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CHAPTER XII THE CARE OF THE BODY
“Let there be in the infirmary thirteen sick persons in their beds, and let them be kindly and duly supplied with food and all else that shall tend to their convalescence or comfort.” (Statutes of Northallerton.[103])
IN considering the provision for material comfort in hospitals, one must distinguish between residents and sojourners. Board and clothing had to be found for the leper or the almsman, and the sick needed food and shelter for a time. Travellers either called for doles in passing, or required supper, bed and breakfast. Upon every pilgrim, sick or well, spending the night at St. Thomas’, Canterbury, four-pence was expended from the goods of the hospital. Bodily necessaries of life may be classified under the headings food, fuel, baths, bedding and clothes.
1. FOOD
(a) Food for resident pensioners.—There was of course a wide difference between the lot of the ill-fed lazar who lodged in some poor spital dependent upon the chance alms of passers-by, and that of the occupant of a well-endowed institution. At the princely Sherburn hospital, each person received daily a loaf (weighing five marks) and a gallon of beer; he had meat three times a week, and on other days eggs, herrings and cheese, besides p168 butter, vegetables and salt. The statutes laid stress upon the necessity of fresh food, and it was forbidden to eat the flesh of an animal which had died of disease. This was wise, for the constant consumption in the Middle Ages of rotten meat, decayed fish and bread made from blighted corn predisposed people to sickness and aggravated existing disease. Forfeited victuals were granted to the sick in hospitals at Oxford, Cambridge, Sandwich, Maldon, etc. The Forest law directed that if any beast were found dead or wounded, the flesh was to be sent to the leper-house if there were one near, or else be distributed to the sick and poor; Dr. Cox in his Royal Forests cites instances of the lepers of Thrapston and Cotes benefiting by this statute.
Salt meat was largely consumed, but it was insufficiently cured on account of the scarcity of salt. Bacon was a most important article of food; one of the endowments of St. Mary Magdalene’s, Winchester, consisted of four flitches annually. About Christmas-tide, according to the “Customal of Sandwich,” each person at St. Bartholomew’s received a hog with the inwards and all its parts. The lepers at St. Albans had a similar custom, but they made their own selection for the salting-tub at Martinmas:—“we desire that the pigs may be brought forward in their presence . . . and there each, according to the priority of entering the hospital, shall choose one pig.”
In some households, a meat-allowance was given to each person, perhaps two-pence a week, or a farthing a day. There were vegetarians among the residents at Southampton, for the account-rolls mention Sister Elena who for a time “ate nothing that had suffered death”, p169 and Sister Joan, “who does not eat flesh throughout the year.” In those days of murrain they were prudent, for it is recorded that an ox was killed for consumption in the house “because it was nearly dead.”
In the later almshouses the inmates received wages and provided their own victuals, which were cooked by the attendant. It was directed at Higham Ferrers:—
“That every poor man shall buy his meat upon the Saturday . . . and deliver it to the woman, and she shall ask them which they will have against Sunday, and the rest she shall powder up against Wednesday; she shall upon Sunday set on the pot and make them good pottage, and shall give every man his own piece of meat and a mess of pottage in his dish, and the rest of the pottage shall be saved until Monday.”