During the early Renaissance most hospitals were not like our modern institutions. They could function as hospices, providing comfort and minor medical care for those who were weak and dying, and as temporary shelters for pilgrims, widows, abused wives, and orphans. By the 16th century in Italy some hospitals included healing the seriously ill among their mission, and several rather large institutions were established for that purpose. A few hospitals, for example in Bologna, began training doctors on site. The more ambitious institutions had pharmacists and surgeons available when needed. Thus the Renaissance saw the beginning of the professionalization of hospital services.
At least 20 and as many as 40 percent of all babies, regardless of class, died within the first 12 months of life. For this reason many babies were baptized immediately after birth. Half of those who survived infancy died before they reached the age of 10. Although some scholars have stated that parents resigned themselves to the deaths of infants and did not become emotionally attached to children until they reached the age of two, there is much firsthand evidence to contradict such an assumption. Fathers wrote letters to friends expressing their grief at the death of a small son, and mothers rejoiced in their babies. Beatrice d’Este (1475-97) wrote to her sister, Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), about her infant son, “I often wish that you could be here to see him, as I am quite sure that you would never be able to stop petting and kissing him” (Durant 1953, p. 587). Babies and small children slept in a cradle that was often suspended from the ceiling to prevent mice and bugs from crawling up the legs and to keep the child away from the cold floor. These cradles sometimes were draped with netting to guard against insects. Unfortunately most cradles were placed near the fireplace for warmth, and occasionally their blankets and netting caught on fire. Toddlers who slept in the bed with their parents or older siblings were sometimes accidentally smothered, or “overlaid” in Renaissance legal terminology. Another hazard that could kill an infant but not necessarily an older child was tainted drinking water; that is one reason why water was not a popular beverage during this period.
Most common illnesses were treated with home remedies, and girls were trained by their mother to be fairly competent nurses. Aloe juice, for example, was used as a purgative and as a dressing to soothe burns. The flower, stalk, and root of lilies of the valley were
Handbook to life in Renaissance Europe
Known to help prevent apoplexy, and indeed this flower has some of the properties of the digitalis taken today as heart medication. Many other herbs and flowers were used against head lice, chest congestion, mild forms of influenza, internal parasites, toothache, and similar conditions. The Renaissance had nothing with which to battle the major diseases that attacked thousands, including dysentery, diphtheria, ergotism, tuberculosis, smallpox, syphilis, a sickness that may have been typhus fever, and, of course, plague. Both
12.10 Allegory of avarice, with skeleton. Jacopo Ligozzi, between the latter 16th century and 1626.
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Eric Seller and Darcy Bradbury, and Edward A. and Karen S. W. Friedman, 1991 [1991.443])
Smallpox and plague were known to spread rapidly, even though the precise mechanism of their epidemic nature was not clearly understood. Civil authorities attempted to control their virulence by quarantining households and even neighborhoods. If anyone in a family contracted plague or smallpox, the entire family could be boarded up inside the house for several weeks. By the late 16th century Europe had many times more people living in dire poverty than in 1400. Hunger, then, was almost a disease and people did starve to death. Those who managed to cling to life were much more susceptible to illness and disease because of their weakened physical state.
Treatises were written on “the good death” and on preparation for the inevitability of dying. Woodcuts of skeletons leading the Dance of Death were popular in northern Europe. These publications constituted the genre known as ars moriendi (the art of dying). Based on ancient philosophical ideas, the Stoical attitude toward one’s death was said to facilitate access to purgatory. Mourning was to be subdued because, for Christians, death was considered the pathway to eternal life. A proper death included disposition of one’s worldly goods through a legally binding testament and setting aside of money for funeral masses that might speed one’s way to purgatory. Catholic funerals could be lavish; Protestant funerals were usually rather somber and plain. All funerals involving burial of the corpse took place as soon as possible after death because embalming was not done. In northern Europe there were visual reminders of death’s triumph. Tomb sculpture often depicted skeletal imagery. Because most people did not live beyond the age of 40, death and the dying were a constant presence, simply a fact of life.
Reading
Clark 1976: urban life; Cowan 1998: urban life.
World History
