Suchergebnisse

This article begins by exploring ideas about physical exercise as outlined in the advice literature that circulated widely in late medieval and early sixteenth-century England. Whereas other aspects of these popular guides to health have attracted considerable interest on the part of medical and cultural historians, recommendations about exercise have been largely neglected. Yet it was deemed essential for both physical and mental wellbeing. Its principal function was to augment and redistribute the body's innate heat, which functioned as 'Nature's primary instrument', while improving digestion and the elimination of waste, encouraging restorative sleep, and combatting stress. These ideas spread rapidly throughout society, being harnessed to suit the practical needs of many classes of people, especially after the Black Death when keeping fit became a priority. Not even animals could escape current assumptions about the importance of remaining active, while political theorists emphasised the need to purge idle and unproductive elements from the communal body.

This article examines attempts made by the Commons in the parliaments of April 1414 and 1512 to address the corruption, neglect and poor administrative standards deemed endemic in the nation's hospitals and almshouses, and to remedy a perceived lack of facilities for the care of sick paupers. Despite early (but short‐lived) support from the crown, the first initiative failed, partly because of its association with heretical demands for the disestablishment of the English Church. Although the underlying reasons for institutional decline were often more complex than the reformers cared to suggest, their campaign did inspire a number of hospitals and their patrons to rectify abuses. At the same time, individuals and organisations throughout society invested in new foundations, generally under lay management, for the residential accommodation of the elderly and reputable poor. These measures sufficed until the arrival of endemic pox, along with mounting concerns about vagrancy and disorder, prompted another parliamentary petition for the investigation and reform of charitable institutions. Notable for its emphasis upon the sanitary imperative for removing diseased beggars from the streets, and thus eliminating infection, the bill of 1512 also attacked the proliferation of fraudulent indulgences, which raised money under false pretences for houses that were hospitals in name only. This undertaking also failed, almost certainly because the lords spiritual had, again, drawn the line at the prospect of lay intervention in overwhelmingly ecclesiastical foundations. Both bills are reproduced in full in an appendix, that of 1512 appearing in print for the first time.

Drawing upon a wide range of primary sources, this article argues that a study of the medieval laundress can illuminate wider social attitudes to hygiene as well as to low status women. Having considered the many types of laundry workers active in England and northern France between c.1300 and 1550, it examines the techniques they used, as well as the hazards encountered through exposure to difficult conditions. Such factors, along with the freedom of movement enjoyed by many laundresses, often harmed their collective reputation. That responses to those who dealt with the community's dirty clothing were highly ambivalent is reflected in contemporary writing about laundresses, and in the measures taken to regulate them. Finally, we turn to remuneration. The sporadic survival of financial evidence means that our knowledge of wage rates remains impressionistic. But some laundry workers were surprisingly well rewarded. This confirms the value placed, in elite households at least, upon the cleanliness of personal linen.

Described as "a golden age of pathogens", the long fifteenth century was notable for a series of international, national and regional epidemics that had a profound effect upon the fabric of society. The impact of pestilence upon the literary, religious, social and political life of men, women and children throughout Europe and beyond continues to excite lively debate among historians, as the ten papers presented in this volume confirm. They deal with the response of urban communities in England, France and Italy to matters of public health, governance and welfare, as well as addressing the reactions of the medical profession to successive outbreaks of disease, and of individuals to the omnipresence of Death, while two, very different, essays examine the important, if sometimes controversial, contribution now being made by microbiologists to our understanding of the Black Death. Contributors: J.L. Bolton, Elma Brenner, Samuel Cohn, John Henderson, Neil Murphy, Elizabeth Rutledge, Samantha Sagui, Karen Smyth, Jane Stevens Crawshaw, Sheila Sweetinburgh