The Birth and Death

The Birth and Death

The infant mortality rates of the medieval period were high, with over a third of boys and a quarter of girls dying at or soon after birth. That is why baptism was of overwhelming importance to the family of the child; if not baptized, the infant would go into the indeterminate eternal world of limbo and be denied the bliss of heaven. In the event of imminent death the midwife was permitted to sprinkle water over the child and pronounce I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.' If the mother died in labour, the midwife was obliged to cut the child from the womb in order to save its soul. In extreme cases the infant was baptized even before birth, given a name such as Vitalis' or 'Creature' or 'Child of God'.

The room of birth was supposed to be warm and dark, with a scent of rose petals somewhere in the air, but of course not all births could be performed in ideal conditions. That accounts for a large number of the deaths. Men were not allowed to witness the birth. The husband was permitted to mimic a symbolic act of release at that moment, however, by firing an arrow into the air or opening a box.

The infant survivors came into what was for some a world of pain and suffering. There is widespread evidence of anaemia, sinusitis, leprosy and tuberculosis; osteoarthritis and diabetes were common, but essentially for no larger 3 proportion of the popula-con than in the twenty-first century. Exye complains such as dare eves, red eyes, watering eyes, running eyes and boiling eyes were ubiquitous.

Doctors or leeches' could be summoned for a telatively large fee. Their medical skills were not remarkable. One of the more famous of them in the fourteenth century, John of Arderne, wrote in a treatise that a young doctor should learn good proverbs pertaining to his craft in comforting of patients. Also it speedeth that a leech can talk of good and honest tales that may make the patients to laugh, as well as of the Bible and other tragedies.

Laughter was perhaps, under the circumstances, the best medicine. The cure for toothache was to burn a piece of mutton fat under the affected tooth, so that the 'worms' would fall out, A remedy for the stone was a mash made out of the bodies of beetles and crickets applied to the sick part of the body. The cure for tonsillitis was inspired. Take a fat cat, skin it, draw out the guts and take the grease of a hedgehog and the fat of a bear ... All this crumble small and stuff the cat, roast it whole and gather the grease and anoint the patient therewith. The lice of hogs was a sovereign curative of consumption. If you combed your hair with an ivory comb, your memory would be improved. For a condition known as web in the eye' the marrow from the great bone of a goose wing was to be mingled with the juice of the red honeysuckle, but the fower had to be plucked with the saying of nine paternos-ters, nine aves and a creed'.

It is easy to mock what seem to be absurd provisions, but they belonged to a tradition that viewed the human and natural world as part of the same unity. That is why doctors prescribed the flesh of tame beasts rather than of wild ones; a carp from the pond was better than a shrimp from the seashore. It calmed, rather than excited, the patient. Melancholy men must avoid eating venison; the deer is a beast that lives in fear, and fear only augments the melancholy humour. If a man was sick of the jaundice and saw a yellow thrush, the man would be cured and the bird would die.

The power of suggestion was also very great, judging by the extraordinary number of miraculous cures that took place at the shrines of the saints. The majority of people never saw a 'leech' the whole course of their lives; they relied upon the herbs and potions of the local wise woman.

Buildings known as hospitals did exist, but they were essentially large chapels in which invalids were lodged; prayer was as good a remedy as medicine. No medical attendants were employed in the hospitals, only monks and chaplains. If illness was a punishment sent by God, then it might be impious to seek to cure it. The soul's health was in any case more important than that of the body.

Yet the hospitals played their part. An interval of rest and care was probably more efficacious than many of the available remedies.

The medical treatment of the period, where available, was based on folklore or the instructions of Galen from the second century AD which were based on the doctrine of the four humours?.

Just as the universe was made of four elements - earth, water, air and fire - so the human body was comprised of phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholy humours in various proportions.

The house of melancholy, for example, lay in the spleen. Good health was the result of the balance between them. The doctor would taste the blood of his patient, after one of the frequent bloodlettings considered to be necessary. Healthy blood was slightly sweet.

The inspection of urine, in special glass vessels or urinals, was also an important part of the doctor's regimen; it bears a resemblance to the modern blood test. Urine is in fact still inspected as part of a general health precaution. Twenty types of urine could be found, with certain broad divisions based upon the humours. If the urine was white and thin, for example, it signified melancholy; melancholy was considered to be cold and dry. The doctor would observe, smell and taste the urine to discover the governing condition of the patient and the part of the body most in danger.

A good doctor also had to be an astrologer. When the moon was in Aries, a fiery and moderately dry sign, it was proper to operate upon the head and the neck. The leaves of henbane, good for the gout, could only be picked on Midsummer Eve.

The possibility of saintly intervention was also at hand. St Blaise was the patron saint of throat disease, St Hubert of hydrophobia and St Martin of the itch. The top joint of the second finger of the right hand was dedicated to St Simon Cleophas, while the second joint of the third finger of the left hand was under the protection of

'St Bartholomew. By various means, sacred and secular, the good doctor was thus able to prepare a diet and a routine of life to suit the particular temperament of each patient, if the body was in tune with the stars and the elements, then it would not suffer.

Bathing was a luxury of the upper classes and those who liked to imitate them; bathhouses were established in the larger towns, and the magnates possessed their own wooden bathtubs which were shaped like vats and bound with hoops. Soap was readily available, as well as instruments for cleaning the teeth and ears.

Bathwater was supposed to be tepid, the same temperature as that which ran from the side of Christ at the time of his crucifixion.

The prayer 'Anima Christi' has the invocation, Water from the side of Christ, cleanse me.'

Only four English kings of the medieval period lived beyond the age of sixty, which can be considered as the gateway to old age.

It was once widely supposed that men and women over the age of forty were considered to be old, but that is not the case; only after sixty was that attribute used. In the century and a half after 1350, 30 per cent of the members of the House of Lords were over sixty, and 10 per cent over seventy. It would still be considered a respectable proportion of that parliamentary chamber. Life expectancy was of course a different matter; throughout our period it has been variously estimated at forty or fifty years. In some regions it might have been as low as thirty.

When death arrived, the body was wrapped in a shroud tied at head and neck. Coffins were not used for the ordinary dead. The favoured part of the churchyard was the south, the north part being considered damp and mossy. The corpse was met at the principal gate of the churchyard by the priest, who led the mourners in procession to the site of the grave where the burial service was held. Only the rich dead deserved a stone memorial, which was to be found within the church. So the cemetery itself was free of gravestones, except for a few wooden markers and small carved stones.

The churchyard itself was considered to be part of the common space of the parish, used for sports and markets; it could also be used as a pigsty and as pasture for cattle. As the dead multiplied, so did the surface of the churchyard rise.

Source ~ Peter Ackroyd ~ The History of England