OCR GCSE History B (Schools History Project)

## Medieval Britain Britain in the later Middle Ages was overwhelmingly rural. Most people were peasants who farmed land held from a lord, and the Church shaped daily life, belief and the little education and medicine that existed. Towns were small by later standards; London was by far the largest, and many market towns held only a few thousand people. Wealth was unequal, and in matters of health the main divide was between those who could afford a physician, a better diet and a drier house, and the great majority who could not. Health was understood through religion and through the ideas of the ancient Greek and Roman writers, above all Hippocrates and Galen. The theory of the four humours held that blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile had to stay in balance, and an illness meant they had fallen out of it. Treatment therefore aimed at restoring the balance, through bloodletting, purges, changes of diet and herbal remedies. Many people also believed that sickness was a punishment from God for sin, or that the position of the planets could cause it, so prayer, pilgrimage and charms stood beside medicine. A third idea, miasma, said that disease was carried in foul air, which came from rotting matter, standing water and the stench of waste. It is wrong, but it led people to want streets and houses cleaner and sweeter-smelling, so it sometimes produced useful action for the wrong reason. ## Living conditions ### Housing Most peasants lived in small one- or two-room houses…