Gone Medieval - Medicine in the Middle Ages

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

The Middle Ages were a period of exploration in medicine, but it didn't come without risk. The lack of understanding when it came to sanitation and cleanliness resulted in disaster and even death for many. But how far have we come? In this episode, Matt is joined by author Juliana Cummings who specialises in Tudor and medieval history. We delve into the myths and misconceptions around medieval medicine, exploring this period of medical learning. From physicians to barber-surgeons, we gain a better understanding of how they approached healing.Don’t forget to leave us a rating and review while you're here!For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to the Android or Apple store Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. One of the most fascinating aspects of medieval life to consider for us today is what would we do if we fell ill? The horror stories of bloodletting gone wrong, drilling holes in heads and weird concoctions might be enough to put you off visiting any kind of doctor for even a fairly major ailment. But how accurate is this impression of medieval medicine?

Well, I'm joined today by Julie Cummings, whose new book, Medicine in the Middle Ages, is the ideal companion to picking apart the myths surrounding this subject. So thanks very much for joining us, Julie. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And thank you for getting me in touch with pen and sword, essentially. If it wasn't for you, I feel like I'm not sure where this would have gone. So thank you very much.

Ah, shucks. More, please. So I guess to start off with, can you give us an outline of what were the principles of medieval medicine? Because I think a lot like combat, it kind of goes back to sort of ancient philosophies, really, doesn't it, for its basis? It does. So the theory of the four humors originated with Aristotle, but Hippocrates is really the one that was credited with the development of it all. And it goes back to ancient Greece. They believed that the body was made up of four different humors.

and it was like four sections. They called it the four humors. And they felt that these four humors needed to be kept in balance in order for everything to be running and for you to be staying healthy. So what were the four humors that they thought we all had? So the four humors, they represented major liquids in your body, which is what the Greeks kind of believed the body was made up of.

There was yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm. And the four humors were associated. with certain traits, which all sort of interacted with one another. And your personality was also believed to have been greatly affected by whether or not your humors were in balance. So, for instance, yellow bile was attributed to your body's hot and dry qualities. And if you were feeling, you know, rather grumpy or irritable, it was because your yellow bile wasn't properly balanced. Black bile was made up of your body's cold and dry qualities.

and if your black bio was out of whack, you were probably terribly depressed or melancholic. If you were the life of the party or someone that was particularly social, it meant that your, you know, blood was hot and moist as it should be. And then there's phlegm, which gave you kind of a calm and compassionate disposition, which is kind of odd since it was the cold and moist humor. But, I mean, that's pretty much the foundation of what they believed these four humors were, which seems really, you know, outlandish to us, but that's what they believed. And for a fairly long time as well, you know, if it goes back to ancient Greece,

we're talking thousands of years of people believing these theories. And so did they put most illnesses and maladies down to an imbalance in these humors that could be sorted out by kind of resetting the four humors in your body in some way? Yeah, they did. I mean, I think it was really the fundamentals of medieval medicine, but I also think that it was kind of more than that. I think that this period was a tremendous period of learning, and it was also one of great risk.

There was so little that was understood about the human body. So unfortunately, all of these people were essentially the guinea pigs for the practitioners as they're trying to accomplish getting these people better. And, you know, the doctors had to take the Hippocratic oath, which is to do no harm. And I do, I firmly believe that they took that serious. I think the doctors of that era and of ours truly want to help their patients. Any harm or death, which unfortunately happened quite a bit in the Middle Ages, was certainly not an intended

result of a particular procedure. And I think they understood the risks. That wasn't really down to a lack of care for the patients. No, not at all, not at all. And so what kind of medical practitioners were around in the Middle Ages? Should we be discriminating between a doctor, a surgeon, a barber surgeon. Did they all perform different functions? Yeah, you can discriminate a little bit if you want. But yeah, there is essentially the three, the kind that you just mentioned. So you had your medieval doctor, which more or less took care of kind of the inside of your body.

