Favorite medieval disease?

[Mobius]

Poll question: Favorite medieval disease?

I know its tasteless, oh well...:shrug:

[CanuckAmok]

1. Make mine "The Falling Sickness", please!

[RevolutionaryActs]

2. You know, I just got to go with the plague.. I mean its a staple.

[jdots]

Death by Poompaw

old bad joke scurvy was a nice one and syphalis
but the Black Death was the biggy

[Spiffarino]

3. Red Death = Cholera

My personal fave. But then, I like Poe.

[WMliberal]

4. scurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry

not just for pirates, you know.

[Mobius]

10. ooooh scurvy!

good one!

[realisticphish]

13. um...

you forgot the "v" :evilgrin:


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[WMliberal]

43. haha, i did. and it's too late for me to edit now.

bfd, everyone knows I never spellcheck before I post.

[rawtribe]

5. I'm not quite dead yet!

:silly:

[hickman1937]

22. BANG. Bring out your dead!

[rawtribe]

35. Welcome to DU

Have a star on me.

[signmike]

6. Plague...Black or Bubonic?

Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes we all fall down

This came out of one of those old plagues

[Mobius]

9. they are the same

:)

[AngryAmish]

7. What was that one where everyone danced until they died?

It was St. something's something.

There was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer based on it.

[CanuckAmok]

11. that wasn't medieval, that was 1986.

[SmileyBoy]

37. St. Elmo's Fire??

:D

[Thurston Howell IV]

18. St Vitus' Dance

I think that's what you're referring to. It was due to eating fungus contaminated rye, and lead to ergot poisoning -- ergot is an alkaloid that is a hallucinagen.

Here's an article which suggests that ergot poisoning weakens the immune system, and may have contributed to the outbreak of the Black Plague - so they may be related!

The article also asserts that hallucinations resulting from ergot poisoning were considered "bewitchment" and lead to a lot of witch trials.

Gota love the middle ages. I've contended for quite a while that we're just one generation from slipping back into the middle ages, ie, if we don't transmit the knowledge we accumulated throughout history to the next generation, then we could slip into an era of vast ignorance. Given the gains by fundamentalist Christians in the US, we may be closer to the middle ages than I thought I'd ever live to see.

Here's the link on St. Vitus' Dance and ergot poisoning:
http://www.hulford.co.uk/ergot.html

BTW, I cast my vote for Ergot Poisoning!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

21. We posted at the same time

Your explanation was better. :)

[Thurston Howell IV]

28. I'm a walking advertisement for Google

I remembered about the ergot poisoning but I didn't know about the immune suppression and black plague connection until I read the article I found by googling "ergot" and St Vitus. Them middle ages was wild times indeed. Kinda like now.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

19. I bet your talking about St. Vitus’ Dance

It was rheumatic chorea, a temporary disorder of the parts of the brain that control movement and coordination. Nasty stuff.

[Mobius]

8. YAY Plague is winning!

:bounce:

[azoth]

12. What about syphyllis? Gonorrhea?

[demgrrrll]

16. I think they called syphilis the pox . There was some medieval

reference to "their tails are all peppered with pox and that you're welcome to". What about rickets?

[azoth]

20. So then was saying "a pox on your house" like saying

"fuck you" - ya think?

bwaaahahaha

[politicat]

32. cute, but no. Pox is just a generic term for a disease that makes sores.

Syphyllis was called the French Pox by the English, the Spanish Pox by the French, the Italian Pox by the Spanish... you see the problem here?

When the phrase a pox on your house was used, it was wishing disease, no matter what kind.

Pcat

[Mobius]

50. Now we have Republican Pox

only the symtoms are fear of gay people, unwavering faith in idiots, the strong urge to cut down brush, the inability to swallow a pretzel, penis shrinkage and the need to break every Commandment then condemn others for doing much less evil than you.

[politicat]

31. Syphyllis rears its head in the mid 1490's by some accounts,

technically making it a Renaissance disease. There's some speculation that it was what the New World gave to Europe in exchange for smallpox, measles, chicken pox, mumps....

Pcat

[WMliberal]

44. i think those didn't come to europe until

the Columbian exchange.

[Seabiscuit]

14. There MUST have been crab lice back then

[Lone_Star_Dem]

17. Sure was, and bedbugs and fleas.. ICK.

edit: I forgot about scabies.. how could I forget that lovely parasite.

[Seabiscuit]

27. Could you imagine having all four at once? AAAAAACCKKKKK!!!!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

34. Ewww, I bet it happened back then too.

Hygiene was poor and for many these were just things that you lived with. I'm itching just thinking about it!

[Seabiscuit]

39. I'm going to have nightmares about the creepy-crawlies!

[Mobius]

53. Im sure it happened

ALOT

[American Tragedy]

38. I have a question regarding crab lice

Can you get them if you don't have pubic hair?

And if not, why are they a problem at all? Even if you have an infestation, the hair is very easily removed.

[Seabiscuit]

41. They attach to the hair and lay eggs there, but they suck on your flesh.

I don't think shaving would solve the problem. Only Kwell lotion does.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

42. I think repeated shaving IS a pretty decent measure for both prevention

and treatment, but you'd have to make sure they're gone from linens etc. too.

Head lice, which function in much the same way as crabs except they like a different kind of hair, are the whole origin of short "buzz cut" hair in the military.

The problem with head lice is, that in most elementary schools (most common place for epidemic), it's just not acceptable to be shaving kids' heads, hence all the other measures.

[burn the bush]

15. were women afflicted with HYSTERIA yet? n/t

[JVS]

24. Not until a few centuries later

Back then they were posessed by demons and concubines of the devil

[American Tragedy]

40. The ancient Greeks were the ones who devised hysteria

It was based in the less-than-scientific notion that women were mentally unstable due to a 'wandering uterus'. Sigmund Freud stole upon the idea when he was making up psychoanalytic theory.

The origin should be little surprise, given that the Greeks created possibly the most profoundly misogynistic society in Western history.

[JVS]

23. The terrible scourge of Changelings!

Currently known as mental retardation

[donheld]

25. Black plague was nice

yea right

[hickman1937]

26. Leprosy

Everything rots and falls off. Eventually. Oh, I think I just found another metaphor.

[Thurston Howell IV]

29. Good one! n/t

[politicat]

30. Sweating sickness, please.

It came, killed a lot of people, then disappeared. Had a couple small recurrences, then vaped. Wasn't malaria. Happened during Henry VIII's reign.

Pcat

[Anarcho-Socialist]

33. imbalance of the four humurs n/t

[SmileyBoy]

36. Lice and flux and vermin.

It's all TINGLY.

[baldguy]

45. Biblical literalism

It's the deadliest and most enduring.

[name not needed]

46. Leprosy

[SarahB]

47. Scurvy!

:bounce:

[Endangered Specie]

48. The Church

[hippiechick]

49. ooh, I gotta go with this one !!

:hippie:

[datasuspect]

51. phlegmatic humour or catarrh

[Book Lover]

52. Actually, teeth did not rot out of the mediaeval head

It's the refined sugar that does that - european medievals had pretty good teeth.

[Pacifist Patriot]

54. I wouldn't have been able to get through A Distant Mirror if it

weren't for the Plague.