effectiveness of treatment

• effective responses to Black Death:

  • avoiding visiting family who had caught plague
  • quarantine laws - people new to area had to be isolated for 40 days
  • escaping to other parts of country
• ineffective responses to Black Death:

  • listening to music and avoiding being sad
  • bleeding and purging
  • smelling herbs
  • Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were not aligned
  • confession of sin and asking for forgiveness
  • flagellation
  • lancing buboes
• treatment in hospitals:

  • 30% of hospitals were owned by the church and were run by nearby monks and nuns
  • the rest were set up by an endowment - money left by wealthy person to set up hospital
  • medieval hospitals was usually for rest and recovery
  • hospitals were not helpful for those with infectious or terminal diseases because of limited treatment, therefore prayer or penance could do nothing
  • this is linked to religion as recovery was used to show the importance of prayer and existence in God
• treatment at home:

  • at home, the sick were expected to be taken care of by the women in the family
  • women would keep the patient comfortable, providing restorative foods and mixing herbal remedies
  • women were responsible for growing herbal plants like clover or marigold
  • it is suggested that women carried out small surgeries but there are very few records and it was taken for granted how women cared for the sick