Disease

Question 1

What are the four historiographical approaches to disease

Answer 1

1) Epidemics- plague and pox
2) mortality vs. morbidity
3) Disease entities- history and biology
4) constructivist/relativist histories of health and healing

Question 2

Define morbidity

Answer 2

the condition of being disease; rate of incidence

Question 3

3 x explanations for the plague

Answer 3

1) Divine (wrath of god)
2) Celestial (malign plants)
3) Terrestrial (foul air)

Question 4

5 individual responses to the plague

Answer 4

1) pray
2) healthy regime
3) restorative/preventative remedies
4) avoid foul air
5) flee the city

Question 5

3 civic responses to the plague

Answer 5

1) monitor populations
2) improve sanitation
3) isolate affected

Question 6

What are the three Galenic divisions of the causes of disease

Answer 6

1) imbalance of humours
2) malfunction of organs
3) trauma caused by external agent

Question 7

What are the Avicenna’s three divisions of the causes of disease

Answer 7

1) internal
2) external
3) combination

Question 8

How does Weisser argue EM patients viewed disease?

Answer 8

as continually shifting clusters of symptoms, rather than as discrete entities that operated the same in all bodies.

Question 9

How many people in medieval Europe were killed by the Black Death

Answer 9

1.5 million

Question 10

How did plague spread from Crimea?

Answer 10

Bodies of dead plagued soldiers catapulted over the walls to infect the inhabitants; fleeting traders took the plague to Sicily.

Question 11

What modern event refuelled interest in scholarship around the spread of the Black Death?

Answer 11

Rise of the HIV/AIDs epidemic.

Question 12

What does Samuel Cohn argue about the relationship between the Black Death and the later Bubonic Plague?

[The Black Death: End of a Paradigm]

Answer 12

Not the same pathogen- two diseases had different signs, symptoms and epidemiologies.

Humans have no natural immunity to plague, whereas populations adapted rapidly to black death pathogen

Question 13

What five factors about the Black Death allow Cohn to argue it is different to later plague?

Answer 13

1) speed
2) mode of transmission
3) seasonality
4) cycles of recurrence
5) swiftness of adaptation

Question 14

What did German physician Villiani identify during the German Plague 1357-58?

Answer 14

struck most vigorously in areas not infected by the first plague: doctors could react culturally, adapting new techniques.

Question 15

Why does Siena argue we shouldn’t use the term ‘syphilis’?

Answer 15

It’s anachronistic: EM term ‘venereal disease’ was a single disease concept that subsumed many conditions now regarded as separate: not just syphillis, but also gonorrhea, chancre, and other urethral/genital issues’

Don’t read ‘modern bacteriological conception backwards’.

Question 16

How did the 1348 University of Paris treatise explain the plague?

Answer 16

1) planetary constellations: conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars- Jupiter as a hot and moist planet, leading to putrefaction, leading to plague
2) terrestrial: bad air released after an earthquake.
3) Combination: bad planets causes thunder, rain and wind, which dispersed the poisoned air, and went to the heart.

Question 17

How did the 1348 Paris treatise explain why certain individuals were unaffected

Answer 17

Only certain bodily constitutions were pre-disposed to suffer; those ‘hot and wet’ , where decay was more likely.

Question 18

Who did Fay Getz identify was the intellectual influence for the 1348 University of Paris Treatise?

Answer 18

Hippocratic text ‘Epidemics’ - stressed the importance of astrology to medical practice

Aristotelian text ‘Meteorology’ - concerned atmospheric phenomena and putrefaction.

Method of attempt to rationally understand the causes of plague: a natural event, and by implication, part of God’s plan.

Question 19

What did German physician Henry Lamme say in 1411 about the recurrence of plague?

Answer 19

‘It is better to say that the epidemic comes from God than to repeat all the opinions one hears.

Question 20

Who did Henry Knighton blame for the plague?

Answer 20

‘hordes of prideful women’, who caused social excess as the wickedness of humanity manifested itself on earth. [Fay Getz]

Question 21

Asides from plague, what else was caused by the ‘fatal alignment of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars’?

Answer 21

Produced poisonous vapours which caused the pox

Question 22

When did astrological and providential theories decline?

Answer 22

Late 15th century- increasingly the cause of disease was more closely linked to the body.

