Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
Epidemics, Pandemics, and the Doomsday Scenario
For centuries in Christian society people have made direct connections between the outbreak of epidemic disease and Doomsday.
The effect of sex on risk of mortality during the Black Death in London, A.D. 1349-1350
The purpose of this study is to determine whether the Black Death was similarly selective with respect to biological sex-that is, did either sex face an elevated risk during the epidemic or were men and women at equal risk of dying?
Plague And Changes In Medieval European Society And Economy In The 14th And 15th Centuries
Standards of hygiene in the Middle Ages appeared high enough to prevent diseases as medieval Europeans, contrary to popular beliefs, bathed quite often. However, contact with domestic animals, which were frequently kept in the part of the house reserved for human activity, exposed people to animal-related diseases passed to humans via insects.
Comparing Pilgrim Souvenirs and Trinity Chapel Windows at Canterbury Cathedral
The story begins with two tin pilgrim ampullae2 made before 1220 in Canterbury, England, that were found centuries later, one in France (now in the Cluny Museum) and one in Norway (now in the Historical Museum in Bergen, Norway).
Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval English Literature
Madness has been long misrepresented in medieval studies. Assertions that conceptions of mental illness were unknown to medieval people, or that all madmen were assumed to be possessed by the devil, were at one time common in accounts of medieval society.
Vilification of Identity and the Exilic Narrative: The Illustrated Pied Piper Story
This paper situates The Pied Piper story as an exilic narrative, part of a larger repertoire of stories that follow the romantic quest-myth formula, a formula that conveys a totla metaphor for the “journey of life”.
A Brief History of Ergotism: From St. Anthony’s Fire and St. Vitus’ Dance Until Today
Ergotism appeared in Europe in the early Middle Ages and manifested itself in gangrenous or convulsive forms. Between 1085 and 1927 epidemics of convulsive ergotism were widespread east of the Rhine in Europe
Health and dietetics in medieval preventive medicine: the health regimen of Peter of Spain (thirteenth century)
Health and dietetics constitute the basic concepts of preventive medicine constructed by medieval and Latin Galenism, i.e. the medical theories of Galen (second century) transmitted by Arab commentators (Avicenna, among others). Over time, the concept of health with respect to the human body changed according to specific socio-historic contexts.
Bearing the Cross: Syphilis and the Founding of the Holy Cross Hospital in Fifteenth-Century Nuremberg
As syphilis crept up from southern Italy the Nuremberg city council, like many leaders elsewhere, prepared for the impending onslaught of this mysterious new disease. As the highest political authority in the city, the council considered the health of its citizens its responsibility.
‘For Whom Does the Writer Write?’: The First Bubonic Plague Pandemic According to Syriac Sources
This includes information about the geographical spread and extent of the initial outbreak in the time of Justinian (541–543), the chronology of later outbreaks, the pathology of the disease, its occurrence among animals…
Famine and Pestilence in the Irish Sea Region, 500–800 AD
Michelle Ziegler examines the questions on why does plagues seemed so much worse in the Middle Ages. Why did medieval populations die so much more frequently? Was it because of malnutrition?
‘Arthritis’ in Byzantium (AD 324-1453): unknown information from non-medical literary sources
Most Byzantine physicians described several types of arthritis that resemble rheumatoid arthritis, chronic deformans polyarthritis and gout.
BLACK DEATH: The Causes and Effects of a Pandemic
It requires an enormous burden of proof for any microscopic organism to be held responsible for killing roughly 30-40 percent of the population of Europe, or an estimated 17 to 28 million people from 1347-1352. Since the isolation and description of Yersinia pestis at the end of the “golden age” of microbiology in 1894, by the Swiss-French bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, it is widely held that the small bacterium was responsible for the Black Death and several more pandemics that followed in Europe and Asia.
VAGANTES: Hālnes and hǽlþ:Anglo-Saxon Bodily Wellness
Since most of the surviving mentions of wellness relate to the health of the soul, it is not clear what constituted a healthy Anglo-Saxon body. This paper will use the Old English poem Soul and Body and Old English medical texts to explore Anglo-Saxon bodily wellness.
A brief review of the history of delirium as a mental disorder
This paper will review the most important of these concepts about delirium, from ancient times until the appearance of the two classification systems. Special attention will be paid to the question of how those concepts have dealt with the particular problems posed by prognosis and outcome.
A note on the origins of syphilis
The name syphilis came into common usage. It came from a Latin epic poem Syphilis, sive Morbvs Gallicvs, written by Girolamo Fracastoro or Hieronymus Fracastorius(1483–1553). In his work De contagione et contagiosis morbis, he discussed the nature and the spread of infectious diseases, foretelling the germ theory of disease.
The Poisoned Arrows of Amor: cases of syphilis from 16th-century Iceland
The number of syphilis cases at the Skriðuklaustur monastery is unexpectedly high, as nine individuals with the disease have been identified in a skeletal assemblage totalling only 198 skeletons. At least two of the cases bear the signs of congenital syphilis. The youngest individual was just an adolescent at death but still showed severe symptoms of congenital syphilis that had developed to the tertiary stage.
“What We Are, So You Shall Be”: Preparation for Death in the Late Middle Ages
It is tempting to explain the late medieval attitude toward death as a direct result of the Black Death, which caused massive loss of life and brought about a new awareness of the fact that death could come at any time. While this generalization is not completely false, there are several issues of timing. The fear of sudden death was not new.
The Origin of Quarantine
A similar strategy was used in the busy Mediterranean sea- port of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik, Croatia). After a visitation of the black death, the city’s chief physician, Jacob of Padua, advised establishing a place outside the city walls for treatment of ill townspeople and outsiders who came to town seeking a cure. The impetus for these recommendations was an early contagion theory, which promoted separation of healthy persons from those who were sick.
The concept of quarantine in history: from plague to SARS
The concept of ‘quarantine’ is radically embedded in local and global health practices and culture, attracting heightened interest during episodes of perceived or actual epidemics. The term, however, evokes a variety of emotions, such as fear, resentment, acceptance, curiosity and perplexity, reactions often to be associated with a lack of knowledge about the origins, meaning, and rel- evance of quarantine itself.
The Danube Floods and Their Human Response and Perception (14th to 17th C)
This study will examine in particular the reactions of the people living close to the Danube River and its catchment area in “Austria” between the 14th and 17th centuries.
Diagnostics in Late Medieval Sources
Medieval medicine as a scientific discipline was constituted generally in the 11th and 12th century on the basis of Latin translations of Arabic and Greek medical texts.
In a spin: the mysterious dancing epidemic of 1518
As the dance turned epidemic, troubled nobles and burghers consulted local physicians. Having excluded astrological and supernatural causes, the members of the medical fraternity declared it to be a ‘natural disease’ caused by ‘hot blood’.
Diseases as causes of divorce in Byzantium
Τhe purpose of this study is to describe the diseases for which divorce could be issued if one of the spouses wanted, in Byzantine times.