In medieval England, such things as bloodletting, public shaming and punishment, barbers as
doctors, and much more were common. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Let's explore
several creepy things that were considered normal in medieval England.
Bread might seem like the most boring, inoffensive thing on the planet, but throughout the Middle
Ages, and across Europe, each bite brought with it the potential for serious illness.
The culprit was a fungus called ergot. Grains infected with it were unknowingly made into
bread, and anyone unfortunate enough to get a loaf would soon descend into madness.
The physical symptoms were easy to see, and the most drastic were arms and legs that would
go gangrenous. But then, there were also hallucinations. A burning sensation led to the disease being
called Saint Anthony's Fire, and there are stories of entire communities affected by
the fungus, with scores of them cutting off their limbs to try to stop the burning.
And it was very common, particularly in the damp, cool areas of Europe. Many believed
the illness was a sign from the divine. This is especially because of the whole burning
and hellfire thing. And religious orders devoted to Saint Anthony set up hospitals to care
for the afflicted. A 15th-century amulet found in North Lincolnshire suggests that Saint
Anthony was regularly invoked by people hopeful for his protection. Because no one wants to
be in so much pain that cutting off their arms and legs seems like the only solution.
There's an oft-repeated rumor that people in the Middle Ages didn't bathe, but that's
not true. Historians have found scores of medieval texts that refer to the importance
of cleanliness. It is next to Godliness, after all. And the people of medieval England were
a religious sort. It was widely known how important it was to be clean, but actually
taking a bath was complicated.
There weren't many people who had a bath in their own home, so communal baths were a huge
deal. In the part of London called Southwark, there were 18 bathing houses.
And here's where it gets weird. Since bathhouses were co-ed, it wasn't long before they got
a reputation as places someone could get a little more than just a bath. Those Southwark
bathhouses, for example, became brothels known as the Stews. It was widely accepted that
if you were heading to the bathhouse to get cleaned up after a long day in the fields,
you were highly likely to see more than you bargained for.
The medieval church took an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," sort of stance, and by
the 15th-century the bishop of Winchester was profiting nicely from a series of statutes
he had drawn up to oversee the sex workers that were plying their trade at the Southwark
Stews.
In the 21st century, kids are staying with their parents for much longer than had previously
been the norm.
"Mom?"
"Yes, hon?"
"More Hot Pockets!"
"Right away, hon!"
Take medieval England, as an example, as told through a letter sent from a Venetian who
was shocked at what he found in England. He wrote that kids were kept in their parents'
home only until the age of seven or nine before they were sent...
"[...[ to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another
seven or nine years."
That was across the board: Rich and poor, boys and girls. Now just imagine waving goodbye
to your first-grader and wishing them all the best of luck in life.
Historians suggest that the ages of 7 and 9 weren't absolutes, and many kids ended up
staying with their parents until they were somewhere between 10 and 14. The aforementioned
Venetian indicated that a lot of it had to do with having fewer mouths to feed at home.
It was also done to give kids the chance to learn a trade beyond what their parents could
teach them. Still, given that most kids were illiterate at that age and time, even if they
just went to the next town over, it was almost a guarantee they'd have next to no contact
with their parents.
People always love pointing out the flaws and mistakes of others, and in medieval England,
they didn't have social media as a platform for that. Instead, they held shaming parades.
The idea of public shaming wasn't just popular for hundreds of years, it was pretty creative,
too. The specific punishments were often based on the crime. A tavern owner who was found
selling bad booze might be forced to drink it before he was paraded through the streets.
And then there are the examples that were made of pig thieves. They were escorted through
the city with a dead pig hanging from their necks and a crown of pigs' feet on their heads.
The idea of this kind of public shaming went on for centuries and included devices like
the pillory. Use of that particular method of shaming dates back to at least 1318, and
it wasn't just a matter of sticking your head and hands through a board and being held there.
Sometimes, you were nailed there. People absolutely did die. Some were also pelted with stones,
broken glass, and even dead cats, while there's record of others falling through the platform
they were standing on and slowly being strangled.