And they would have often requested the help of like an apothecary to get some kind of exiler or enema. And just for the record, as you know, medieval doctors believed that everything could be cured with an enema. So these were kind of recommended treatment just across the board. anything from like headache to you know getting your humors and balance seems like another good reason to avoid the doctors yeah absolutely and the doctors would also meet with astrologers to come up with your treatment plan because what was in the stars was considered a dependable source of knowledge

and so the medieval doctor was more responsible for curing whatever disease you were afflicted with while trying to understand what was going on inside you the surgeon that was a different story he was more responsible of caring for the outside of your body, like healing wounds or setting broken bones. He was more like your hands-on guy. Doctors and surgeons were both expected to be not only educated, but to hold themselves to a high standard. That would have been expected of them. And there we have the barber surgeon who usually didn't have a formal education, but he was generally looked upon to perform an array of pretty invasive procedures. These guys usually try. trained for several years as an apprentice to learn their skills. And so ideally, if you,

you know, went in for a quick shave, he'd be happy to pull out a rot a tooth or remove a finger that had succumbed to gain rain. So it was kind of like a one-shot deal. It's a weird shopping list. I'm going to go and get a haircut and this toe chopped off. And were all of those that practice medicine then professionals who were trained or was there some element of kind of the enthusiastic amateur to this, backstreet surgeons, I guess the women in villages maybe who helped out during pregnancy and things like that, was there an element of that kind of enthusiastic amateur to it as well who maybe knew more than the trained people at some point, so I should point that out. Yeah, I mean, as far as, yeah, knowing more

than the trained people, I think that the midwives, they didn't have degrees and everything, like, for those people, like for the barber surgeons and midwives, and they kind of just learned along the way. I kind of think that they were just as important and if not more important than the doctors and the surgeons. Because they had the real life experience. I feel like they really got into the, you know, the nitty gritty and just the dirty stuff that nobody wanted to do. And so what kind of problems led to the kind of medieval illnesses that these doctors had to treat? I guess we're talking about the filth in the streets and things like that before they were too aware of germ theory, for example. Yeah, exactly. Like, I think it all comes down to kind of a lack of knowledge, because daily life as a whole for these guys was just a recipe for a disaster. You know, your typical peasant home was one room. There was no ventilation, fireplaces. They had chimneys, but they didn't really work. And so you basically have this big rum filled with smoke. They would keep the farm animals in the house overnight because they were afraid they would get stolen or, you know, be attacked by a wild animal.

rushes, which were essentially just bits of hay that were just laying about the floor. And they would just pick up everything from feces to vomit to, you know, snot, everything that came out of your body and your animals. And it kind of just sat there and rotted on the floor and was changed like maybe once a year. So probably not like the best living conditions. I don't feel like castles were much better. Cold, damp. Again, like little ventilation.

They were riddled with mold. The towns were incredible. incredibly overcrowded. Buildings practically sought one on top of the other. There's no waste disposal system until much later. And the streets were just riddled with animal excrement and trails from the butcher shop. Chamber pots were emptied out into the street. So where people as are making their way, you know, they're getting feces and whatnot thrown out the windows. It's not a very healthy living condition for them to be in like, so, you know, it just definitely added to how you could get sick and there was so much disease that was spreading. They just didn't

understand it. I mean, they didn't understand how disease spread and they didn't really understand what to do if you got sick. So I think sometimes it's interesting to look at the things that they did. I'm thinking, you know, everyone knows the famous plague doctor masks, the great big long noses and things like that. For medieval times though. The mask is not from medieval. You know that. It's from the great plague in like the 16th century. But it is interesting, though. It is super cool, though. And I think, you know, every once in a while they would have a big push to clean the streets and things like that. So it's almost like they knew that these things weren't good, even if they didn't understand the germ theory. So they did have some idea that these things were unsanitary

and caused problems so that they tried to deal with them sometimes, even if they didn't understand the germ theory. So there kind of was an effort sometimes to deal with these problems. Yeah, I definitely, I don't think these people were as ignorant as we seem to think they are. This was their way of life, and I don't think they knew anything other than that. But I also don't think that they wanted to be walking through waste either. And there's actually records from 1347 of people filing grievances that their neighbors were tossing their chamber pots into each other's homes. And the third banned butcher shops from tossing their scraps into the street and, you know, told them, had to go somewhere else to dispose of it.

