Western Civilization - History Of European Society

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1
200Chapter 11

Some medieval diseases appear to have no modern
counterparts, a tribute to the rapidity with which
viruses and bacteria can evolve. Others, such as measles
and chicken pox, the great killers of late antiquity, were
now restricted largely to children. The population had
acquired an hereditary immunity. But even childhood
diseases were capable of carrying off the weak or
poorly nourished. In general, malnutrition weakened
resistance to every ailment and, like crowding, was a
silent partner in the high rate of mortality. Towns may
have been more dangerous than the countryside, but
poverty, whatever its location, was likely to prove fatal.
Death by injury or misadventure was also common.
Upper-class males were likely to destroy themselves in
battle or in hunting accidents. Villagers were exposed
to the inevitable hazards of agricultural life. Infants fell
into fires, crawled into the path of carts, or were
mauled by hogs. Adults fell out of trees while picking
fruit or gathering firewood or toppled into wells while
drawing water. They severed limbs and arteries with


their scythes or accidentally brained each other with
their flails. Drink and the absence of illumination by
night also took its toll. Happy harvesters fell off their
carts and were run over while people returning from
late-night drinking bouts drowned in ditches or passed
out and froze to death in the road.
Against this formidable array of human ills, doctors
were as helpless as they had been in antiquity. Their
theories and the remedies available to them had
changed little. By the thirteenth century many physi-
cians were university-trained, but they tended to con-
centrate on diagnosis and the prescription of drugs,
most of which were of dubious value (see document
11.1). The surgeons who, unlike physicians, performed
medical procedures were educated by apprenticeship.
They operated without sterilization and without anes-
thetics. Broken bones could sometimes be set, but
wounds were likely to become infected with fatal re-
sults. In any case, most people had no access to either
physicians or surgeons and relied upon folk remedies

DOCUMENT 11.1

The Treatment of Disease

The following remedies are taken from a standard medical text, Rosa
Anglica practica medicine a capite ad pedes (The Rose of
England, the Practice of Medicine from the Head to the
Feet), by John of Gaddesden (1280–1361), a graduate of Oxford
and of the medical school at Montpellier. The treatments he prescribes
are a typical mixture of common sense and natural magic.

For smallpox: [I]n the case of the noble son of the
English king, when he was infected with this disease... I
made everything around the bed to be red.
For tuberculosis:1). Keep in check the catarrh and
the rheumata; 2). cleanse the body; 3). divert and draw
away the matter [of the disease] to a different part;
4). strengthen the chest and head so that they do not take
up the matter, and that it there multiply; 5). cleanse and
dry up the ulcers and expel the matter from them; 6). con-
solidate them; 7). restrain and cure the cough by using
demulcent drinks with ointments and stupes; 8). assist the
patient to sleep; 9). strengthen and bring back the ap-
petite; 10). keep in check the spitting of blood; 11). do
what can be done to make the breathing more easy and to
remove the asthma and the hoarseness; 12). regulate the

way of life so far as the six non-naturals; 13). cure the pu-
trid or hectic fever which goes with the disease. As to
food, the best is the milk of a young brunette with her
first child, which should be a boy; the young woman
should be well-favored and should eat and drink in mod-
eration.
For toothache: Again, write these words on the jaw
of the patient: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, Amen. RexPaxNaxin Christo Filio,
and the pain will cease at once as I have often seen....
Again, some say that the beak of a magpie hung from the
neck cures pain in the teeth and the uvula and the quinsy.
Again, when the gospel for Sunday is read in the mass, let
the man hearing mass sign his tooth and head with the
sign of the holy Cross and say a pater noster and an ave
for the souls of the father and mother of St. Philip, and
this without stopping; it will keep them from pain in the
future and will cure that which may be present, so say
trustworthy authorities.
Clendening, L., ed. A Source Book of Medical History,pp. 83–85.
New York: Dover, 1960.
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