Pages 12-14 of Medicine A5 booklet (Medieval hospitals, Coventry case study and the Black Death)

Question 1

What did Bishop Lanfranc construct?

Answer 1

A house made of stone. He divided the main building into two. One for ill men and the other for women in a bad state of health. He made arrangements for their clothing and daily food.

Question 2

What are the rules of the hospital in Bridgewater in 1215?

Answer 2

No lepers, lunatics, contagious diseases, no pregnant women, no sucking infants even if they are admitted by mistake they must be expelled immediately. When the other poor and ill have recovered they are to be let out immediately.

Question 3

What did St Bartholomew’s hospital in London specialise in in 1123?

Answer 3

Specialised in the treatment of poor pregnant women.

Question 4

What did the St Mary of Bethlehem specialise in in 1247?

Answer 4

Poor and silly people.

Question 5

What were many hospitals more like?

Answer 5

Like safe houses for the vulnerable.

Question 6

Who were hospitals mainly funded by?

Answer 6

The church or by rich people and were basically care homes to provide warmth, food and rest until you feel better.

Question 7

Where is St Giles hospital?

Answer 7

Norwich

Question 8

Who was St Giles hospital set up by?

Answer 8

Bishop Walter de Suffield in 1249, still used as a care home today.

Question 9

Why was St Giles hospital set up?

Answer 9

To care for the poor, but also to help the bishop to be forgiven for his sins, so he’d get to heaven quicker.

Question 10

How was it funded?

Answer 10

Funded by income from several churches around Norwich.

Question 11

What did rich people leave in their wills?

Answer 11

Money to the hospitals.

Question 12

Who wasn’t allowed to go to the St Giles hospital?

Answer 12

No women were allowed.

Question 13

What was the routine in a medieval hospital?

Answer 13

First you went to chapel, then a bath, clothes taken, boiled and baked in an oven and then you had clean sheets overnight.

Question 14

Who was care carried out in medieval hospitals?

Answer 14

Nuns or elderly women.

Question 15

What was the main treatment in hospitals?

Answer 15

Prayer and mass was said every day by a priest.

Question 16

What was given by monks?

Answer 16

Herbal remedies, but prayer was the best cure.

Question 17

What do the remains of a monastery at Soutra show?

Answer 17

Clear evidence of sophisticated herbal remedies and even amputated limbs. The evidence shows the monks could also induce birth, stop scurvy, create hangover cures and make surgical instruments.

Question 18

Why was living in towns and cities so unhealthy?

Answer 18

• Animals roamed the streets.
• People lived close together.
• Few regulations about buildings or waste disposal.
• Cesspits for human waste were built next to wells.
  They were expensive to empty so were left.
• Water was drawn from rivers that were contaminated
  by waste.
• Butchers brought live animals into town to slaughter
  them, causing lots of blood and waste.
• Industries such as tanning (leather making) took place
  near residential areas.
• No dustbins or rubbish collectors, so it collected in the
  streets until it was washed away.

Question 19

What did Coventry’s Mayor tell the city they had to do?

Answer 19

In 1421 the Mayor said that every man should clean the street in front of his house every Saturday or pay a 12 penny fine, with no exceptions being made.

Question 20

When were the first waste collection services recorded and what was it?

Answer 20

1420, when the council gave William Oteley the right to collect 1 penny from every resident and shop, on a quarterly basis for his weekly street cleaning and waste removal services.

Question 21

What did William Oteley do with all the collected waste?

Answer 21

Sold it to nearby farmers.

Question 22

What did the council call the designated waste disposal locations and how many were there in Coventry?

Answer 22

Called dunghills, which naturally sprang up around the perimeter of the city, but there were 5 designated sites by the council in 1427.

Question 23

What did the council order in 1421 about all the toilets over the red ditch stream?

Answer 23

They all had to be moved to allow free flow of the water and to prevent flooding.

Question 24

How many times did Coventry’s council ban waste disposal in the River Sherbourne?

Answer 24

Nine times between 1421 and 1475, showing that they took action, but it was widely ignored.

Question 25

When did the Black death arrive in England?

Answer 25

A ship docked at Melcombe in Dorset in 1348 carrying the Black Death.

Question 26

How many people died from the Black Death between 1348 and 1349?

Answer 26

Historians disagree but estimates vary from 50-56 percent.

Question 27

What did people believe caused the Black Death?

Answer 27

• bad smells (Miasma theory)
• the four humours are out of balance
• god’s punishment
• planet alignment
• earthquake in China
• the Jews poisoning wells and springs.

Question 28

How did people try to prevent getting the Black Death?

Answer 28

• March through the streets praying to God to spare them from disease (by order of the king).
• Making candles as tall as yourself and burning them in church.
• Avoid eating too much
• Avoid taking a bath as opening the pores on the skin will let in the disease.
• Avoid having sex as too much excitement will weaken you.
• Avoid all plague victims.
• Clean all filth from the streets, by order of the king
• Carry a posy of sweet smelling herbs to ward of the bad smells.
• Attend church every day to stay healthy.
• Bathe in urine 3 times a day, or drink it once a day

Question 29

How did people try and get rid of the Black Death when they had it?

Answer 29

• Pop open the buboes to release the disease.
• Attach a live chicken (or pigeon) to the buboes to drive away the illness.
• Drink a mixture of vinegar and mercury.
• Carry out flagellation (walking through the street praying to God for forgiveness and whipping yourself.
• Bleeding will release the evils inside the body.

Question 30

Why do historians not think that the Black death was spread by rats?

Answer 30

Archaeologists haven’t found lots of rat bones.

Question 31

Why might the Black death have been different to the Bubonic plague altogether?

Answer 31

Because mortality rises in winter.