Doctoring the Black Death

Doctoring the Black Death

Author: John Aberth

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 144222391X

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The Black Death of the late Middle Ages is often described as the greatest natural disaster in the history of humankind. More than fifty million people, half of Europe’s population, died during the first outbreak alone from 1347 to 1353. Plague then returned fifteen more times through to the end of the medieval period in 1500, posing the greatest challenge to physicians ever recorded in the history of the medical profession. This engrossing book provides the only comprehensive history of the medical response to the Black Death over time. Leading historian John Aberth has translated many unknown plague treatises from nine different languages that vividly illustrate the human dimensions of the horrific scourge. He includes doctors’ remarkable personal anecdotes, showing how their battles to combat the disease (which often afflicted them personally) and the scale and scope of the plague led many to question ancient authorities. Dispelling many myths and misconceptions about medicine during the Middle Ages, Aberth shows that plague doctors formulated a unique and far-reaching response as they began to treat plague as a poison, a conception that had far-reaching implications, both in terms of medical treatment and social and cultural responses to the disease in society as a whole.


Medieval Medicine and the Plague

Medieval Medicine and the Plague

Author: Lynne Elliott

Publisher: Crabtree Publishing Company

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 9780778713586

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Learn the history of medieval disease and how medical treatments were worse than the disease.


Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times

Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times

Author: Christos Lynteris

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-07-29

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 3030723046

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This edited collection brings together new research by world-leading historians and anthropologists to examine the interaction between images of plague in different temporal and spatial contexts, and the imagination of the disease from the Middle Ages to today. The chapters in this book illuminate to what extent the image of plague has not simply reflected, but also impacted the way in which the disease is experienced in different historical periods. The book asks what is the contribution of the entanglement between epidemic image and imagination to the persistence of plague as a category of human suffering across so many centuries, in spite of profound shifts in our medical understanding of the disease. What is it that makes plague such a visually charismatic subject? And why is the medical, religious and lay imagination of plague so consistently determined by the visual register? In answering these questions, this volume takes the study of plague images beyond its usual, art-historical framework, so as to examine them and their relation to the imagination of plague from medical, historical, visual anthropological, and postcolonial perspectives.


Medicine in the Middle Ages

Medicine in the Middle Ages

Author: Juliana Cummings

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2021-12-08

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1526779358

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The Middle Ages covers a span of roughly one thousand years, and through that time people were subject to an array of not only deadly diseases but deplorable living conditions. It was a time when cures for sickness were often worse than the illness itself mixed with a population of people who lacked any real understanding of sanitation and cleanliness. Dive in to the history of medieval medicine, and learn how the foundations of healing were built on the knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Understand how your social status would have affected medical care, and how the domination of the Catholic Church was the basis of an abundant amount of fear regarding life and death. We are given an intimate look into the devastating time of the Black Death, along with other horrific ailments that would have easily claimed a life in the Middle Ages. Delve inside the minds of the physicians and barbersurgeons for a better understanding of how they approached healing. As well as diving into the treacherous waters of medieval childbirth, Cummings looks into the birth of hospitals and the care for the insane. We are also taken directly to the battlefield and given the gruesome details of medieval warfare and its repercussions. Examine the horrors of the torture chamber and execution as a means of justice. Medicine in the Middle Ages is a fascinating walk through time to give us a better understanding of such a perilous part of history.


Medieval Medicine

Medieval Medicine

Author: Faith Wallis

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 1442601035

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In this collection of over 100 primary sources, many translated for the first time, Faith Wallis reveals the dynamic world of medicine in the Middle Ages that has been largely unavailable to students and scholars.


Medicine Before the Plague

Medicine Before the Plague

Author: Michael Rogers McVaugh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-07-11

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780521524544

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An account of the medical world in eastern Spain in the decades before the Black Death.


Medicine in the English Middle Ages

Medicine in the English Middle Ages

Author: Faye Getz

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1998-11-02

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 140082267X

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This book presents an engaging, detailed portrait of the people, ideas, and beliefs that made up the world of English medieval medicine between 750 and 1450, a time when medical practice extended far beyond modern definitions. The institutions of court, church, university, and hospital--which would eventually work to separate medical practice from other duties--had barely begun to exert an influence in medieval England, writes Faye Getz. Sufferers could seek healing from men and women of all social ranks, and the healing could encompass spiritual, legal, and philosophical as well as bodily concerns. Here the author presents an account of practitioners (English Christians, Jews, and foreigners), of medical works written by the English, of the emerging legal and institutional world of medicine, and of the medical ideals present among the educated and social elite. How medical learning gained for itself an audience is the central argument of this book, but the journey, as Getz shows, was an intricate one. Along the way, the reader encounters the magistrates of London, who confiscate a bag said by its owner to contain a human head capable of learning to speak, and learned clerical practitioners who advise people on how best to remain healthy or die a good death. Islamic medical ideas as well as the poetry of Chaucer come under scrutiny. Among the remnants of this far distant medical past, anyone may find something to amuse and something to admire.