Unfortunately, that was the Thames, so that was a whole other problem. You know, so it's like they knew they had to change things, but they didn't do the best job at doing. But yeah, and it was just, it was a period of learning, you know. I guess solving one problem sometimes creates another one. Yeah, it definitely does. That's for sure. And so with all of these fairly disgusting things floating around in the street and in the house

and in the rivers and everything else, what types of illnesses or diseases? were prevalent during the medieval period. Geez, I think the better question is what wasn't problematic? You know, like there's so many. Smallpox, dysentery cholera, syphilis, sweating sickness, leprosy. I mean, there's so many of them, but I think that there are three big ones, at least that stand out for me, would be syphilis, leprosy in the Black Death, just because it received the most attention through history

and because the symptoms were so horrific. If we look at syphilis, which is pretty much, believed to have been pretty rampant during the time of King Charles the 8th and his army. That was nasty, also known as the Great Pox. And it was easily passed through sexual intercourse. So whatever these guys were doing, they were just passed it all around. And it began with genital sores. And over time, these would spread.

And then you'd start to really feel unwell like you had the flu. This could last years. But it's when you were most contagious. And it, you know, it would often cause like eruptions on the flu. the skin, swelling, nerve pain, ulcerations that could begin to cover your face, even I think sometimes to the point where the nose would actually start to rot off, which must have been horrifying. Syphilis also would make its way eventually to the nervous system, causing seizures and dementias.

You know, we know that today. It's called neurosyphalus. And it was really what led to insanity for a lot of these people. It's just a really long, horrible way to die. I can't imagine having to live like that. Were there any treatments for syphilis? Yeah, treatments were just as bad. Like, they had, you know,

initially they used the guayacum, which was used as like an ointment to put over you. But it just, it didn't work. And I think they kind of knew that. And they quickly turned to like other methods, Mercury being the big one. Mercury could have been used like as an exhilar that was, you know, rubbed over you.

They also like to make you like sweat it out because they thought that sweating, excessive sweating, would somehow rid your body of syphilis. So you basically be put in a hot room with a fire and be left there to sweat excessively. But I mean, we know that Mercury, the results from that were disastrous. You know, destroyed your organs or rotted away your teeth. The mouth sores, it was way worse. Well, maybe not way worse, but just about as bad.

But did it get rid of the syphilis? I mean, was it a case of, okay, the syphilis has gone, but the bad news is? Yeah, maybe that was a 50-50 chance there. We don't know. And how about leprosy? What were the ways that they treated leprosy? So leprosy was interesting because these people, they were treated horribly. You know, they were shunned from towns.

And when they got really bad, they were often given like a noisemaker that would announce their presence because syphilis went after the larynx. So a lot of these people just couldn't talk. But for the most part for treatment, these guys were sent to the leper hospitals, which were primarily between like the 11th and the early 14th century. And there was over 300, I think, in England alone. But I think the disease was just so misunderstood. So many people who weren't lepers were sent away.

So even if you suffered from like psoriasis or eczema, it was thought to be leprosy because there was such a little understanding. And so it was like the simple. list of skin disorders could get you sent to the leper hospital. In the most part, these were the monasteries or the alms houses and the brethren were devoted to a life of taking care of you. And it was really just supportive care where you were made comfortable and fed and taken care of for the remainder of your life. What's interesting is that many people actually looked at lepers as those who were touched by God because Jesus cured the lepers in the Bible. So it's, you know, it's definitely

it's interesting the way that it was just looked at us so horrible and it's really not. Hi everyone, I'm Jimmy Doherty, TV presenter, farmer and conservationist. I've got a brand new podcast where we discuss all things green, from nature to recycling to foraging to potty training cows. Yeah, I'm not joking, apparently it helps with pollution. Each week you'll be hearing from some recognisable faces off the telly and eco experts who would tell us how they try and sometimes fail. to live a greener life.

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being given a wide birth by everyone else who was terrified of catching leprosy. But it sounds like what actually happened was there was some kind of structure around sending them to a place to be cared for. If they can't be treated and made better, they could at least be cared for. And I mean, did the monks have to worry about catching leprosy while they were treating the lepers? I mean, I'm sure they did. You know, I think these guys were just on a completely different realm. I think that, you know, they are doing the work of God.

And if they got sick, they got sick. They didn't put themselves for us clearly. So, you know. And I guess the biggie towards the middle and the end of the Middle Ages is the black death. And I think we probably all know that there was no cure for the black death. But were there efforts made to find a cure or to treat it? Well, yeah, get better or die are the two options that you have available. But were there efforts to find a treatment or a cure?

