How did doctors deal with the Black Death?

Medicine Through Time – The Black Death, 1346-52

In this course, Professor Simon Doubleday (Hofstra University) looks at the Black Death in Europe, 1346-52. In the first module, we consider how doctors dealt with the Black Death whilst also looking at how doctors were perceived during the early modern period using Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as a reference. In the second module, we look at the various theories of plague that physicians came up with in response to the Black Death, before in the third module turning to consider the methods that were promoted as preventing and treating the plague. In the fourth module, we look at public health more generally, in particular focusing on developments in public hygiene. In the fifth module, we turn to consider the religious responses to the Black Death, before in the sixth module looking at the differences between Muslim and Jewish responses to the Black Death.

How did doctors deal with the Black Death?

In this module, we look at the ways in which medieval physicians dealt with the Black Death, in particular focusing on: (i) the 14th-century physician, as presented in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.