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Anthony DiBattista: Rutgers Institute for High School Teachers

Friday, February 07, 2020, 09:00am - 02:30pm

The Black Death and Medieval Medicine

February 7, 2020, 9am-2:30pm

Anthony di Battista, Lecturer, Department of History, Rutgers University

The Black Death was the most devastating pandemic to strike medieval Europe, ultimately killing at least one third of the population.  Without a modern scientific explanation, the population reacted to the crisis in ways that often seem unfamiliar, and in fact, irrational, to the modern reader. This seminar will examine the Black Death within the context of an understanding of medieval medicine and the medical profession. We will examine contemporary accounts of the plague, medieval cures, and the artistic, theological, literary and economic responses to the devastation. In addition, the seminar will also examine another disease, leprosy, and its unique place within the medieval consciousness.

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