Question 23

How did a 1648 English Treatise explain the origins of the French Box

Answer 23

Venereal disease arises spontaneously in the wombs of women who had sex with numerous different men

‘The mixture of so many Seeds does occasion such a Corruption of the Passage of the Matrix that it degenerates into a proper virulent Ferment.

Question 24

What did Venitians believe about witchcraft and disease?

[Laura McGough ‘Demons, Nature or God 2006]

Answer 24

Possible that which could cause disease, even disease linked to natural phenomena such as sexual intercourse. Witchcraft helped provide an explanation for incurable illnesses and account for death.

Question 25

Two arguments made by Cohn in 'The Black Death: End of a Paradigm"

Answer 25

1) Black death was not the same disease as the bubonic plague - two disease were radically different in their signs, symptoms and epidemiologies 2) Humans have no natural immunity to the modern bubonic plague, whereas Western European populations adapted rapidly to the Black death pathogen - this immunity conditioned a cultural response.

Question 26

How did society get less violent in response to plague?

Answer 26

- Growth of centralized authority in Florence, decline in factional strife - Growth of diplomacy and balance of power between city states in northern/central Italy 15thc. - Conclusion of 100 yr War France mid 15thc.

Question 27

Two responses to 'plague guilt' in Europe 1348-1350

Answer 27

- movements of flagellants | - burning of Jews

Question 28

What is the romantic/gothic interpretation of the black death

Answer 28

as 'giving birth' to the Renaissance- evidence of men's progression toward a new age.

Question 29

What is the Annales school interpretation of the black death

Answer 29

used municipal records to see Black Death as evidence for the enduring nature of medieval social and intellectual institutions.

Question 30

What was the regimen of James of Agramont 1348

Answer 30

Causes of the plague by examining how they were cured -> emphasis on the importance of pure air in the prevention of disease. Plague killed both master and servant;: distinguished it

Question 31

Nietzchien idea that illness was vital for culture to develop

Answer 31

The black death was the 'crisis of the European soul' and 1348 the 'year in which the modern man was conceived.

Question 32

Socio-economic revisionism

Answer 32

attack the notion that plague = drop in population = crop failure = labour shortages =end of feudalism = growth of mercantile culture: plague returned time and time again, population already falling,

Question 33

What were the London Bills of Mortality

Answer 33

Kept in London from 1529 plague, started in order to inform the royal court when plague had reach a state that meant flight from town was necessary, printed every Thursday- recorded births and deaths of members of CoE, their predominant symptom, and what the doctor diagnosed them.

Question 34

17th century diseases with no modern equivalent

Answer 34

Ague Bloody flux consumption Quinsy

Question 35

How many people in London 1632 died of diseases no longer recognised today

Answer 35

3783, according to the Bills of Mortality

Question 36

What were the effects of the Plague in Rennes [France] 1605

Answer 36

Bad. - 20% affected died within 24 hours - 80% within 5 days

Question 37

What was the lethality rate of the plague 1500-1770 in France

Answer 37

60-80%

Question 38

How many years were plague free in France 1500-1770 [Jones 'Plague and its metaphors]

Answer 38

None.

Question 39

What was the population lose due to plague in Angers in the late 1580s?

Answer 39

between 25-33%

Question 40

What was the population lose due to plague in Lyons 1628-30

Answer 40

50% - 70,000 to 35,0000

Question 41

When was the last major Western European outbreak of plague?

Answer 41

1630s.

Question 42

How many texts related to plague were written in France 1500-1700

Answer 42

264, written in French or Latin, all mention God/disease as divine punishment.

Question 43

What do government records of Venice 1541 tell about the causes of fever affecting Padua?

Answer 43

Stagnant pools and slow streams left by heavy rain changed environment surrounding the city and thus caused disese.

Question 44

What did Claudia Stein's Augsburg Pox hospital study show?

Answer 44

Common belief that pox was linked to particular temperaments and complexions, which made a person with certain mental and physical characteristics susceptible to disease

Question 45

What was the aim of the tract of William Clowes

Answer 45

linked contagion and disease in order to justify the demonisation of alehouse: one could be 'unknowingly infected by poxed rogues'

Question 46

How does Andrew Wear describe the role of food and drink in disease?

Answer 46

Perceived to be the cause: poor digestion produced by too much food, or food unsuitable for an individual's constitution could cause the corruption of digestion.

