By Vania Raebel | June 21, 2019
The cautery was one of the most important tools in medieval surgery. Cauterization involves burning a part of the body in order to close it off or to remove it. It is still used in today’s medicine, but at a milder level, usually only in electrocautery and chemical cautery.
Cauterization is an effective means to stop bleeding, however, it also increases the risk of infection, especially since it causes more damage to the surrounding tissues and promotes bacterial growth. In medieval times, this could have led to deaths from simple wounds, especially since antibiotics weren’t around then.
