HIST 204
SYLLABUS
LECTURE OUTLINES
HEALTH AND ILLNESS, FAMINE AND PLAGUE
Tuesday:
Five years ago (2019): Family ledger and Black Death memorial book from Florence: https://www.facebook.com/NewberryLibrary/videos/346617039265271/ (30:17 min.: see 2:00-7:00 min.)
Pepo degli Albizzi, a Florentine wool merchant, began this ledger book in January 1340. It is an example of a then-new literary genre, the family diary or ricordanze. The book consists mostly of business transactions and contracts related to the family’s business in wool-cloth finishing and export, one of the most important industries in Florence at the period.
The last section of the book, which the author entitled “All my other memoranda,” includes some more personal matters. Most poignantly, there is an entry for ten members of his immediate family (including four sisters, three brothers, and his father) who died in June and July of 1348, when the Black Death struck Florence as it swept across Europe.
Five years ago (2019): Fire devastates Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris (begun 1163, completed 1345):
Notre-Dame in 2010 (from south)
In flames (15 April 2019)
Aerial view after the fire (published 3 April 2021)
Videos:
Michael Wood, “The Story of England: The Great Famine and the Black Death” (58:47 min.; famine: 20:29-30:29; plague: 39:29-47:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJSK8_atMJY
Music:
Dies irae (Day of Wrath), 13th cent. (3:31 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc-QKI_KaAM&feature=fvsr
Deus miserere (God Have Mercy), Old Hispanic prayers and responses sung before the funeral service (4:14 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWO412fuPXg&feature=relmfu
Corvus Corax, “Saltatio mortis” (Totentanz, or Dance of Death, 3:53 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWruBwPNBOs&feature=related
Monks (acting like flagellants): “Pie Jesu domine” (1:37 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgYEuJ5u1K0
“Bring out your dead!” (1:56):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs
Steeleye Span, “The Shaking of the Sheets” (1989; 4:12 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16WqxSMCu0
Major health crises of 14th century: Great Famine (1315-22) and Black Death (1347-49)
Distinctions drawn between:
- medicine (physic) and surgery
- licensed (learned or university-trained) physicians and surgeons, and unlicensed healers (including midwives, bone-setters, tooth-pullers, barbers, folk healers, and quacks)
- blood (hot and moist)
- phlegm (cold and moist)
- yellow bile (hot and dry)
- black bile (cold and dry)
Diagnostic aids included:
- pulse
- urine (color, sediment, smell, taste)
- stool
- general appearance (especially of eyes, lips, tongue, hair, skin, etc.)
- other symptoms (swellings, pain, weakness, faintness, blurred vision, hearing problems, dizzyness, sweating, etc.)
Astrological influence on health
Remedies for illness included:
- bloodletting
- purging (with emetics and laxatives)
- medicinal baths (Codex Manesse, early 14C;) and vapor-baths
- adjustment to diet and daily regimen
- medicines
- prayer
Hospitals (for poor only):
- General hospitals (often excluded pregnant women) (examples: St John’s Hospital, Bruges; Eastbridge hospital, Canterbury; and the Hôtel-Dieu, Beaune)
- Leper hospitals (for confinement and care of lepers)
- Lying-in hospitals (for women in childbed)
- Insane asylums
- Almshouses (for the elderly, invalid, or diabled)
- Orphanages
Click to see some 14th-century manuscripts on plague, medicine, and surgery
Some responses to the Black Death:
- Fear that the epidemic was caused by the stars or by divine wrath
- Massacres of Jews (who were initially accused of poisoning wells to cause the pestilence)
- Processions of flagellants
- Mass burials (part of the plague cemetery near the Tower of London, excavated in the 1980s; mass burial in Ellwangen, Germany)
- Macabre art (click here to see part of a late 15th-century painting of the “Dance of Death” from Tallinn, Estonia, and another from Lübeck, Germany)
- Struggling to carry on with normal administration (click here to see death entries from the manorial court roll of Norton, co. Hertfordshire, 1348-9)
Thursday:
Some effects of the Black Death in Europe:
- Death of one-third to one-half of the population in 1347-49
- Recurring episodes of pestilence until 18th cent.; population in decline or stagnant until 16th cent. (click for grafitti from Ashwell church, Herts., 1361)
- Rise in real wages and fall in land and food prices (until 16th cent.)
- Changes in farming patterns on large estates, e.g., renting out of demesne, or conversion from arable to pastoral farming
- Gradual eradication of serfdom (except in Eastern Europe)
- Development of rural industries (espcially textile production)
- Rise in peasant and artisanal standard of living (until 16th cent.)
- Expansion of ecclesiastical property ownership
- Peasant and artisanal revolts (e.g., French Jacquerie, 1358; Florentine Ciompi Rebellion, 1378; and English Peasants’ Revolt, 1381)
- Rise of lay participation in civic and religious leadership
- Attempts to use law or statute to prohibit rise of wages and luxurious dress or food to non-elites
Online readings:
John de Trokelowe, Annales: Famine of 1315
Marchione di Coppo Stefani, The Florentine Chronicle (1370s-1380s): the plague in Florence, 1348
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/osheim/marchione.html
The plague in England, 1348-9:
https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/the-black-death-in-the-british-isles/
The Ordinance of Labourers (1349) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/seth/ordinance-labourers.asp
The Statute of Labourers (1351) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/seth/statute-labourers.asp