Health and Disease in The Middle Ages

FAIN: FS-50283-11

Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)
Monica H. Green (Project Director: March 2011 to November 2014)
Rachel E. Scott (Co Project Director: March 2011 to November 2014)

Funding details:
Original grant (2011) $0.00
Supplement (2011) ($1,676.50)

A five-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty members to explore the intersections of religion, economics, and medicine in the midieval interpretation and treatment of disease.

“Health and Disease in the Middle Ages” will be a five-week seminar for college and university teachers to be held June 17-July 21, 2012, in London, England. Administered by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and based physically at the Wellcome Library in London—the world’s premier research center for medical history—this Seminar will gather scholars from across the disciplines interested in fundamental humanistic questions of health and disease. A primary goal of “Health and Disease in the Middle Ages” will be to explore how scientific technologies of assessing disease prevalence and identifying pathogens (particularly leprosy and plague) can inform humanistic methods (historical, literary, art historical, and linguistic) of interpreting health-seeking behaviors and cultural responses to disease. This Seminar, co-directed by a historian and a bioarcheologist, connects with the NEH’s “Bridging Cultures” initiative.

Media Coverage

"The Truth Gets Its Shoes On" (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Richard Nevell
Publication: Wikimedia UK Blog
Date: 1/16/2015
Abstract: Mark Twain said “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” The same applies to honest mistakes. The ease with which information spreads across the Internet means the stakes are higher when it comes to getting things right. But with a bit of help, it’s possible to get the genie back in the bottle. Mostly at least. For several years, many sources – including a wide range of academic websites – described the image on the right as depicting people suffering from the Black Death, the pandemic of plague that swept through most of Eurasia in the mid-fourteenth century. The illustration itself dates from 1360-75 and is from an illuminated manuscript, Omne Bonum by James le Palmer. In fact, the image shows clerics with leprosy being instructed by a bishop.
URL: https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2015/01/the-truth-gets-its-shoes-on-the-black-death-on-wikipedia/

Getting the Words Out (and Back In): What to do When a Plague Image is Not an Image of Plague (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Lori Jones
Publication: Global Medieval Studies: The Arc-Medieval Blog
Date: 3/1/2015
Abstract: Green, together with Kathleen Walker-Meikle and Wolfgang P. Müller, recently published a cautionary tale of how such misinterpretation comes about and what makes it so prevalent in ‘Diagnosis of a “Plague” Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale’ in The Medieval Globe. Importantly, Green and her colleagues published the complete text of the chapter that the image was meant to illustrate. There, it is very clearly stated that the topic of the chapter is how to decide what should be done when a cleric suffers a disabling condition that prevents full performance of his pastoral duties.
URL: http://arc-medieval.blogspot.com/2015/03/getting-words-out-and-back-in-what-to.html

Associated Products

“Genetics as a Historicist Discipline: A New Player in Disease History,” Perspectives on History 52, no. 9 (December 2014), 30-31 (Article)
Title: “Genetics as a Historicist Discipline: A New Player in Disease History,” Perspectives on History 52, no. 9 (December 2014), 30-31
Author: Monica H. Green
Abstract: This essay describes the circumstances of the "intrusion" of genetics into the historiography of the Black Death, and suggests to historians why it is high time for us to embrace this new connection with the historicist sciences.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/genetics-as-a-historicist-discipline
Primary URL Description: Perspectives in History, December 2014
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Perspectives in History
Publisher: American Historical Association

"Health and Disease in the Middle Ages" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: "Health and Disease in the Middle Ages"
Author: Monica H. Green
Abstract: “Health and Disease in the Middle Ages” was a five-week Seminar for College and University Teachers held June 24-July 28, 2012, in London, England. Based at the Wellcome Library—the world's premier research center for medical history—this Seminar gathered scholars from across the disciplines interested in questions of health, disease, and disability in medieval Europe. Support for this Seminar came from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). We explored how the new scientific technologies of identifying pathogens (particularly leprosy and plague) could inform traditional, humanistic methods (historical, literary, art historical, and linguistic) of understanding cultural responses to disease and disability. Reciprocally, we also explored how traditional, humanistic studies of medieval medicine could inform modern scientific studies of disease, which were developing at a rapid pace thanks to new methods of DNA retrieval and analysis.
Date Range: 06/2012-07/2012
Location: London, UK
Primary URL: http://healthanddisease2012.acmrs.org/index.html
Primary URL Description: "Health and Disease in the MIddle Ages" website

