I’ve just got back from living as a medieval person, AMA

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

First time in my life I’ve ever done anything worthy of an AMA!

Brilliant thread - thank you! 😊👏

I think you can make soap out of ivy leaves too. Was that known in medieval times?

Another KWellie giving reverence! There’s a scary amount of us on here…

glad it went well op, it looks fab!

Huge fan of Ruth here!

Can I ask why you were given water to wash with when Ruth has lived as a proper (sorry, no disrespect meant) historical life with no flush loos, tea and coffee etc, and her hygiene was of the time. So why not use linen body cloths, as they do work. Same with soot teeth cleaning etc. They are not what we are used to but they do work!

I was fascinated by her Tudor book and tried it for a couple of weeks and it does w

The Romans had a sponge which they carried in a belt. Their way of life probably influenced the Medieval times in Britain, but there was also a great deal of trade with Europe, so they would have had some benefits.

It was used by the Romans so probably was. The Romans also had hot water bathing and underfloor heating. They used coal.

That Ruth Goodman series on bbc sounds is fascinating btw! I’ve listened to all of them but tempted to listen again.

Did you drink any water or just the ale to keep it time accurate? Did you feel a but tipsy all day? This is the question I’ve always wanted to ask!

I have rheumatoid arthritis and I’ve always wondered how I’d cope going back in time to try remedies of the time and if I’d be better or worse off.

The evidence doesn’t suggest, and Ruth doesn’t claim, that nobody washed with water at all. There is lots of evidence of people washing hands and faces regularly. Read ‘Sweet and clean’ by Susan North if you want a full picture.
What Ruth Goodman is mainly talking about is regular linen changes rather than showers or baths.

We didn’t have a chimney, just a central hearth, so no supply of soot even if we had wanted to.

(This is like Four Yorkshiremen. ‘Soot? You were lucky….’ 😂)

So it’s a bit of a myth that people didn’t drink water at all. There’s lots of evidence of people drinking water and being aware of good and bad water supplies, even if they didn’t have the knowledge of microbes to understand why. In a rural village I think we would probably have had a sweet well; the struggle to keep the water supply pure is more of a problem in towns.

But people absolutely did drink ale at any time of day. Ale is seen as a healthy drink partly because of the calories, it imparts strength unlike water.

I did drink ale when I fancied it, never enough to feel tipsy. Some of my previous batches ended up quite sweet and one morning I was pondering the fact that I probably fancied something like that more than I fancied tea. Like you I have always wondered about how people could possibly have wanted ale as a morning kick start, but I think it is simply the energy.

Thanks 🙂

Re tooth brushing, I have also lived in Tanzania (though in a small town in a much hotter area, we generally had electricity and sometimes running water).
In town we used a shower or a bucket bath (I got very good at a full wash with one bucket and doing my teeth plus contact lenses in one glass of clean water). It was cold in June so we heated it up (though we had a gas bottle/stove). I occasionally stayed with friends in villages but we had kerosene lamps, matches, bought food etc. and of course it's much better for growing vegetables! Though there is a hungry season just before the rice harvest.

Here are some village boys in another African country brushing their teeth. You use one particular tree (no paste traditionally) and the word for toothbrush comes from the name of that tree.
My question is: was there also a hungry season?

Hello! This is a lovely thread.

Did being in dark/dim light so much change your sense of space at all?

Definitely a hungry season this time of year. I'm an allotmenteer, nothing much is growing.

Medieval period: no potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips.

This time of year there would have been grain, dried beans or peas, smoked meats, some game.

So it’s a bit of a myth that people didn’t drink water at all. There’s lots of evidence of people drinking water and being aware of good and bad water supplies, even if they didn’t have the knowledge of microbes to understand why. In a rural village I think we would probably have had a sweet well; the struggle to keep the water supply pure is more of a problem in towns.

Drifting OT, but it's fascinating that the English/British love of tea (which requires boiled water) is credited with staving off all sorts of very nasty potential water borne diseases as the industrial revolution ramped up.

Not so sure I'd drink water from the well ...

There were still some places in the UK without mains water nowadays. I’m specifically thinking of the village of Lothersdale close to where I grew up.

The house I grew up in doesn’t have mains water. It’s not that rare in Ireland — about 12% of households have their own well. (Though in our case, it was a spring that came out of the hill behind the house, and that cattle sometimes got into.)

A cousin in Florida who built his own house only got permission if he sank a well. All the houses in that neck of the woods have wells.

Thank you @TheCountessofFitzdotterel such an interesting thread!

In Victorian East London there was a problem with contaminated water supply causing severe stomach diseases like cholera and typhoid.

The people used a well and ultimately the source of the infection was traced to it. As most of the locals drank beer they were not affected.

Ah, the amazing John Snow - father of big data.

Managed to completely eradicate cholera without having the faintest clue what it was. An inspiration to anyone who works with data and wants to do good.

But Victorian East London, fairly different from 1461 in a rural village?

continuing from my previous post of a few minutes ago, I found the following in Wikipedia:

There was one significant anomaly—none of the workers in the nearby Broad Street brewery contracted cholera. As they were given a daily allowance of beer, they did not consume water from the nearby well.[18] During the brewing process, the wort (or un-fermented beer) is boiled in part so that hops can be added. This step killed the cholera bacteria in the water they had used to brew with, making it safe to drink. Snow showed that the Southwark and V

Wiki has the big debate, It is fascinating to read the opinions of the 'professionals'.

They didn't have a clue in some things. Actually, there was knowledge of infections and how to avoid them, and some aspects of treatment in the Old Testament. While the Hebrews were wandering in the desert for 40 years Moses gave them instructions on what they could and could not eat, and how to treat infections so that they didn't spread.

The problem was that in those days the priests acted as doctors and monitored any cases which came along, so that for centuries it was considered the realm of theologians, rather than science or medicine. It was read and written by monks and priests mainly, and royalty and land owners beside priests. Until it was printed by King James few even had access to the Bible until education was compulsory from 1850 and the ordinary people learned to read.

Even so, it was only in the 20th century that efforts were made to avoid contamination.

You would think so, but no, because little had changed for centuries between those, and actually Biblical times. They learned by trial and error I suppose, otherwise the human race would have died out. They were also regularly visited by priests, monks and nuns who set up 'hospitals' and nursed the sick. They had access to knowledge from the scriptures.

All that was considered religion only, and only landowners, royalty and scholars could read. Had the medical profession known the books of Moses, there might have been more knowledge.

It is to be assumed that Victorian surgeons who operated in their suits in front of large audiences, were not inclined to read the scriptures in the Old Testament.

The Book of Genesis has the first written evidence of cryogenics and genetic breeding and much more, which we only started in fairly recent times. The Bible also contains the first description of arthritis too.