So let's talk shit.
Most historians seem to agree that Europe in the Middle Ages, most particularly the period of the High Middle Ages from about 1000 CE to 1300 CE, was very far from the completely ignorant and plague-riddled mud farmers portrayed by Monty Python, but it would also be too much to say it had public sanitation and medicine comparable to today. Medicine was ultimately founded on the theory of humours and people commonly chucked their refuse out onto the open street. Infant and child mortality was at a level we would deem traumatically high.
Taking the period of 1000 to 1300 into consideration (admitting, of course, that even this limited stretch of time saw monumental change such that the beginning of the period was drastically different from the end), what improvements to public health were eminently feasible with the technology and social structures of the age? What advances were achievable by physician blessed with exceptional genius, royal patronage, and a bit of luck? What obstacles were in the way for these advances to be implemented on a wider scale?
Most historians seem to agree that Europe in the Middle Ages, most particularly the period of the High Middle Ages from about 1000 CE to 1300 CE, was very far from the completely ignorant and plague-riddled mud farmers portrayed by Monty Python, but it would also be too much to say it had public sanitation and medicine comparable to today. Medicine was ultimately founded on the theory of humours and people commonly chucked their refuse out onto the open street. Infant and child mortality was at a level we would deem traumatically high.
Taking the period of 1000 to 1300 into consideration (admitting, of course, that even this limited stretch of time saw monumental change such that the beginning of the period was drastically different from the end), what improvements to public health were eminently feasible with the technology and social structures of the age? What advances were achievable by physician blessed with exceptional genius, royal patronage, and a bit of luck? What obstacles were in the way for these advances to be implemented on a wider scale?