Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities

by Carole Rawcliffe

The idea of English medieval towns and cities as filthy, muddy and insanitary is here overturned in a pioneering new study.

Carole Rawcliffe continues with her mission to clean up the Middle Ages. In earlier work she has already given us scholarly yet sympathetic portrayals of English medicine, hospitals, and welfare for lepers. Now she widens her scope to public health. Her argument is clear, simple and convincing. Through the efforts of crown and civic authorities, mercantile élites and popular" interests, English towns and cities aspired to a far healthier, less polluted environment than previously supposed. All major sources of possible infection were regulated, from sounds and smells to corrupt matter - and to immorality. Once again Professor Rawcliffe has overturned a well-established orthodoxyin the history of pre-modern health and healing. Her book is a magnificent achievement." Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway University of London.

This first full-length study of public health in pre-Reformation England challenges a number of entrenched assumptions about the insanitary nature of urban life during "the golden age of bacteria". Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that draws on material remains as well as archives, it examines themedical, cultural and religious contexts in which ideas about the welfare of the communal body developed. Far from demonstrating indifference, ignorance or mute acceptance in the face of repeated onslaughts of epidemic disease, the rulers and residents of English towns devised sophisticated and coherent strategies for the creation of a more salubrious environment; among the plethora of initiatives whose origins often predated the Black Death can also be found measures for the improvement of the water supply, for better food standards and for the care of the sick, both rich and poor.

CAROLE RAWCLIFFE is Professor of Medieval History, University of East Anglia.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval History, Medieval

446 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2013

About the author

Carole Rawcliffe was an editor on the History of Parliament Trust (1979-92) before becoming a Senior Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at UEA (1992-7). She was made Reader in the History of Medicine (1997-2002) and Professor of Medieval History (2002).

Her research focuses upon the theory and practice of medicine in medieval England, with particular emphasis upon hospitals, the interconnection between healing and religion, and urban health. As editor of The History of Norwich (2004), she maintains an interest in the East Anglian region, and has written extensively on its medical provision. Her most recent book, Leprosy in Medieval England (2006), is a study of medieval responses to disease. She is currently investigating concepts of health and welfare before the Reformation.

Reviews

[Lucy Barnhouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, Rawcliffe is lucid and persuasive. This monograph, a holistic history of public health, both fills a lacuna in the growing field of premodern public health, and makes an effective plaidoyer for more such studies. Rawcliffe examines how technology, law, and charity, as well as medical care in a narrower sense, contributed to the health of medieval communities, and were seen as vital to the maintenance of that health, moral and spiritual as well as physical. Desiderata might be a closer consideration of how, when, and why urban communities, or groups within them, undertook projects with the explicit goal of improving health; and a more detailed look at how such projects might be associated with group or even individual identity, rather than or in addition to civic pride. This is still, however, a work of impressive scope, drawing on edited sources from, and studies of, urban communities all over England, in addition to Rawcliffe's own archival research.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books that should be required reading for authors who set their stories in medieval or medieval adjacent worlds.

Dr. Rawcliffe goes through in detail the different aspects of health and hygiene, interlacing how gender, sex, social economic status, and time period influence how these factors play a role in how society approach health. Subjects such as water purity and bathing, waste disposal, food quality maintenance, almhouses and leprosaria are all discussed within these books. It is a good beginning to understand a much misunderstood aspect of English History. Each page is footed by various notes and sources, allowing ease of access to further reading on the topics mentioned.

This book is a relatively accessible read. I recommend it to anyone who: enjoys history, historians, and authors and screenwriters interested in setting their stories in the the medieval age or a world equivalent to that.

Rating: 5/5

[Jo Hedwig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book about a subject still so misunderstood by most people.
Yes, medieval people bathed, washed & loved their bath houses.
This book deals with the myth of the dirty medieval folk once and for all, one hopes.
Here my detailed review:
https://twitter.com/fakehistoryhunt/s...