| The Art of Medicine
| | Æbelholt Monastery developed into a centre of nursing and medicine. Excavations from the 1930´s documented the monks´ knowledge of medicine and nursing and it gave an insight into the diseases of the Middle Ages. |
Medical Centre
Extensive excavations at Äbeholt monastery have confirmed that the monastery was a medical centre. Abbot Wilhelm himself used the name ”the hospital monks”.
Cut Injuries
Many times the people in Äbelholt apparently had conflicts, as the excavations have shown many cut injuries.
Violent Times | 
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The Medieval Medicine
The medieval medicine was developed in the monasteries. In the Salerno monastery in southern Italy many medical and surgical scripts were written. The Salerno school had the classic theory of the four body fluids: The blood in the veins, mucus in the brain and the lungs, the yellow gall in the liver and the black gall in the spleen. Different characteristics were attached to these fluids. Blood was warm and wet, mucus cold and wet the yellow gall warm and dry and the black gall cold and dry.
The view of the diseases was also linked to the theory of the four elements (earth, water, air and fire). The different organs in the body were considered to have a connection to the position of the constellation on the firmament. Through the study of the stars you could be guided in whether you should regulate the balance of the fluids, which could be done by bloodletting. They thought that diseases were caused by an imbalance of the four body fluids.
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Herbs
This imbalance could also be discovered through the examining of urine and the controlling of the pulse. Medicine was prescribed, made by different herbs, which was to counteract the imbalance. In Roskilde the canon Henrik Harpenstreng (1164-1244) wrote a book on herb medicine. In here you can see how widespread the employment of herbs was in the Middle Ages.
The herbal garden | 
Cross-Spurge |
Surgical Operations
In Äbelholt Monastery surgical operations were performed. Trephine (they drilled a hole in the cranium) was done and even operations, which had to do with the healing of fractures. A large part of the medical activities were the healing of wounds.
The medical treatment in the monasteries was much debated because part of the church prohibited that priests participated in the treatments, which included bloodletting. Sometimes the medical profession was called in question. Bernhard Clairvaux felt that ”the consulting of doctors and medicine does not benefit religion and is in conflict with purity”.
Violent Times | 
Spinal Column | 
Æbelholt Kloster | 
Trephination | 
Instruments |
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