The Diseases That Ravaged Medieval Europe...

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Just like people living today, the medievals had a huge number of diseases doing the rounds. So what illnesses did people face back then? Surprisingly, many of them are the same as ones we deal with today. The difference wasn't the diseases themselves. It was the fact that the medievals had no vaccinations, antibiotics, or modern medicine. So recovery often depended on rest, the strength of the patients own body, and of course a whole lot of luck. Let's travel back to the Middle Ages and take a look at medieval diseases, the cures that did or in most cases didn't work, and ask the big question. Did getting sick in the Middle Ages mean certain death? Welcome to Medieval Madness.

[00:00:59]hot stuff.

[00:01:01]Many of us have dealt with the flu at some point and most of the time it's more annoying than dangerous. There's still no real cure. Just rest plenty of fluids and the hope that it passes quickly. But for people in high-risisk groups, such as the very old, the very young, or anyone with a weakened immune system, it can be far more serious. In the Middle Ages, the flu was just as unpleasant as it is today. But without modern medicine, it could feel like a much bigger threat. No vaccines, no antiviral drugs, no quick trip to the chemist for something to ease the symptoms. You simply had to endure it and hope your body won the fight.

[00:01:40]Medieval life already came with enough challenges. Adding a fever, chills, and a nose that wouldn't stop running certainly didn't help. In the Middle Ages, one disease showed up that made ordinary influenza look like a mild inconvenience.

[00:01:55]It was known as the sweating sickness.

[00:01:58]The first major outbreak appeared in 1485 during the reign of Henry TUDA, father of the far more famous Henry VIII. The sickness didn't bother with subtlety. It struck suddenly, often in the middle of the night or early morning, giving its victims no time to prepare. The first to describe the symptoms was Forester writing in 1490.

[00:02:20]He noted, quote, "Sudden great sweating and sickness with redness of the face and of all the body." John Caes a physician living in London, witnessed the last epidemic and referred to it as quote, "a fearful time of the sweat. It was highly infectious and often began with a sudden sense of doom followed by a high fever, violent shivering, headache, dizziness, great exhaustion, and severe pains in the neck, shoulders, and limbs. After around anywhere between half an hour and 3 hours, the hot sweats began, accompanied by an unnatural thirst, headaches, palpitations, heart pain, and delirium. Finally, there was complete exhaustion and collapse with death often occurring within 8 to 10 hours. And if you did survive an attack, that was no guarantee of immunity. Some people suffered several bouts before eventually dying. Was it poor sanitation or contaminated water that caused the sweating sickness? Well, who knows? But after spreading across areas of Europe, the brutal disease suddenly stopped as quickly as it had started and disappeared after the last major outbreak in 1551.

[00:03:36]Blind spot.

[00:03:38]It's thought that the first smallox epidemic caused by the variola virus occurred in the late 1st and early second centuries. It is referred to as the Azenine plague and it swept across the Roman Empire. Waves of smallpox hit Asia and Europe in the Middle Ages, wiping out rural populations. Bishop Gregory of Tors witnessed the illness when it spread across northern Italy and the south of France in the late 6th century. He wrote, quote, toss was desolated by the severe pestilential sickness. The violent fever covered all over with vesicles and small postules.

[00:04:13]The vessels were white, hard, unyielding, and very painful. When they broke and began to discharge, the pain was greatly increased. He also noted that when Lady of Count Eberin contracted the pests, she was covered with them on her hands, feet, and even her eyes. Lady Eberin survived, but when her husband died from the disease, his corpse, quote, appeared black and burnt as if it had been laid on a coal fire.

[00:04:39]It's likely Lord Eberin had hemorrhagic smallox, which begins in the same way with a high fever and severe headache.

[00:04:46]It quickly turns particularly nasty with bleeding in the skin which detaches with fluid collecting under it. Capillaries can hemorrhage throughout the body including the major organs and in men the gonuts. Those who did survive were left with lasting reminders of the ordeal. Extensive scarring across their skin and in some cases permanent blindness known as the red plague or simply the pox in England. The disease made a reappearance during the Crusades.

[00:05:16]Luckily for us, smallox is now one of two diseases that the World Health Organization has declared completely eradicated. The other being cattle plague, the love bug.

[00:05:32]Sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea were common during the Middle Ages. As contrary to popular opinion, the medievals didn't live in a constant state of sexual repression. For men, when swelling or sores appeared on a viral member, the trotula, a 12th century medical compendium, recommended using a pus to reduce swelling and the washing of quote the ulcerus or wounded neck of the preus with warm water and the sprinkling of some quote Greek pitch and dry rot of wood or of worms on it. Nasty, but not nearly as brutal as the treatment recommended by English surgeon John of Ardin in the 14th century. For the patient whose penis became painfully swollen after intercourse with burning and aching, the solution was to remove the damaged tissue with a blade and then apply quick lime, a substance that would have caused severe pain. As agonizing as this must have been, Arda reported that the treatment worked and the patient recovered.

[00:06:34]goat.

[00:06:36]No list of medieval diseases would be complete without the granddaddy of them all, the great plague, also known as the black death, peaking between 1348 and 1350 and spread by the bacterium yinopestis.

