disease

The lonely life of a medieval leper

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I would not wish leprosy on anyone. It is an insidious disease, taking anywhere from months to many years to manifest itself.1.World Health Organization – Leprosy. You, too, can become an expert on anything with the help of the internet. Once it takes hold nerve damage causes victims lose sensation in their skin. An inability to feel pain results in untreated injuries, which eventually leads to significant damage as infections take hold and destroy tissue. As fingers and toes are lost other symptoms include degraded eyesight and terrible skin lesions. The victim’s appearance gradually becomes grotesque.

While today a highly effective multi-drug therapy cures leprosy, for most of human history there was no treatment. In the absence of a treatment and the horrific effects of the disease, the medieval church and state enforced a strict policy of exclusion. A leper’s life was one of stigma and ostracism.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 World Health Organization – Leprosy. You, too, can become an expert on anything with the help of the internet.

Disease-ridden peasants?

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A recent paper deserves our attention for the light it sheds on the day-to-day realities of early medieval diet, disease, and mortality. Spoiler: it wasn’t a great time to be alive.

The journal Genome Biology published “Pathogen genomics study of an early medieval community in Germany reveals extensive co-infections” in December of 2022. The team of sixteen authors performed DNA analysis on the bones and teeth of individuals buried between 650 and 800 (the dating is rough) in a German town now called Lauchheim (part of Frankish Allemania). Their findings illustrate a population ravaged by disease and hardship.

Of the seventy remains investigated, twenty-two had active infections (31% of the population!), of four different viral and bacteriological diseases. Seven individuals had two infections, and one unfortunate young man had three different diseases going on. Just what were these diseases, how prevalent were they, and what were the immediate and long-term effects?

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