Foundation (History of England Vol 1) by Ackroyd Peter

Author:Ackroyd, Peter [Ackroyd, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781447203704
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2011-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

22

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 a proportion of the population than in the twenty-first century. Eye complaints such as sore eyes, red eyes, watering eyes, running eyes and ‘boiling eyes’ were ubiquitous.

Doctors or ‘leeches’ could be summoned for a relatively 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

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