[00:06:52]Almost half the population of Europe and the Middle East were wiped out in the pandemic. transmitted through fleas on rodents like rats as well as through the air. The plague came in two main forms, bubonic and pneumonic. The bubonic version had an incubation period of about 2 to 7 days, meaning that after a flea bit you, it could take anywhere from a couple of days to nearly a week before you realize something was very wrong. Pneumonic plague moved even faster with symptoms appearing in just 2 to 3 days. Bubonic plague attacked the lymph nodes causing them to swell, heat up, become extremely tender and ooze person blood when opened. These swollen nodes called bubos could appear anywhere lymph nodes are found. The neck, the armpits, and the groin. Pneumonic plague meanwhile skipped the lymph nodes entirely and went straight for the lungs which made it far more contagious and far more deadly. If you thought the bubonic plague was bad, the pneumonic plague was absolutely terrifying. Other symptoms included a high fever, painful aching joints, headache, nausea, and vomiting. Pneumonic plague had a mortality rate of 90 to 95%.

[00:08:11]The lung infection causing a bloody cough. Today, modern outbreaks of plague are rare, but they do occur and about seven are reported each year in the US.

[00:08:22]That means the black death is still out there quietly hanging around like it never got the memo that the Middle Ages had ended.

[00:08:32]Dead man walking.

[00:08:34]Leprosy was another nasty medieval disease. It attacked the nervous system and the upper respiratory tracts. And before the black death came along, leprosy was the illness most medievals feared. Once contracted, the disease was slow to progress. One of the first signs was the gradual loss of sensation in the hands and feet. As the nerves deteriorated, people could no longer feel injuries, which led to chronic ulcers and infections. Over time, this nerve damage caused the fingers and toes to weaken, shrink, and essentially melt away. Bleeding from the palms, loss of body hair and eyelashes, and a rotting penis were just some of the lovely symptoms of leprosy. Added to that, a collapsed nose cartilage, ulcers in the throat, tooth loss, and ulcerated eyeballs. And it's easy to see why the medievals called the disease the living death. Now, thankfully, modern medicine can cure leprosy, but in the Middle Ages, the only treatment was isolation until death. Medieval society created leper colonies, usually run by monastic orders, where people with the disease were sent to live out the rest of their lives. They weren't allowed to mix with the general population. Monks, however, were thought to be immune not because of any medical insight, but because they were considered godly men, and apparently medieval germs just respected holiness. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, France alone had over 2,000 leper houses.

[00:10:08]royal blood.

[00:10:10]As leprosy cases began to decline around the start of the 15th century, tuberculosis was on the rise. Those poor medievals just couldn't catch a break.

[00:10:19]Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that comes in many forms. And surprise, surprise, none of them are particularly pleasant. One of the more memorable versions was scruffula, also known in the Middle Ages as the king's evil. This particular form of tuberculosis infects the lymph nodes in the neck, causing them to swell until the sufferer's neck looks unusually enlarged. Medieval writers compared it to the thick neck of a pig. It was believed that the king had the power to heal the scruffula by placing his hand on the sufferer or more commonly touch a coin that was then passed to the patient to drive the disease away. Thousands went before the king for this healing service. Edward I reportedly performed the ceremony for up to 2,000 people a year. When a medieval developed pulmonary tuberculosis, the illness usually began with a persistent, increasingly forceful cough. Before long, the mucus they coughed up might contain small traces of blood, a classic sign of the infection. Alongside the cough, there was chronic fatigue, loss of appetite, weight loss, lethargy, anxiety, chills, muscle aches, sweating, and fever. In other words, tuberculosis didn't just affect the lungs, it drained the entire body, slowly wearing a person down over time before finally killing them. It was one of the most exhausting and relentless diseases of the medieval world.

[00:11:48]What a waste.

[00:11:50]Dissentry, also known as the bloody flux, was one of the most common and most spectacularly unpleasant bacterial diseases to strike medieval armies. Long campaigns meant bad food, worse water, and sanitation that would make a modern festival toilet look luxurious. While it could cause stomach cramps, vomiting, and fever, Dissentry's main party trick was relentless diarrhea so violent it could lead to dangerous fluid loss, bleeding, and all too often death.

[00:12:19]Highly contagious dissentry was spread easily through camp. Contaminated food, which was basically all food on campaign, didn't help either. Even kings weren't spared. King John of England died from dissentry at Newick Castle in 1216. The French King Louis VI succumbed to the disease during a siege in 1226, and the English King Henry V died from it in 1422 while campaigning in France.

[00:12:47]For medieval rulers and soldiers alike, dissentry was often as great a threat as any enemy on the battlefield. In severe cases of dissentry, if you didn't replace the fluids you were losing, you could be dead in as little as 6 hours.

[00:13:02]Medieval medicine didn't have much to offer in the way of treatment. The only real cure was to let the illness run its course and keep the patient hydrated.

[00:13:12]Not exactly reassuring, but there was one small consolation. Fluid replacement was usually done with beer, which was safer to drink than most water sources.

[00:13:23]So, yes, dentry was miserable, dangerous, and occasionally fatal. But at least your rehydration plan came with a pint. Of course, there were many other illnesses endemic in the Middle Ages, like erotism, malaria, typhoid fever, and plenty of parasitic worm infestations to go around. Seems like the medievals were forever playing a game of Russian roulette when it came to illnesses, one with a full barrel of bullets. Thank you so much for watching this episode of Medieval Madness. If you enjoyed this video, then why not consider subscribing to the channel as we do release a new video every Friday covering all things medieval. For those of you who want to support the channel and see some extra videos, we did recently launch a Patreon and YouTube memberships. And on the higher tier, you can get your name on screen like these lovely people you can see right now.

[00:14:12]Cheers everyone and as always, I'll see you next week for another video.