How did doctors deal with the Black Death?

My name is Simon. Double day.

I'm a professor of history at Hofstra University just outside New York.

In this first lecture,

I'd like to look at the way in which

mediaeval doctors dealt with the catastrophe of the black death

in order to set the stage just a very brief word about the scale of this catastrophe.

Now it's often said that the black death was responsible for the death of one third

of people within the continent of Europe.

There are two problems with this.

Firstly,

it's very important to remember that the black death was a global phenomenon,

affecting really the whole of Asia

and much of Africa

and the Middle East as well as the European continent.

Secondly, the figure of one third is almost certainly too low.

Most specialists these days, I think,

in terms of overall average of approximately 40%

with possibly higher proportions a higher percentage

in densely populated areas such as,

for example, the city of Florence

in northern Italy, London and other urban centres.

Very few places in Europe appear to have been spared from the plague.

Used to be said that perhaps Poland escaped,

perhaps Bohemia in what is now the Czech Republic.

But the evidence for that looks very, very shaky.

So I think that we can imagine this as being a uniform

disease in the sense that it was almost universal in its occurrence

and having an overall impact of roughly 40%.

Now.

In this cataclysmic context, of course, doctors did play a crucial role,

and one of the surprising, uh,

facets of this is that they often enjoyed very high social status.

Which is to say that people trusted their doctors.

We, of course,

have inherited a view of the Middle Ages that

suggests that this was a backward and ignorant period,

and I'll be challenging that presumption in various ways.

But certainly contemporaries did not perceive that they trusted their doctors.

They trusted experts such as Ghida Shoulder Jack, who was the personal physician

to the pope Clement, the sixth

leader.

Shelia, who were will encounter in later lectures as well, uh,

just survived the plague, contracted it, but lived to tell the tale

and really exemplifies the kind of expertise

that could be found in many learned quarters in this period.

Now I want to take a look at the figure

of the doctor through the prism of contemporary literature.

14th century literature

Looking at the portrait of the Physician, The Doctor,

which is presented to us in the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Chaucer, who was writing in the last two decades of the 14th century,

had survived the first great wave of plague himself as a young child.

He'd been six years old when it first arrived in the city of London

in 13 48.

By the time he was writing

in the 13 eighties,

he would have survived multiple subsequent waves of plague as well,

perhaps as many as half a dozen.

And it's important for us to remember that plague was in

fact endemic and would remain endemic as late as the 18th century

in Western Europe.

Now in his Canterbury Tales,

a text which of course collects a variety of tales told

by pilgrims on their way to the pilgrimage sites of Canterbury.

About two days journey from London,

Chaucer presents us with vivid portraits of a variety of

members of English society in the aftermath of the plague,

the doctor is one,

and charter tells us that he, the doctor, the physician,

was thoroughly respectable member of society, a man of great learning.

There was no one as well schooled choices says

as this doctor, No one as well schooled in medicine or astrology.

And this word or the reference to astrology makes us raise our eyebrows,

perhaps because we might think this is perhaps a quack,

someone who is relying upon folk medicine in various untrustworthy ways.

But astrology was,

in fact a highly reputable science in which

Chaucer himself placed a good deal of faith.

So to a considerable degree, we can take choices portrait of this doctor as being,

uh, genuinely admiring portrait of medical scholarly learning.

He tells us that the physician was well dressed, dressed in blood red and blue.

He would have cut a striking figure amongst the

company of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury.

And this was a period in which clothing mattered a great deal.

The demonstration of status through clothing mattered a great deal.

Uh, that's precisely why there were some actuary laws, which is to say,

clothing laws that regulated the kinds of fabric

that different social classes were allowed to wear.

So Geoffrey Chaucer's portraits of the physician is

in many ways an extremely positive one.

He refers to the physician as a perfect, true practitioner

of his craft.

One of the things that he particularly admires

is the physicians mastery of medical expertise.

And he lists a variety of medical authorities

from the ancient world to the mediaeval world,

all of whom the physician has read and absorbed.

He mentions the Greco Roman

writers Galen and Hippocrates, both of whom were foundational

to mediaeval medicine.

He mentions much more recent 13th century

English medical authorities. People like Gadsden, for example,

and interestingly,

he also mentions the fact that the physician has absorbed

the learning of Muslim writers such as Abbas Sana.

Now it's interesting, partly because, of course,

we might expect to kind of cultural hostility towards Islam.

Uh, this was a period in which crusading remained a live ideal.

But there was enormous aberration across religious lines for the profound

learning and wisdom of Muslim writers such as Avi Zana.

And clearly this physician has absorbed his knowledge to

now no portrait in choice that would be complete without a certain ambivalence.

Ambivalence is one of choices. Hallmarks. He's a very tolerant writer.

He's not judgmental,

but there are gentle digs at the position to one of the

things that he gently critiques is the physicians evident Love for money.

We've already encountered his rather luxurious clothing,

and Chaucer hints delicately, the physician,

perhaps like one or two modern doctors,

has a rather close relationship with the local pharmacists,

the apothecaries serving each other's interests, perhaps rather too closely.

He also towards the end of the portrait,

makes a rather delightful observation about the physicians.

Love of Gold, which, as we'll see in a later lecture,

was in fact widely regarded as being a medically valuable metal,

one that can be used in medical recipes and treatments.

But when Chaucer refers to the physicians love of Gold,

it's a deliberately double edged compliments,

and we get a keen sense of the element of greed and monetary self interest,

which is also part of the physicians profile in medicine,

Charter says Gold works well for the heart, therefore,

the physician loved goal from the very start.

This is a very characteristic char Syrian portraits and ambivalence portraits,

which on the one hand pokes gentle irony at the figure of the physician

and on the other hand,

which expresses genuine admiration for the learning of this man,

a man of the type the choice would have known personally

from his community in London.

I hope this lecture has demonstrated at least two important things.

Firstly, the unexpected sophistication of learning in the late 14th century,

and secondly, the really active way in which contemporaries, including doctors,

confronted

this appalling

catastrophe.