Question 47

What is the dual role of religion?

Answer 47

1) explaining why disease occurred | 2) offering healing through prayer and repentance.

Question 48

What is the 'forgotten fear of excrement'

Answer 48

EM preoccupation with obstruction and flow: blockages could be a cause of certain illness -> treatments such as bleeding or urging ensured 'continuous output of waste'

Question 49

What does Mary Dobson's study of South East England show?

Answer 49

Less healthy areas tended to be low lying, marshy areas: contemporaries blamed high mortality rates on bad air Possible malaria- similar symptoms, mosquitoes prevalent, disease treated with Peruvian bark

Question 50

Providential explanations of disease

Answer 50

1) God's remedy for numerous accounts of sinful behaviour 2) Plague as caused by the wickedness of humanity which manifested itself on earth 3) Plague as a cure for social fragmentation and sin 4) conviction that God sent ill health to convey a message

Question 51

Constructivist approach to disease

Answer 51

- Makes disease into a cultural phenomenon - Allows for complex causal explanations - Asks the question 'what did early modern sufferers believe caused disease rather than applying modern historical concepts to the past

Question 52

What three factors did Alice Thornton believes caused her illness on her wedding day?

Answer 52

1) anxiety surrounding marriage (emotional) 2) washing her feet with cold water (physical) 3) punishment from God for being un-keen about prospect of marriage (spiritual) a demonstration of how patients drew on co-existing humoral, emotional and religious explanations of illness: a 'nexus of concerns'

Question 53

Role of religion in explaining the body

Answer 53

Shared repertoire for making sense of suffering.

Question 54

What is Protestant providential theory?

Answer 54

God sent ill health - a framework for making sense of the natural body.

Question 55

What does Olivia Weisser argue about piety?

Answer 55

Spiritual practices were integral to responses as well as explanations for ill health

Question 56

What did surgeon Peter Lowe (1596) argue caused the Pox?

Answer 56

'filthy lusts of men and women', punished by God.

Question 57

What did Albrecht Drürer pray for? (painter in the German Renaissance)

Answer 57

that he would be 'saved' from French disease, which 'eats up many people so that they die' -Fear of the pox and its cultural response

Question 58

When did 'French Disease' begin to spread through Europe?

Answer 58

1490s

Question 59

What were the symptoms of French Disease?

Answer 59

aches and sores that eventually covered the whole body.

Question 60

What did Vivian Nutton argue about contagion?

Answer 60

The notion of contagion was not foreign either to Galen, or to Renaissance university medicine. Physicians such as Girolamo Fracastoro were able successful when in their ability to systematise the idea of contagion within the framework of sixteenth-century Galenism.

Question 61

What were healing contracts?

Answer 61

Most common in Italy: practitioner promised to cure the sufferer, while the sufferer promised to pay the practitioner an agreed some. Identified - the nature of the illness - the duration of the treatment - the cost of the medicines. No treatment was due if the patient did not get better, and it was up to the patient to determine this.

Question 62

What does Gentilcore suggest was different about Italian responses to Pox compared to English?

Answer 62

Little evidence of Italian healers promoting patient confidentiality and privacy as a way of drumming up business. 'within a few years of its initial outbreak, venereal disease had passed from being a serious and even embarrassing private affair and become just another public calamity'.

Question 63

Why was York protected from plague 1631?

Answer 63

President Wentworth isolated the city and removed shantytown suburbs outside the city walls- administrative measures at containment and sanitation.

Question 64

Galenic Body

Answer 64

- Humours- fluids that influenced bodily health [blood/phlegm/black bile/yellow bile] - Each individual had a characteristic temperament determined by the balance of the humours - Organs channels for the humours- blood carried them through the body - Illness = imbalance

Question 65

Melancholy

Answer 65

Caused by too much black bill- humours could make one 'unbalanced' mentally

Question 66

What could blood turn into

Answer 66

Lactating women- breastmilk | Intercourse- semen

Question 67

Robert Burton's argument in the Anatomy of Melancholy

Answer 67

Emotions and mental states as liked to imbalances in the four bodily humors: - too much blood - bold, courageous, - too much phlegm - sluggish, apathetic - yellow bile- angry, irritated - black bile- sad, depressed, melancholy.

Question 68

See medicine as connected to

Answer 68

broader intellecual, social and cultural developments.

Question 69

Socio-cultural factors shaped...