Or was it all about just avoiding spreading it? No, I definitely think that they tried. I feel like most of these doctors made me in their heart of heart. knew that it was probably a lost cause, but no, I think they absolutely, they did try and they did do the bloodletting, which, you know, like, again, seemed to be helpful for everything. At least that's what they thought. And I think a lot of it was kind of just supportive care to, you could have been given an exhilar to drink, or they would often put, like, pasts over the buboes that were starting to pus. Leeches were used just to kind of, again, like, cleanse the

humors. You know, and I think. think just because it was so quick and it took you out so quickly, I think they did everything they could. But, you know, the herbal treatments and the bathing in Rosewater was not going to save you, but they tried. But they were onto something at least medically with leeches. I mean, famously leeches are things that people associate really closely with medieval medicine, but they're coming back into modern medicine these days because they were valuable. So was it a case of with leeches that they worked so they became overused they were seen as a cure-all kind of thing or were they not used as much as we perhaps imagine? I don't know that it was like a cure-all. I think

that was more kind of the bloodletting and the enema aspect. I mean, I think leeches probably did the most good out of all of those things because they actually have, you know, the anesthetic properties in their little mouths or teeth or whatever it is. And so yeah, I think they weren't probably used as much, but they should have been, maybe. I'm thinking of the famous scene in Blackadder the Second where he goes to the doctor, and it's just a question of where on your body you put leeches to fix any given problem. It's not a question of what treatment is. It's just where to put the leeches?

So assuming that someone fell ill, where might they go to receive any kind of treatment? And particularly, is there a difference between the rich and the poor? So if I'm a medieval poor man and I'm feeling ill, where do I go to get any kind of treatment? Yeah, so I mean, absolutely the royalty, of course, would get the best treatment. Those that didn't have the funds, they probably didn't have the money to pay a doctor or a surgeon. So then, of course, you had your barber surgeon who, I think, worked with the poor more, the apothecary, with someone that you could certainly go to, to give you at least an herbal, like ointment or an exhilar. And the barber surgeon, I think his treatments were just much more affordable to the common people.

You can also go to a monastery or an alms house. Again, these people were dedicated to taking care of the poor. Regardless, they pride themselves on being examples, and they just treated their patients. They let their patients sleep in their beds and they slept on the floors. I mean, that's just kind of, it seems like, I don't want to say such a nice place, but they seem like such caring places to go.

But if you were deemed insane, which I guess was relatively easy, then you were also probably sent to an almshouse or pilgrimage. Often these people go on pilgrimages to just pray for for sanity and for nailing. So, I mean, you didn't have a ton of options, but there were some. Did they know much about sort of mental illness, or did they equate that with similarly an imbalance of the four humors? I'm thinking famously of the mental illnesses of Charles I'm sick of France and Henry the sixth of England, who were over prolonged periods,

particularly in the case of Charles of sixth, and there were a whole raft of treatments tried. Lots of them recorded for Henry the 6th, all sorts of things applied to all sorts of parts of the body, including lots of venomers, I think. But did they equate mental illness to an imbalance in the four humans in the body? Or did they see mental illness as a different thing? I think, I mean, the church was so dominant back then.

I think that they believed that mental illness was probably a form of possession, you know, that somehow you had spirits, it's entered in you and taking over your body. They didn't understand mental illness at all. I think they knew that, you know, you could have been characterized as an idiot or an imbecile or something. I don't think they understood like really where it came from. They obviously don't understand, you know, hereditary and things that went wrong and childbirth and that sort of thing. And we quite often think, as I mentioned before, about medieval medical treatments doing more harm than good. And we talked a little bit about mercury and how it could be used to treat one thing,

but cause a whole raft of its own problems. But is it fair to think that most of them caused more harm than they did good? And I mean, I'm thinking in particular of the treatment that Henry, the future Henry V got at the Battle of Shrewsbury when he gets an arrow in the face. And famously, the doctor that treated him or surgeon that treated him, wrote down all of the things that he did and how and why it worked. So is it fair to think that they were all kind of quacks who were just causing more harm than good? I think painting medieval medicine and doctors with a broad brush is not fair. Again, it's important to remember that still we are evolving as humans in every aspect of life, including medicine. And the treatments that were warranted during that time was all that they knew.

