Page 42 - British Museum: SYTYGIB Medieval Castle

If you did catch a disease, you’d be lucky if you got better.
The plague (or Black Death as it became known) was a particularly nasty one – you’d definitely get
a day off school if you caught it. You’d get red spots on your skin, sore black bulges under your arms, fever, vomiting, headaches and coughing up blood!
Plague I see. Well, you´d better sit out games I suppose.
Thanks, sir.
Even if you didn’t die from a disease, life could be tough. If you had leprosy, you’d be treated like an outcast and made to ring a bell to warn people you were coming. People would throw food for lepers, but they wouldn’t come near them for fear of infection.
You could also catch the likes of smallpox, which could result in you being less alive than you were before you caught it.
Not exactly a barrel of laughs to be ill in a medieval castle then.
FANCY THAT!
Medieval docs didn’t know much about how the plague was spread from one person to another. One medic at the time is said to have claimed, “instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit escaping from the eyes of the sick man strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick”. Unfortunately, keeping your eyes shut did not stop you from catching the plague.
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