Did the church help or hinder medical progress in the middle ages?

... Did the church help or hinder medical progress in the middle ages? This essay will study the factors that helped & hindered medicine during the middle ages, & come to the conclusion on whether it helped or hindered more, & also how much progress medicine really did make. How the church helped - The church helped medical progress because it set up a lot of universities, this spread the medical knowledge & ideas of Galen, which was correct in some areas. The church also helped because it believed that public health was very important, they regarded fresh water a priority. At Canterbury there were settling tanks to purify the water. This purified water was piped to the kitchen, the wash rooms, the brewery, the bakery & even the fish pond! Another important factor that helped medical progress a little more was when at Montpellier, after 1340, students were allowed to use one

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