And still they did manage to advance. So the treatments may have been looked at as harsh, but that's what was expected. It's hard for us to think of a barber surgeon, you know, hacking off a diseased finger. But what was the alternative? They had no idea about bacteria or how it spread. They knew what a diseased body part looked like and that it could get worse. I just didn't understand why. They surely understood pain, but their only method of pain relief was really alcohol. And I guess if you were lucky, you would just pass out from the procedure and get some kind of reprieve, I suppose. But the belief in balancing the four humors was certainly the foundation for everything. And so I think it makes sense to them. That's why the purging and the

enemies come in because it somehow expelled, you know, all of the offending ailments that was throwing you out of whack. Like, I think if we fast forward 100 years or even 500 years and people look back on 2022, you know, they may say, my God, they used to cut people open to fix them. Like, that's horrific or they'll essentially look back and say they were poisoning people with chemotherapy, which is what we're doing, but we don't know any other way, I think, to treat cancer right now. So that's kind of the same premise as they did what they knew. And so if you look at Henry V, you know, with the arrow in his eye, he was going to receive the best care, of course, because he was royalty, but I don't think what happened with him would have been done with a commoner. I mean, as you mentioned,

Bradmore went to extensive lengths, you know, to develop the Bradmore screw and the packing with the honey and cleaning with the wine that was done, you know, over and over and over again. He didn't know at the time, but, you know, he was actually really onto something because they still, again, they still do that today in some wounds that are left open. So it's really kind of cool how, you know, they go and figure these things out and some of them stick because they work. It must have been pretty terrifying for Bradmore to be doing all of this to the King's sun and air to think if it goes horribly wrong, you catch a nerve somewhere or anything else. So the Bradmore screw is effectively a thing he inserted to widen the hole, wasn't it, to get the arrowhead out?

Yeah, it was like a tube, and then he made, like, the screw that kind of went in, and it was almost like to grab it and then pull it out through the tube. So, you know, it wasn't taking pieces of him as it was being pulled out. It took several attempts, I think. But, you know, he eventually got it right, and lo and behold, he lived, so. And again, using honey on the wound is something that we know today is a great antiseptic. Absolutely. What do you do when you have a sore throat? You know what I mean? Take a spoonful of honey. And I think Bradmore talks as well about regularly changing the dressing. So stopping the infection setting in by, you know, that's something we would do today.

We would recognize that's good practice. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, even if they didn't understand why they were doing the right thing, they seem to have alighted on the right thing. I think so. Yeah, I do. I think so. I think these guys deserve a lot of credit.

I really do. Because we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for them. We just wouldn't, you know, who knows. Yeah, I guess as you say, you know, it's a constantly developing thing. And we're at the stage we're at looking backwards down our noses a little bit at them. And as you say, in 400 years time, I dare say someone will be looking down their noses at the things that we're doing today.

But you have to go through that process to arrive at where we are now and where we'll be in 400 years time, hopefully. Although obviously neither of us will probably know, unless there's some startling developments and living forever. Oh, you won't know. But you never know. Interestingly, your book, the last chapter actually deals with torture rather than medicine. So it feels almost like the opposite of what the rest of the book is about. We've talked about how to make people better. Now let's talk about how to hurt them and make them worse deliberately.

Was there some kind of medical input or oversight then in torture to kind of prevent death as part of torture? How does it play into the idea of medieval medicine? So it's so funny because when I first wrote this, one of the women that I'm friends with, medieval history professor at Holy Cross College in Worcester Mass. And she says, why is torture in here? And I'm like, just go with me. Just let me do this. I'm like, you'll see where, you know, and she gave me a hard time.

And I, it's funny because I think a lot of people were kind of put off by that, or at least trying to understand, like, why would you put that in? The way that I look at it is like, so much of the middle ages was about preparing for your death. I mean, you had to lead a good life and you had to be a good Christian because you were ultimately preparing to go to God's kingdom. You do avoid sin, do good works, go to confession, and obviously abide by the church's rules, which would hopefully assure that your time in purgatory would be short. The idea of purgatory in the Middle Ages was very real and very

scary. So with that being said, I think it's ironic that like so much of the Middle Ages also revolved around torture and death, even when the main idea was to save yourself from the torture of purgatory and possibly no life in heaven. I mean, death was a terrifying thing to monarchs especially because their entire reign depended on the birth of a healthy son. I mean, you know that, Richard III. I mean, I can't imagine what that must have been like to lose a child. And basically, like, this is your everything. And it's just, it can be taken from you so easily. And so it's almost like, despite everything that may have been done to prevent your death, whether it was, you know, prayer or healing, it's just, it's just, it can be taken from you. It's just, it's just like, it's, it's

