Kushi Sharma - Week 11 - Spirituality, Timekeeping, and Medicine During the Middle Ages
Europeans living in the Middle Ages were culturally steeped in religion; the medieval relationship with Christianity was entirely alien from that of modern culture. As a result, Christianity pervaded all aspects of life in this era, with spirituality and superstition imbued in everyday life. To these people, spirituality and logic were one and the same—for instance, medieval scientists were often monks, nuns, and priests, and spiritual assistance was hugely important in every aspect of life, from bread baking to medicine.
Starting with bread baking, the paternoster—the lord's prayer—was a method of reckoning time, a prayer and a timespan. This resembles how church bells were used as timekeeping, only in this case, the timekeeping regarded how long baked goods needed to bake. Prayers used for timekeeping were often in Latin and had a cadence similar to counting seconds ticking down, making them effective devices for measuring time. An example of this has to do with ovens—before thermometers, to check the temperature of the oven, you would place your hand inside and recite an Our Father prayer. The length of time before pulling out your hand was measured by how far you’d gotten in the prayer. Recipes during these times often specified which word in such a prayer signified that the oven was at the right temperature, but this concept lived on past the Middle Ages. Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook, published in 1999, also contains an example of this concept; only here, the timing method is the number of verses in well known songs.
The inundation of Christianity throughout society is also seen in medieval medicine. A remedy for boils instructs doctors to rub a mixture of eggshells, egg whites, and sulfur into the boil in the time it takes to recite five paternosters. Each part of this process has significance: the eggshells abrade the skin to allow the sulfur to work, the egg whites form a barrier, and the incantation signifies the necessary amount of time. Another medieval remedy that holds up today is a remedy for what is known today as a bacterial infection signified by the presence of a cyst on the eyelid and caused by staphylococcus aureus, or what was known in the middle ages as a “wen”. The remedy, translated into English, reads
and when studied, it was determined that this remedy worked well enough that, in a lab setting, the mixture killed methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (an antibiotic resistant strain of the bacteria).
Hello Kushi! I thought this topic was pretty interesting and relevant for the previous book that we read recently, "The Crucible". I think that it is always worthwhile to get a good understanding of the belief systems and common knowledge to really gauge the reasoning behind their decisions, and sometimes it can be pretty funny too. With what you said about using prayers as timekeeping devices, instead of the myriad of other tried-and-true methods both speaks to the capacity of the person who is praying being that consistent, and also because it is pretty funny to imagine people praying to their ovens to work properly. Maybe with enough prayer, the Lord would bless their buns and breads and make them softer than heaven and decadently delicious. As your work turned to the medical procedures, I felt a little less mirthful, because although I knew that they didn’t know any better, I thought that it was still pretty disgusting that they would use egg materials and sulfur to cure boils. Not only would they contaminate the wound with a host of illnesses from the eggshells, but the chemical reaction from the eggshells and sulfur makes quicklime in small amounts, which is caustic and while in contact with the fluids, quickly heats up and lights up. I would certainly hope that the prayers would cure the useless pain. For the fun that this topic brings in dissecting the various problems of unscientific medicine, and a laugh at their usage of prayer as a timekeeping method, thank you for choosing this topic.
ReplyDeleteHi Kushi! Your blog was really captivating, especially because I’ve never thought about medieval medicine. It’s definitely important to acknowledge how medieval medicine may not have been as rooted in facts and information as it is today, but it is still a valuable and somewhat reliable source. For instance, your example about doctors using eggshells, egg whites, and sulfur in order to cure boils might seem like an illogical remedy today, but the science behind it, such as eggshells allowing the sulfur to work, egg whites forming a barrier, and the “incantation” providing the remedy enough time to work shows that although the remedy might not have been purely based in fact, it used enough scientific evidence in order to ensure that the remedy worked. While people did not understand medicine during medieval times, and attributed most of it to a “higher spirit,” there was enough logic and science that allowed the rememdies to work. Overall, it’s interesting to think about how religion was beneficial to medieval society in a way most people don’t expect; it allowed people to gain confidence in their own practices and make significant advancements in the field of medicine, even if they thought it was the work of religion and not their work in understand our world better. It’s also interesting to learn that medieval concepts are still in use today, such as the cookbook you mentioned that was published in 1999 using songs and verses in order to measure temperature and time.
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