Peter Richards (1) (1936–2011)
Autor de The medieval leper and his northern heirs
Para otros autores llamados Peter Richards, ver la página de desambiguación.
Obras de Peter Richards
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1936-05-25
- Fecha de fallecimiento
- 2011-09-29
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- UK
- Educación
- Monkton Coombe School, Bath, UK
Cambridge University (Emmanuel College)
St George's Hospital Medical School, London, UK - Ocupaciones
- physician
Dean & Professor of Medicine, St Mary's Hospital Teaching School
President of Hughes Hall, Cambridge
Miembros
Reseñas
También Puede Gustarte
Autores relacionados
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 4
- Miembros
- 61
- Popularidad
- #274,234
- Valoración
- 2.9
- Reseñas
- 1
- ISBNs
- 36
The “maybe” part is there because it’s not clear that all the people diagnosed with leprosy in medieval times had it. Leprosy was diagnosed by a priest and members of the congregation, so if there was somebody in the parish who was annoying or unlikeable or just plain odd, they could be sent off to a leprosarium. The accused could get a doctor’s certificate stating that they were “clean”, but they had to do this at their own expense; this might mean a journey from Cornwall to London or the Aland Islands to Stockholm which would probably be beyond the means of your average leper.
In England, leprosaria were typically religious institutions and the lepers were lay brothers and sisters. The lepers were generally put to work chanting prayers (sometimes up to 250 a day) for the soul of the founder, and could be punished if they failed to keep up the prayer quota. As the incidence of the disease diminished, some of these places experienced a leper shortage, with the staff outnumbering the lepers two or three to one.
The last third of the book discusses disease identification and concludes that medieval leprosy was the same as modern Hansen’s disease. Archeological investigations of leper cemeteries show a large fraction of the skeletons have bone changes identical with those seen in modern patients. (Interestingly, the facial bone changes were discovered in the leper cemetery first, which then led doctors to find them in X-rays of modern patients).
This is an older (1977) book, so there’s probably more recent information. It’s still pretty interesting.… (más)