Maybe modern medicine could learn a few things from the Schola infirmary....

[Evie]

My husband shared a link to this article on his Facebook page. I thought it might be of interest here as well:

http://www.medievalists.net/2015/03/30/anglo-saxon-medicine-is-able-to-kill-modern-day-superbug-researchers-find/

[Laurna]

That is awesome. Awesome in two ways; first they may have found a means of curing MRSA, which is a bacterial disease that is very prominent in the hospital setting and once you have it you are considered to have it for life; and secondly that they found it in a Medieval healing recipe that must be made just right. Very cool.

[DesertRose]

This is pretty awesome.  MRSA sucks a lot and can be fatal in someone who is immunocompromised.

I bet Helena is getting a kick out of that, Evie. 

[Evie]

This is pretty awesome.  MRSA sucks a lot and can be fatal in someone who is immunocompromised.

I bet Helena is getting a kick out of that, Evie. 

Yes, and Sister Therese is practically doing cartwheels! 

[revanne]

It makes me wonder how much else from the dark/middle ages which certainly in my childhood we were taught to think of as primitive was really very knowledgeable. Sure there was very low level of technology but arguably much greater wisdom

[Evie]

The more I study the era, the more it's brought home to me that they were every bit as intelligent and capable as people nowadays (with the same range of intelligence at least--not everyone was a genius, but hardly everyone was a dolt, and there were a fair few geniuses).  They were somewhat hampered in their advancement due to their tech level (just like some advancements weren't possible in human society until we learned how to craft iron, other advancements weren't possible until we learned how to harness steam power, electricity, etc.), but the same creative spark was always there.  If anything, being less dependent on computers and technology than we are today, I suspect our medieval ancestors were a great deal more capable in many areas than we are. What they lacked for in terms of props, they often made up for in critical thinking and creative adapting skills.  Both of these skills are beginning to be lost among our youngest generations, to the despair of their teachers.  (Actually, having dealt with some of those teachers, I begin to wonder at times if they've got a full grasp of such things themselves! )

[Elkhound]

"A thousand years without a bath," is how our history classes generally paint it.  The "Dung Ages" as some put it.  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDungAges.

Remember in "Monty Python & the Holy Grail"----"That must be the king; he's the only one who ain't got $#@^ all over him."

[Evie]

"A thousand years without a bath," is how our history classes generally paint it.  The "Dung Ages" as some put it.  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDungAges.

Remember in "Monty Python & the Holy Grail"----"That must be the king; he's the only one who ain't got $#@^ all over him."

LOL!  Yes.  And ironically enough, Terry Jones from Monty Python actually has a degree in medieval history, and in his more scholarly work he neatly demolishes that myth. Even his more "serious" books are written with that same trademark tongue-in-cheek humor, and they're loads of fun to read. His love for the period shines through.

[Aerlys]

The more I study the era, the more it's brought home to me that they were every bit as intelligent and capable as people nowadays (with the same range of intelligence at least--not everyone was a genius, but hardly everyone was a dolt, and there were a fair few geniuses). 

It's just modern arrogance that makes us think we're smarter than previous generations. While our medieval counterparts couldn't program a computer (though who's to say they couldn't learn), the computer itself doesn't make us more intelligent. We just have more efficient tools. Perhaps too efficient.

On the other hand, plunk a typical modern man or woman into the Middle Ages into a typical home (no servants) and see how well they could survive. Most people have never had to butcher an animal, forage for food, or put up enough stores to survive a winter.

[DesertRose]

Even as recently as our grandparents' generation, people have always been capable of learning new things if they decide to.

My own maternal grandmother passed away before the internet became a very widespread phenomenon, but she did ask me to find a specific poem for her, for which she could remember the first stanza but not the title or the author (although she thought, correctly as it transpired, that it was Wordsworth).  I asked one of my professors--who was an older lady (probably between my parents and my grandparents in age) but the most tech-savvy member of the English department at the time--to help me look, and Dr. Hunt used a very early website (this was about 1996) that enabled her to search using the lines of the poem that my grandmother could remember and got us title and author.  When I told my grandmother that information and how we'd arrived at it, she was extremely impressed, and if she hadn't passed about a year later, I expect she'd have learned to use the internet.

Something in the back of my head never quite did buy the Dung Ages idea, as Elkhound so pithily put it, and now that I've studied the era more myself, I know why I didn't quite accept that notion.