Memory Aids: Lock In the Key Facts

🧠 Memory Aids: Lock In the Key Facts

The four humours — "Blood Pours Yellow Black":

• Blood — hot & wet — treat with bleeding
• Phlegm — cold & wet — treat by warming
• Yellow bile — hot & dry — treat by purging
• Black bile — cold & dry — treat by purging or bleeding

Why medieval ideas lasted — "AGENT" framework: Use this for "Explain why" questions about why medieval ideas persisted:

• Authority — Galen's ancient texts treated as unquestionable
• God — Church enforced Galen as God's confirmed design
• Evidence lacking — no microscopes, no technology to disprove theories
• No dissection — Church ban prevented correcting Galen's errors
• Theory seemed logical — symptoms could always be "explained" by humours

Key dates for this topic:

• c.460-370 BC — Hippocrates develops the Four Humours
• c.130-210 AD — Galen expands the theory; writes ~500 medical texts
• 1348 — Black Death arrives — medieval medicine has no answer
• 1543 — Vesalius publishes his anatomy book, beginning the challenge to Galen

Visual association — "The Locked Library": Picture a vast medieval library filled with Galen's books, chained shut with a padlock. A monk stands guard with a key labelled "Church Authority." Outside, a sick patient lies dying. A curious doctor tries to open the library door to find new ideas, but can't — the monk shakes his head. This is medieval medicine in one image: knowledge exists (Galen's books) but it is locked in place by authority, preventing any new ideas from getting in.