It was also very prevalent during those times, which is kind of what led me to talk about torture. Because, well, everything was done to see that you carried on in life. Torturing somebody was just as commonplace. And it does seem like it's kind of the opposite of the book, with it being medicine and healing. But I see the connection is in kind of, again,

like these folks in the middle ages, they did so much to try to keep you alive, but they also knew a really creative ways to kill you or to cause pain. It's almost like torture and execution were used as a way to remind you that while your life was worth saving, it could also be taken from you in the blink of an eye. So that's kind of, I mean, that's kind of my rationale on it.

Like, again, I said, I think a lot of people are like, why is that in there? But to be honest, like, I just really wanted to put it in because I really just, I don't know, I tried to make the connection. And it's super interesting too, like so interesting. What do you think was the most interesting thing you discovered about torture that made it into the book?

This is so weird. The most interesting thing I discovered is that most of the torture was not medieval. It was more, you know, 16th, 17th century, which was interesting. Everybody thinks medieval torture is, you know, the 1,300s. And I mean, there was definitely some, but the horrible things that we hear about, like, you know, the guillotine and, you know, all that. It just wasn't happening back then. It was, you know, it was several hundred years. So that's one of the most interesting things, because I did not know that, so I learned something.

I think my understanding is, you know, we associate the medieval period with lots of racking and hanging up in chains and things like that. But that really didn't happen all that much. People weren't kept in prison because it was expensive and pointless and nobody wanted to do it. And it's very rare that people are racked, you know. That happens much more, as you said, in centuries after the medieval period. there's odd records of people being racked at the tower, but it really didn't happen as often as we probably think it did. Yeah, there's some romanticism that's put on it, I think,

and it's very cool to think about, but then you're like, okay, this is definitely a different time. But, again, not to say that anything like in the medieval medicine is not totally interesting and it's just, it's amazing overall. Did you find any instances of doctors being involved in, torture at all, or was it not something that they took part in? I'm thinking about being there as the kind of medical observer to make sure that this, you know, presumably the point of torture is not to kill someone. I mean, I didn't come across anything myself. I can't say that that wasn't the case.

You know, I, maybe you can answer that. I don't know if whoever was doing the torture was just kind on their own. You know, I'd like to think that there was some kind of medical expert to say, like, hey, you're really pushing this. You need to, you know, lay off. I mean, yeah, I'd like to think there was, but who knows. Who knows? That's right. We'll never know. I'm not sure I'd want to either.

If I was time travelling back, I definitely don't want to end up in a torture chamber somewhere, undergoing some horrible form of punishment for something. It would be cool to be a fly on the wall, let's say that. Like, that would be good. Like, okay, I can see what's going on, but I'm not involved in it.

I don't know. I'm not sure I'd want to watch. Maybe I'm squeamish. I don't know. No, I'm just kidding. The idea of cracking bones everywhere. Yeah, that's a little, Yeah, that is a fingernail, ripping out the fingernails.

I just can't. Like, that's so, oh, my God, it turns my stomach. Yeah. Did you find evidence of that happening at all? Only in the movies. Only in the movies. I think movies and TV have a lot to answer for about our opinion of medieval life and medieval medicine and torture

and all of those kinds of things. And I mean, like I said, it's glorified, you know. It's made to look super cool. And it was super cool, but you're also trying to attract, you know, the masses and they make it look like, whoa, look at this, it's just the way the media. It wasn't quite like that. No. No.

Well, I'm not sure I feel any better about the prospect of visiting a medieval doctor, but it's good to know what to expect if I did ever have to. Julie's new book, Medicine in the Middle Ages, Surviving the Times, is out now if you'd like to learn a little bit more about this fascinating topic with the added bonus of some torture info at the end. You can join Dr. Kat Jarman on Tuesday for a... another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe to Gone Medieval wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you're

enjoying this podcast and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then please do subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter. Just follow the links that you'll find in the show notes below. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.