Answer 69

...the way symptoms were interpreted - same symptoms had different meannings and came to represent different illnesses

Question 70

'green sickness' [diseases having different cultural meanings]

Answer 70

EMP-turned skin pale green- young, unmarried women were seen as particularly likely to suffer, sometimes called the virgin's disease. Treatment: warming the body so blood would flow [best method sexual intercourse. 19thc - chlorosis- iron deficiency anaemia - could be measured

Question 71

What was a civic outcome of the 14th-century plague outbreaks?

Answer 71

Towns and cities, first in northern Italy, appointed official city physicians or boards of medical commissioners - charged with developing and enforcing measures that would limit the spread of disease.

Question 72

Hospitals pre 1450

Answer 72

Primarily charitable institutions whose main function was caring for the spiritual and physical needs of the ill, infirm, mentally ill or elderly poor

Question 73

Pox Houses

Answer 73

Set up in the advent of syphilis 1490s in German and Italian cities.

Question 74

Impact of public health measures

Answer 74

limited- still plague outbreaks and diseases in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe [ie. cholera].

Question 75

Cookbooks, herbals, household guides

Answer 75

contained huge numbers of recipes for treatments- home remedies the msot common way of handling illness

Question 76

Nutton, Seeds of Disease

Answer 76

Galen had indeed written of the possibility of seeds of disease, a view which suggested a belief in the contagious nature of some diseases, in such tracts as On initial causes, On the different types of fever, and in his commentary on the first book of the Epidemics. Galen’s ‘seeds’ were intended to explain why some people contracted a particular disease while others escaped and he located them within the body Overshadowed by humoral theory

Question 77

Changes in theories of the pox

Answer 77

16thc: providential and astrological theories 17thc: angled towards the body: 'spontaneous mixture', contagion, fermentation, putrefaction

Question 78

Prostitutes and pox

Answer 78

Represented the most visible, identifiable group of sexually active women upon whom to pin the new disease. - but not the only group blamed

Question 79

Venereal disease demonized

Answer 79

perceived threats to the social order: anti-popery and alehouses

Question 80

Venereological care

Answer 80

One of the most lucrative practices for early modern city doctors- all groups competed to a) theorise and b) treat

Question 81

Adoption of iatrochemistry

Answer 81

Served practical economic purposes

Question 82

Theodore Brown study of London College of Physicians

Answer 82

College responded to the intensely competitive London scene by adopting new science to solidify its own position- iatrochemistry suited 'forward-looking orientation.

Question 83

Social disorder pox was used to control

Answer 83

- closing alehouses - riding country of catholics - end practice of wet nursing - controlling female sexuality - demonize interracial sex Poz a useful image to 'buttress moral stance'.

Question 84

Dual role of religion

Answer 84

1) explaining why disease occurred | 2) offering healing through prayer and repentence

Question 85

What did Christ do as a sign of his divinity?

Answer 85

healed the sick.

Question 86

How did Weisser use ego literature?

Answer 86

to reconstruct how EM patients depicted their own disease: coexisting humoral, emotional and religions explanations- a nexus of concerns that we should use to interpret disease.

Question 87

Why is discovering the biological cause of sickness less important?

Answer 87

idea of the maintenance of a balanced, flowing bodily composition: the search for historical pathogens as a cause of disease negates how EM sufferers actually viewed their own bodies.

Question 88

Expulsion as

Answer 88

absolutely necessary for the preservation of health

Question 89

What did treatments such as bleeding, expulsion and purging ensure?

Answer 89

considerable continuous output of waste particle.

Question 90

Bad Air South East England [Mary Dobson

Answer 90

some areas far healthier than others - low lying, marshy regions highest disease rates- contemporaries aware of this- priests sought permission to live on higher ground.

Question 91

What was a more worrisome sin than syphillis?

Answer 91

Sodomy- syphillis a way of policing it.

Question 92

What did Gentilcore challenge about pox treatment?

Answer 92

the belief that respectable medical practitioners avoided treating the pox, and charlatans became the resort of necessity for its sufferers: demonstrated that the poxed consulted 'whomever they pleased'

Question 93

Sienna- London pox hospitals

Answer 93

Did not welcome pox, but did not exclude sufferers 'triangulated conflict between indignation, a drive for Christian mercy, and a civic obligation to address a public health crisis.