What medicines did medieval doctors give to their patients?

The term “doctor” can be misleading when it comes to medieval studies. While there were doctors and even dentists, only the wealthy could afford them. The common man used “healing women” or religious leaders, such as monks and nuns from the local villages. Medicines of the time were plant and root based. Different plants had different healing properties. Some of these would include:

Poultices made from mustard seeds, mosses, and muds - these would be mashed, made into a type of paste, and then applied to different areas of the body.

Plants such as Rosemary, Lavender, Peppermint, could be used for internal ailments.

For headaches - radishes, garlic, and a handful of other items could be mixed together to form a paste which would then be applied to the head.

Other forms of medical care would include practices such as blood-letting, leeching (applying leeches to different parts of the body to remove bad humors of the blood), and even using maggots to eat away flesh that was infected.

The doctors of the day would have had some access to medical knowledge from Greece and even the Middle East. Many of them were trained at foreign courts, learning the leading “medicines” of the day. Sometimes the medicines prescribed were just as deadly, if not more so than some of the ailments that the patient was suffering from. Mercury was commonly used to treat several ailments, and this would lead to tooth decay, and most often, death.