by Molly Owen | Oct 2, 2012 | Blog, Merry Farmer
In his book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee traces the history of cancer as it has been seen in the past and continues on through the innovations in cancer treatment in the 20th century and on to the exciting research going on now and the possible future of cancer treatment. It’s a really cool book. But one of the things that struck me was his statement that cancer has always existed and has been identified since ancient times, but that other diseases generally killed people before cancer could take hold.
Mukherjee spends some time talking about cancer in the Middle Ages in his book. The observations he makes about how Medieval doctors viewed what we would later call cancer are not only fascinating, they are surprisingly advanced.
Medical knowledge in the Middle Ages, as you might imagine, was light years behind what we know now. This was before germ theory, before an understanding of contagion, and well before almost all effective surgery and anything but naturopathic medicines. (more…)
by Molly Owen | Sep 2, 2012 | Blog, Merry Farmer
Something really interesting happened to me when I set out to research what Medieval Peasants ate. I found a lot of contradictory information. On the one hand, there are websites and books out there that suggest that the peasant diet was mean, people didn’t get enough nutritional value from their food, and food itself wasn’t readily available. On the other hand, there are just as many resources that state that, in fact, the diet of medieval peasants was far superior to that of the modern man. There are a bunch of things out there about how we should be attempting to eat more like our medieval ancestors. So of course I just couldn’t resist the delicious historiographical dilemma brought up by all this food talk.
Let’s look at the facts, shall we? (more…)
by Molly Owen | Aug 2, 2012 | Blog, Merry Farmer
Good morning, medieval peasant! Rise and shine! The sun is rising and it’s time for you to get to work. You roll out of bed, which you share with your spouse, yawn and stretch, and trudge across the room to wake your three children. Your house has just one bedroom that everyone shares, but you don’t mind. It’s a step up from the one-room, windowless house of your grandparents. Your family enjoys average prosperity so your house has two rooms and a shed out back for the animals (which do NOT live with you in the winter now because you’re not on the very bottom rung of peasantry anymore). Your cousin, however, has done very well for himself over the years and his house has separate rooms for parents and children, boys and girls, AND it’s two-stories tall! Someday, you think, someday we’ll be that prosperous too!
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by Molly Owen | Jul 2, 2012 | Blog, Merry Farmer
The concept of marriage that existed in the Middle Ages was a different thing entirely from what we think of when we think marriage today. Was it about love? Was it about happily ever after? Or was it a cold and heartless contract?
Well, actually, the truth is that it was something both between those two extremes and entirely different from them.
Marriage has always been the focal point of family life. In the world of the upper class, marriage meant the successful continuance of the estate or the alliance of one family or estate with another. It was an important political bargaining chip, used to make or break peace with neighboring people of power. Did the bride and groom have any say in it? Well, not really. A little bit. But there seems to be this mistaken concept that nobles were married off when they were still children and because of that their lives were loveless pieces on a chessboard of politics. The truth is a little stickier.
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by Molly Owen | Jun 2, 2012 | Blog, Merry Farmer
Why??? Why must people persist in believing and spreading the falsehood that People of History didn’t bathe??? Why must my beloved Medieval citizenry be constantly slandered by the “common knowledge” that they threw the baby out with the bath water??? And how did this blatantly false and smelly “fact” come to be anyhow?
Let’s take a look at that, shall we?
First, and this may be very, very difficult, but you have to accept the following…. FACT: People of History, including and especially the People of the Middle Ages DID bathe! More frequently than you think.
But first, let us temper our History with a little Science.
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