Introduction: History of medicine in the 17th century. Unfortunately, 17th-century medicine was still handicapped by misconceptions about the human body. Most doctors still thought that there were four fluids (or “humor”) in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, and believed that an excess of one humor caused disease.
However, during the 17th century, a more scientific method of medicine emerged, and some doctors began to question these traditional views.
For instance, physicians observed indigenous techniques and discovered that malaria could be ministered with the bark of the cinchona tree (effective because, as we now know, it contains quinine). However, the cause of malaria (a parasite) and its vector (the mosquito) remained unknown until the 1880s.
In the first half of the 16th century, Paracelsus’s disdain for the alchemical tradition was replaced by Aristotelian traditions and the recognition that physicians should rely more on their observation of disease than on ancient texts and theories.
Paracelsus, a controversial Swiss philosopher and scientist, also introduced using metals such as mercury and antimony to treat disease.