The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

by James J. Walsh

HYGIENE.

The objection that medical friends have had to the claims of The Thirteenth as the Greatest of Centuries is that it failed to pay any attention to hygiene. Here, once more, we have a presumption that is not founded on real knowledge of the time. It is rather easy to show that these generations were anticipating many of our solutions of hygienic problems quite as well as our solutions of other social and intellectual difficulties. In the sketch of Pope John XXI., the physician who became Pope during the second half of the Thirteenth Century, which was published in Ophthalmology, a quarterly review of eye diseases (Jan., 1909), because Pope John wrote a little book on this subject which has many valuable anticipations of modern knowledge, I called attention to the fact that, while a physician and professor of [{478}] medicine at the medical school of the University of Sienna, this Pope, then known as Peter of Spain, had made some contributions to sanitary science. Later he was appointed Archiater, that is, Physician in charge of the City of Rome. As pointed out in the sketch of him as enlarged for the volume containing a second series of Catholic Churchmen in Science (The Dolphin Press, Phila., 1909), he seems to have been particularly interested in popular health, for we have a little book, Thesaurus Pauperum—The Treasure of the Poor—which contains many directions for the maintenance of health and the treatment of disease by those who are too poor to secure physicians' advice. The fact that the head of the Bureau of Health in Rome should have been made Pope in the Thirteenth Century, itself speaks volumes for the awakening of the educated classes at least to the value of hygiene and sanitation.

Their attention to hygiene can be best shown by a consideration of the hospitals. Ordinarily it is assumed that the hospitals provided a roof for the sick and the injured, but scarcely more. Most physicians will probably be quite sure that they were rather hot-beds of disease than real blessings to the ailing. That is not what we find when we study them carefully. These generations gave us a precious lesson by eradicating leprosy, which was quite as general as tuberculosis is now, and they made special hospitals for erysipelas, which materially lessened the diffusion of that disease. In rewriting the chapter on The Foundation of City Hospitals for my book, The Popes and Science (Fordham University Press, N. Y., 1908), I incorporated into it a description of the hospital erected at Tanierre, in France, in 1293, by Marguerite of Bourgogne, the sister of St. Louis. Of this hospital Mr. Arthur Dillon, from the standpoint of the modern architect, says:

"It was an admirable hospital in every way, and it is doubtful if we to-day surpass it. It was isolated, the ward was separated from the other buildings; it had the advantage we often lose, of being but one story high, and more space was given to each patient than we now afford.
"The ventilation by the great windows and ventilators in the ceiling was excellent; it was cheerfully lighted, and the arrangement of the gallery shielded the patients from dazzling light and from draughts from the windows, and afforded an easy means of supervision, while the division by the roofless, low partitions isolated the sick and obviated the depression that comes from the sight of others in pain.
"It was, moreover, in great contrast to the cheerless white wards of to-day. The vaulted ceiling was very beautiful; the woodwork was richly carved, and the great windows over the altars were filled with colored glass. Altogether, it was one of the best examples of the best period of Gothic architecture."

In their individual Hygiene there was, of course, much to be desired among the people of the Thirteenth Century, and it has been declared that the history of Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century might, from the hygienic standpoint, he summed up as a thousand years without a bath. The more we know about this period, however, the less of [{479}] point do we find in the epigram. Mr. Cram, in the Ruined Abbeys of Great Britain (Pott & Co., N. Y., 1907), has described wonderful arrangements within the monasteries (!) for the conduction of water from long distances for all toilet purposes. There was much more attention to sanitary details than we have been prone to think. Mr. Cram, in describing what was by no means one of the greatest of the English abbeys of the Thirteenth Century, says:

"Here at Beaulieu the water was brought by an underground conduit from an unfailing spring a mile away, and this served for drinking, washing and bathing, the supply of the fish ponds, and for a constant flushing of the elaborate system of drainage. In sanitary matters, the monks were as far in advance of the rest of society as they were in learning and agriculture."