No one likes to go to the dentist, but here's a positive thought: At least you don’t live
in medieval England. Back then, anyone going to the dentist risked hearing that they suffered
from an infection of tooth worms.
This weird concept is the belief that there were literal worms living inside a tooth and
causing it to decay. Holes and pits in teeth were thought to be caused by a worm that looked
something like a miniature eel.
And getting rid of it? Instead of just pulling the tooth, a piece in the British Dental Journal
suggested that more holistic remedies were favored, and no, that's not better. One way
of getting rid of the worm was to take a candle made from sheep's fat and a mix of seeds and
"burn it as near the tooth as possible." The idea was that the worms would run from the
heat and fall into a dish of water that was being held beneath the person's mouth. There's
no mention of how often that water was used to extinguish the unlucky patient.
The long arm of justice
It might seem like a given that justice in medieval England would have been swift and
bloody, but that actually wasn't the case. Or, at least, that wasn't the intent.
It’s been found that there were far greater punishments than, say, losing a hand. Punishments
that included public humiliation, fines, and being kicked out of a community. When violent
punishments did happen, the point wasn't to cause the person so much pain that they'd
be reformed, it was to mark them in such a way that everyone they met for the rest of
their lives would know exactly what they'd done.
In the early medieval period, the payment for many crimes was religious. A person might
fast, for example, and it would be up to God to decide if more punishment needed to be
delivered via the divine hand of justice. But later on, it became more common to chop
off that hand or foot, or just brand a person.
"The penitent man… The penitent man is humble...kneels before God. Kneels!"
The practice of branding, usually on the face, was done into the 1800s, and most of the time,
you were branded with a letter that put your crime on full display. If you were convicted
of blasphemy, for example, you might be branded with a B. Once that happened, it didn't matter
where you went, everyone would know what you'd done.
Being a medieval king might seem like it was the best option for making it through the
Middle Ages with the minimal amount of muck, but it turns out that it wasn't all fun and
games. Some kings were expected to cure an illness called "The King's Evil," and it gets
pretty gross.
The whole thing started with England's Edward the Confessor, who was king in the mid-11th
century. He became known for touching a person suffering from scrofula, the aforementioned
"King's Evil," and curing them. That wasn't the sort of miracle that anyone was going
to let go, so for hundreds of years after, English and French monarchs were responsible
for touching sick patients and healing them through what was believed to be an incarnation
of the divine. Healing events were seriously large-scale, with one court held by Louis
XIV reportedly welcoming around 1,600 people to be touched by the king.
It's also worth mentioning exactly what scrofula is, and what the monarchs were touching. Scrofula
is basically tuberculosis, but outside of the lungs. It manifests with lesions and swelling
lymph nodes that can grow to a massive size and begin to leak pus, a little tidbit that's
necessary to complete the mental picture. Haunted by revenants
It’s important to remember that in the Middle Ages, people got more up-close-and-personal
with the dead and the dying than their 21st-century counterparts ever do. Most people died at
home, after all, and it was left up to the family to deal with the remains. It's not
entirely surprising then to learn that there were a ton of stories about people who believed
their loved ones had come back from the dead. While some of the tales are religious or clearly
fictional in nature, others aren't.
Belief in the revenant, a reanimated corpse, goes back to the early Middle Ages. One tale
comes from the hamlet of Drakelow and was recorded by Geoffrey of Burton. Villagers
who were convinced they were being visited by revenants dug up recently buried men and
found them suspiciously intact. So they cut off their heads and put them at their feet,
removed their hearts, and reburied them.
How common was that? It's hard to tell, but when archaeologists excavated a fourth-century
burial ground in Suffolk, 17 of the 52 bodies had been buried after their heads were removed
and placed at their feet.
