Medieval epidemics

As (justifiable) panic over Covid-19 spreads around the globe. some may be wondering:  did they have epidemics in the Middle Ages?  And what did they do about them?

Of course they had epidemics.  Any time you have a contagious disease and people living close together an epidemic is possible, that is infection spreading faster through a population than the population can handle it, accompanied by fear and despair.

The worst medieval epidemics were the two big outbreaks of the Black Death, the first in the sixth century, the second in the fourteenth.  The Black Death, now known as bubonic plague, killed maybe a third (or more) of Europe's population both times, having horrible ramifications for both economy and society for those who survived.  It's a bacterial disease so it can (now) be treated with antibiotics, unknown until the mid-twentieth century, but there was no good treatment then.  Covid-19 (which is viral, not bacterial, antibiotics won't touch it) is not nearly as serious, even though it's definitely serious (maybe a 4% fatality rate not 35%, though still far above the fatality rate of seasonal flu, which is well below 1%).

Although medieval people did not know about viruses and bacteria, they certainly could recognize contagion.  People fled the cities where disease spread much more rapidly, not appreciating that they might already be infected and were thus spreading rather than escaping disease--the same is the case today.  Medieval people understood about quarantine, and those not infected would try to stay well away from those who were infected.  Boccaccio's Decameron, now considered the first work of Renaissance literature, is a story of ten people self-quarantining and telling each other tales to pass the time.

Although the Black Death was the most serious medieval epidemic, others, like smallpox, came through periodically.  So did measles.  Both of these, especially smallpox, would leave disfiguring marks on your skin but would not (necessarily) kill.  Both of these, however, became devastating epidemics in the New World in the sixteenth century, killing a great number of indigenous people before the Europeans even had a chance to kill them themselves.

Medieval Europe certainly had a health care system, hospitals where sick people would be kept warm and dry and fed in the hope that their immune system would kick in soon, and barber-surgeons who could cut off infected limbs, but obviously these were ineffective against epidemics.  The image below is the interior of a medieval hospital at Beaune.

Patients would each have a curtained bed, and nuns would bring them chicken soup and saint dust.  Hospitals like this were overwhelmed in epidemics.


© C. Dale Brittain 2020

For more on medieval health and disease, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.