Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're being a little mean to the dark ages. Galen was a pretty accomplished medical researcher, and Roman-era medical implements were quite sophisticated, and were well-established by the time of the dark ages. By the late dark ages, we also saw a lot of modern medical techniques coming in from the Middle East. There's this stereotype of people being filthy, ignorant, and dumb, but it's not really true. And…
> Galen was a pretty accomplished medical researcher, and Roman-era medical implements were quite sophisticated, and were well-established by the time of the dark ages. Were those implements actually practiced throughout the dark ages or did they go the way of the Roman road networks? When people talk of the dark ages they're usually talking of post-Roman Western Europe rather than Asia or the Middle East. I'm not su…
One of the reason for the decline of the term "dark ages" is that there is increasing evidence that people in this period didn't actually crawl under a rock of ignorance. Large-scale armies and infrastructure projects were gone, but at the same time, a lot more knowledge persisted than is given credit for -- the sorts of things which don't require a massive Roman central government administration to maintain.