Urban bodies: communal health in late medieval English towns and cities

Abstract

Rawcliffe continues with her mission to clean up 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 efforts of crown and civic authorities, mercantile elites 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 orthodoxy in 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 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 medical, cultural and religious contexts in which ideas about welfare of communal body developed. Far from demonstrating indifference, ignorance or mute acceptance in face of repeated onslaughts of epidemic disease, rulers and residents of English towns devised sophisticated and coherent strategies for creation of a more salubrious environment; among plethora of initiatives whose origins often predated Black Death can also be found measures for improvement of water supply, for better food standards and for care of sick, both rich and poor. Carole Rawcliffe is Professor of Medieval History, University of East Anglia.