by Colin Swanson

William Shakespeare once wrote, "Who worse than a physician would this report become? But I consider by medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too." What Shakespeare is saying here is that treating illness is futile and not worth doing. Nevertheless, people have always practiced medicine, tried different ways to make themselves well when they are sick, and have attempted to extend their lives as long as possible. An interesting period in the history of medicine was the medieval period. Back then, medicine was almost nothing like it is today. Today, medicine is based on proven facts and hundreds of thousands of hours of painstaking research backing those facts up. In the medieval period, most medicine was based on assumptions and guesses by the doctors, often founded on specious reasoning and peasant superstition. The doctors, or...