Western Civilization - History Of European Society

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. 
Rex
Pax
Nax
in 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.