Some things are best left behind closed doors, in the privacy of the bathroom, or at best,
just discussed between a person and his physician. In medieval England, that idea definitely
didn't extend to urine, and that was because of a widespread, long-held belief that the
color, consistency, and taste of a person's urine could be examined to diagnose almost
anything that ailed them.
The practice of diagnosis-by-urine dates back to at least 100 BCE. That's when it was featured
in ancient Sanskrit texts, and it hung around for a shocking amount of time. Fast forward
to the late Middle Ages, and it was so common that people were skipping the professionals
and just self-diagnosing.
The very wealthy could even do it with the help of books that printed color illustrations
of urine bottles and their corresponding diagnosis. The 13th-century treatise On Urines was exactly
what the title suggests. What did it teach? The ideal color was clear, as it meant all
systems were working properly. Wine-colored urine, or blue or black, was really bad. That
is unless a person had been dancing too much, then it was to be expected. And if it's green?
Death was knocking on your door.
One of the biggest worries a medieval Londoner might have is whether they're going to heaven
or hell. Rolled into that was the idea that intercourse was reserved for the institution
of marriage. Woopie out of wedlock was a highway straight to the devil. But marriage was a
little complicated.
Many times, there was no big ceremony, and there certainly wasn't paperwork and filing
with various government agencies. A couple could be considered married if they, in the
privacy of their own home, with no witnesses present, said, "Wanna get married?" and the
answer was "Sure!" Or if a particularly surly priest happened to be one hand.
"Okay, here we go. The short short version. Do you?"
"Yes."
"Do you?"
"Yes!"
"Good. You're married. Kiss her!"
That's all that was required for a marriage to be valid, but proving it valid or invalid
in the court of public opinion was something else entirely. The act of making love was
also considered to make a marriage legal, because marriage and having a wedding were
considered two separate things. Marriage was the institution, while the wedding was the
big show put on for the benefit of guests. It was also believed that God was the only
witness necessary, and considering God is always watching, consent could be made in
private. Creepy? Yes. And people absolutely made everyone else's business their own.
In medieval England, everyone was expected to cry freely. The creepy part comes when
people judged others on their tears, including the quantity, duration of crying, and frequency.
Tears have always been viewed as perfectly normal responses to terrible situations, but
there's another kind: The Gift of Tears. This was essentially a sign that someone was thinking
of Christ's suffering and became so overcome with emotion that they were moved to tears.
These tears were considered a gift from God and set people apart as being particularly
devout.
However, cry too often, too loudly, or too much, and people would start to get suspicious
that they weren't real, Godly tears. Take Margery Kempe, who cried so much that priests
would have to shush her during religious services because she'd disrupt them. While some thought
she was super holy, others suspected she was actually drunk, ill, or that she was possessed
by a demon who was making her appear holy but getting it just a little bit wrong.
The 11th-century Saint Peter Damian explained that this fake crying, quote, "did not come
from heavenly dew, but had gushed forth from the bilge-water of hell." The moral of the
story? Be careful how you cry.
It's one of those facts that's repeated a lot: Barber poles are striped red and white
because they used to be doctors. The red is for the blood, the white is for the bandages,
and pretty much everyone has heard this by now.
“Wait, you can’t go Dr. Barber! What if someone needs surgery or, even worse, an emergency
haircut?!”
But there's a little bit more to it. For a long time, barbers and surgeons weren't the
same thing. In the early Middle Ages, master and apprentice surgeons were even classed
and identified separately, which sounds like a very good thing. In the 14th century, barbers
were allowed to do things like set broken bones and bandage surface wounds, in addition
to cutting hair. Surgeons, the people responsible for operations and amputations, were an entirely
different guild. That was true until Henry VIII combined the two in 1540, well after
the official end of the Middle Ages.
And don’t forget medieval England's most popular medical treatment: Bloodletting. The
image of the leech is a famous one, but the creep factor alone makes it worth mentioning
that there were other methods as well. Some tools were used for scarification, which scraped
away patches of the skin, while other lancets were used to slice open veins, including the
jugular. And you thought our healthcare system had
issues!
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