Prizes

Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize, 2014, awarded by the History of Science Society in recognition of outstanding contributions to the teaching of history of science
Date: 11/7/2014
Organization: History of Science Society
Abstract: The Joseph H. Hazen Education Prize is awarded by the History of Science Society in recognition of outstanding contributions to the teaching of history of science. From the award citation: "Beyond the truly impressive diversity of courses in history of science that Professor Green has taught on the undergraduate level stands a stellar record of accomplishment as a teacher and mentor to graduate students and newly minted PhDs both at her own university and abroad. Twice she has eo-directed summer programs for college and university teachers at the Wellcome Library in London. The evaluations from this experience uniformly are aglow with praise for Monica. What drew the majority of students was her outstanding reputation as a scholar and her many achievements as an active member of our discipline and our society. Students were clear that the summer programs offered the rare privilege of learning from one who teaches by example. The committee noted the multiplying effect produced by h

THE BLACK DEATH: PANDEMIC DISEASE IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: THE BLACK DEATH: PANDEMIC DISEASE IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
Author: Monica H. Green
Abstract: The on-going epidemic of Ebola Virus Disease, which originated in West Africa but has now reached Europe and the U.S., has reminded us forcefully of a premodern world many in the modern West had forgotten. Until vaccines, public health interventions, and then antibiotics helped us gained control over the major global infectious diseases, epidemics and pandemics were a fact of life. The most severe pandemic in human history was the Black Death, which struck Afroeurasia towards the end of the Middle Ages. Although total (absolute) mortality would be higher from the 1918-19 flu or the current HIV/AIDS pandemics, as a percentage of population the mortality from the Black Death (estimated between 40 and 60% in many areas) is the highest of any large-scale catastrophe known to humankind. Which makes it disconcerting that we still know so little about it. For example, while its demographic impact in western Europe and parts of the Middle East and North Africa is well known, we still know virtually nothing about its impact in Central Asia (where the microorganism, Yersinia pestis, evolved around 3000 or more years ago) or other parts of Eurasia; it may have even affected parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Genomics studies have now confirmed that Y. pestis was present in people who died during the Black Death, yet we are still unclear why the course of the disease (rate of spread, level of mortality) was so very different from plague epidemics in other periods.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: https://www.academia.edu/9014151/THE_BLACK_DEATH_PANDEMIC_DISEASE_IN_THE_MEDIEVAL_WORLD_-_syllabus_for_Spring_2015_course_final_
Primary URL Description: HST 304: The Black Death: Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World (Spring 2015 syllabus)
Secondary URL: https://www.academia.edu/11313253/THE_BLACK_DEATH_PANDEMIC_DISEASE_IN_THE_MEDIEVAL_WORLD_-_Reading_Lists_for_Group_Projects_Spring_2015_
Secondary URL Description: HST 304: The Black Death: Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World (Spring 2015 - Student Group Research Assignments)
Audience: Undergraduate

“Diagnosis of a ‘Plague’ Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale” (Book Section)
Title: “Diagnosis of a ‘Plague’ Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale”
Author: Monica H. Green
Author: Wolfgang P. Müller
Author: Kathleen Walker-Meikle
Editor: Monica H. Green
Editor: Carol Symes
Abstract: This brief study examines the genesis of the “misdiagnosis” of a fourteenth-century image that has become a frequently used representation of the Black Death on the Internet and in popular publications. The image in fact depicts another common disease in medieval Europe, leprosy, but was misinterpreted as “plague” because of a labeling error. The error was then magnified because of digital dissemination. This mistake is a reminder that interpretation of cultural products continues to demand the skills and expertise of humanists. Included is a full transcription and translation of the section of the text that the image was originally meant to illustrate: James le Palmer, Omne bonum, cap. “De clerico debilitato ministrante sequitur videre (On Ministration by a Disabled Cleric),” London, British Library, Royal 6 E. VI, vol. 2, fols. 301rb–302ra.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/1/
Primary URL Description: The Medieval Globe, vol. 1
Secondary URL: https://www.academia.edu/9657724/_Diagnosis_of_a_Plague_Image_A_Digital_Cautionary_Tale_The_Medieval_Globe_1_2014_209-226
Secondary URL Description: Monica H. Green, Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Wolfgang Müller, “Diagnosis of a ‘Plague’ Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale,” The Medieval Globe, vol. 1 (November 2014), pp. 309-326.
Access Model: open access
Publisher: Arc-Medieval Press
Book Title: Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death
ISBN: 978-1-942401-0

---