

• Until 100 years back they lived in a similar way to prehistoric men

• We can make educated guesses about prehistoric men from looking at their lifestyle