One reason there was very little progress in medicine in the Middle Ages was largely due to the influence of the Church. The Church banned dissection especially when the results of it disproved Galen's theories. Later on in the Renaissance, Vesalius proves up to 300 of Galen's theories wrong. Like how the human jawbone was one bone and not two like Galen said. They even arrested people who did dissections like Roger Bacon in 1277. He encouraged people to think for themselves and observe science which the church didn't like. Also they were the ones in charge of the medical schools for physicians. As a result they only promoted the works of Galen and Hippocrates and discouraged any new ideas. This was a very big damper on medical progress. The Church finally set up hospitals for sick people, but these focused on prayers and rest. These hospitals didn't accept people with known diseases. So despite there being little comfort and relief for some poor people, they didn't have any real cures or treatments and only offered rest. People also feared the Church due to belief in Heaven and Hell, so no one went against the existing ideas and theories which were largely wrong. Another reason for the lack of progress of medicine in the Medieval era was because of Galen. Galen was a Roman physician who expanded Hippocrates' theory of Four Humours to create the Theory of Opposites. He believed that the cure for an excess of one humour is treatment with the opposite humour. For example, too much phlegm (cold and wet) should be treated with taking hot peppers. He also performed dissections on animals, which made him have incorrect theories of how the body worked. However, his teachings aligned with those of the Church, so his ideas remained uncontested for centuries. Medical progress was only teachings and theories were mostly based on his theories so progress was slow as no one was challenging his work. The fact that theories from Roman times were still very widely believed in the Middle Ages was a very big evidence of the lack of medical progress. Finally, a final reason is a lack of scientific knowledge and understanding. Medieval Britain had no modern technology like microscopes to determine the causes of diseases. They had very crude surgical equipment and no knowledge of germs and bacteria. Most operations that were full of dirty and unclean instruments, so a lot of people died rather than lived from them. The barber-surgeons and physicians back then had very superstitious beliefs with astrological regimes. They also believed in traditional methods and herbal remedies, totally ignoring any scientific experimentation. In addition, the printing press hadn't been popularised yet so communication was poor and no new ideas about causes or preventions of diseases was spread. They had no knowledge of actual biological factors. In light of all these factors, I believe that the Church was the major blockage of progress in medicine at the time. This is because all the other factors like how they had no scientific knowledge or Galen's wrong theories being spread for centuries were caused by the Church. They had limited any improvements in medicines and also propagated Galen's theories and teachings tirelessly. Thus the middle ages was full of stagnation for medicine.