Since Halloween season is upon us, in the spirit of all
things gruesome and ghastly we thought we would give you a little insight into
the eerie world of medieval medicine, featuring the practices of the infamous
barber-surgeons of the Middle Ages. We'll even disclose to you the origins of the red and white barber's pole, which are just a bit more hideous than you think...
In Medieval Dublin, it is safe to say that death was never
too far from anyone’s door. Average life expectancy is likely to have been as
low as 30-35 years and a third of children died before they reached the age of
10. War, famine and of course the Black Death, claimed the lives of many during
this period. As well as that, a certain lack of understanding in relation to
medicine and health, coupled with a rarity of doctors, meant that medical
interventions for diseases of the day were a largely unscientific mixture of
alchemy, astrology, fortune telling and traditional herbal cures.
Enter the barber-surgeon. The closest thing many poorer
people had to a doctor, it might be safe to say that their cures, charms and
remedies are more than a little questionable by today’s standards. While these
days we may not wish for our dental work to be carried out by the same person
responsible for our hairstyle, these
amateur surgeons were the people trained in the use of knives, so many
were butchers or barbers, as well as part-time dentists.
A multi-tasking practitioner by all accounts, they might
have healed your wounds with the poke of a red hot iron, cured your illness
through blood-letting to restore the balance of fluids in your body, or used
leeches to suck out your blood if you wound up with pox. Given all those grisly
procedures, perhaps it is altogether very understandable why doctors of the day
wore a hood stuffed with pungent herbs in the nose to mask the smell of
sickness and rotting flesh that surrounded them. There is little doubt that the
yanking of a rotten tooth with a pair of pliers would have been a painful and
bloody process at the hands of a barber-surgeon… and remember, that’s with no
anaesthetic. Yikes!
While today we have safely confined our medical treatments to the doctor’s surgery, the red and white striped barber’s pole still seen today is reminiscent of the days of the barber-surgeon’s stall – where a pole with a red rag wrapped around it hung on display, representing the blood and bandages of their trade.
From October 24th – 31st, Dublinia
welcomes Deilg Inis living history theatre company for a staging of ‘Creepy
Cures and Ridiculous Remedies’. For more information, check out our events page.
