The biological consequences of urbanization in medieval Poland
This dissertation tests the hypothesis that urbanization in a medieval Polish population caused the general quality of life to decline. Furthermore, it will test the hypothesis that these consequences of urbanization occurred gradually and were not severe.
Early history of wound treatment
In the fourth century AD the cultural centre of the Mediterranean area shifted to Byzantium (Constantinople) and from there medical knowledge in the form of Galenic teaching spread to the Arabs by way of the exiled Nestorians…
A tragic case of complicated labour in early Byzantium (404 A.D.)
The study of the works of celebrated physicians of that era reveals that many of them had especially been occupied with the specialties of gynecology and obstetrics.
Dancing with the Dance of the Dead : cemetery of the Innocents and the ramifications of the Macabre
Glaring at us from the pages of illuminated manuscripts, royal sepulchers, and frescoes of Late Medieval churches and cemeteries, macabre cadavers, with their gaping, vermin-infested torsos, emaciated bodies, and grimacing faces, shock and repel.
Fossils as Drugs: pharmaceutical palaeontology
The present paper surveys the medicinal applications of a number of fossils which were well known in classical, mediaeval and renaissance times….
Dreaming of dwarves: Nightmares and Shamanism in Anglo-Saxon Poetics and the Wid Dweorh Charm
Psychological and psychiatric ailments must have baffled early medical practitioners.
The School at Salerno: Origin of the European Medical University
Despite oppression of scientific learning through the Dark Ages, the medical school at Salerno emerged in the ninth century, reviving the tradition of the Ancient schools. How is it that a school founded by monks was able to flourish, promoting the development of future European Universities?
The Paleodemography of the Black Death 1347-1351
The Black Death of 1347-50 has fascinated both researchers and lay people for over six hundred years1. The medieval epidemic had profound consequences both culturally and demographically and it did much to shape human history.
People with leprosy (Hansen’s disease) during the Middle Ages
Leprosy or Hansen’s Disease represented a major social, moral, and health concern during the Middle Ages. Few diseases have evoked the social responses that leprosy did during the Middle Ages
Healing Leaves
Medieval French literature provides the modern researcher with references to the healing arts in many passages that are incorporated into prose or poetic works.
Herbs of the Field and Herbs of the Garden in Byzantine Medicinal Pharmacy
An interested student or scholar wishing to inquire about the essentials of herbalism in the Byzantine Empire likely will be led into the Greek texts on gardens, well illustrated by the Christian “dream garden” as published in Greek…
Eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire: A Study in Byzantine Titulature and Prosopography
The presence of innumerable eunuchs at the Byzantine court seems to be in conflict with the laws that severely prohibited eunuchism. The Roman emperors early formally prohibited this practice, at least within the boundaries of the empire.
Traditional healing with animals (zootherapy): medieval to present-day Levantine practice
Since ancient times animals and products derived from different organs of their bodies have constituted part of the inventory of medicinal substances used in various cultures; such uses still exist in ethnic folk medicine.
Lovesickness in “Troilus”
The history of lovesickness in the Middle Ages is the record of physicians’ attempts to understand what happens to the body and the mind when passion renders a lover a patient.
Miracle or Magic? The Problematic Status of Christian Amulet
The Church Fathers and intellectuals made the distinction between the miracle of the relics and sacred words of the Bible, verba sacra….
Humanities scholars study health, disease in the Middle Ages
What do the 2012 summer Olympics and medieval scholarship have in common? For both, London will be the site of extraordinary achievements.
The development of education for deaf people
Some aspects of the history of blind education, deaf education, and deaf-blind education with emphasis on the time before 1900.
Symposium on The Social Stigma of Disease: The Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Leprosy
This symposium explores the social stigmatization of disease by considering the long-term history of leprosy: from the origins of the pathogen Mycobacterium leprae to the foundation of leprosaria in late medieval Europe to the creation of leper colonies in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Responses to Mental Illness in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Normandy
To what extent was mental illness attributed to the devil? What was the view of illnesses which had physical signs and non-physical signs? What about mental illness caused by trauma?
Alienated from the womb: abortion in the early medieval West, c.500-900
Early medieval churchmen, rulers, and jurists saw multiple things in abortion and there were multiple perspectives upon abortion.
“To all grave and modest matrons”: Practical Midwifery and Chirurgery in De conceptu et generatione hominis (1580)
If previous manuscripts offered helpful remedies to soothe women’s suffering, these new works studied reproduction for theoretical gain, not practical application.