MEDIEVAL BRITAIN 1250 - 1500

  • life expectancy was 31

KEY FEATURES OF MEDIEVAL BRITAIN

  • ideas and values came from the church, church dominated society

    • catholic church run from Rome, provided services, taxed people

    • Norwich, leading city, had 57 churches for 7,000 people

  • highly ordered; the feudal system

    • kings and barons had overall power

  • medieval society was rural

    • 15 towns above 10,000 people

    • 90% lived in countryside

  • medieval tech was basic but developing

  • ideas about health based on Roman ideas

    • four humours needed to be balanced to be healthy

LIVING CONDITIONS

  • housing

    • poor

    • rich

    • country - hut made of mud and sticks, no chimney or windows

    • town - timber framed, multiple floors, blocked out sunlight, overhanging, very cramped

  • waste

    • poor

    • rich

    • country - cesspits and middens, emptied and used as fertilizer when full

    • town - public latrines emptied by gong fermer

  • water

    • poor

    • rich - bought from water carrier

    • country - from streams and springs, often polluted

    • town - piped into towns by lead pipes

  • diet

    • poor - largely vegetarian, meat expensive, susceptible to famine, ergotism due to bread they ate

    • rich - made bread from wheat therefore did not get

    • country - lots of vegetables, pottage, however a bad harvest lead to starvation such as the Great Famine between 1315-16 where 10% died, fungus bread and ergotism,

    • town - closer to market so more access to varied food, vendors made meat pies from rancid meat

9 marker - living conditions in the middle ages varied according to location/ class/ quality of food… for instance

RESPONSES TO BLACK DEATH - BELIEFS AND ACTIONS

Name three medieval diseases that were not Black Death. [3]

  • Typhoid

  • Ergotism

  • Dysentery 

Give the three different modern names/forms for the Black Death. [3]

  • Bubonic

  • Pneumonic

  • Septicaemic

 Give a contemporary name for the Black Death. [1]

  • The Great Mortality

 Name the bacillus/germ which caused Black Death. [1]

  • Yersinia Pestis

 Give the year in which Black Death arrived in England. [1]

  • Summer of 1348

 Name the place where Black Death arrived in England. [1]

  • Weymouth in a port in Dorset

 Name the animal which carried the plague. [1]

  • fleas

 Name the animal which carried the carrier. [1]

  • animal which carried the carrier was largely black rats

  • 400 years for the population to climb back to pre black death levels.

beliefs about the causes of the black death

  • movement of the planets

  • punishment from god

    • rise of flagellation and penance

    • rise in praying (candle wax run out)

  • miasma (bad air)

    • lit fires to try and purify the air

    • carried around flowers and rosemary

  • imbalance of the four humours

    • drained pustules

    • blood letting

APPROACHES TO PUBLIC HEALTH IN LATE MEDIEVAL TOWNS AND MONASTERIES