The medieval leper hospitals where cure was never an option
Leprosy in medieval Chichester was, as might reasonably be expected, a grim affair during which a cure was never part of the agenda.
To have attempted a cure would have been to intervene with divine will, as former district archaeologist John Magilton explains. And no-one would have wanted to do that.
Far more to the point would have been the aspirations of those running leper hospitals to minimise their time in purgatory.
"Hospitals could not do very much for the lepers," John explains. "They were not intended as isolation hospitals except to isolate spiritually-contagious people.
"They were not intended to stop the spread of the disease because the mechanism of the spread was not understood."
Far more relevant was the doctrine of purgatory: "If you founded a leper hospital for eight lepers and filled the beds, you had eight lepers praying for you daily – and that might lessen your time in purgatory."
In that sense, hospitals were closer to monasteries than to our modern hospitals: "They had monastic regimes and led a monastic life. The difference was that they were sick."
And it seems Chichester may well have had more than its fair share of lepers: "It's possible Chichester had a higher average of lepers than other places for two reasons.
"First, lepers tended to congregate in ports, places where there were lots of people to seek alms from. And secondly, because these places were fairly thronged with people, the disease was able to transmit itself better."
Considerations which go into the mix for a new book, Lepers Outside The Gate, which forms Volume 10 in the Chichester Excavations series.
Co-edited by John with Frances Lee and Anthea Boylston, it takes a look at medieval hospitals and cemeteries, the provision of charitable care at that time, and also attitudes to leprosy.
The material was drawn from two archeological campaigns, between 1986 and 1993, when more than 380 skeletons were excavated from the cemetery of the former Hospital of St James and St Mary Magdalene at Swanfield Drive, Chichester.
St James' Hospital, founded in the early 12th century for eight leper brethren, admitted women late in the 15th century and children not long after.
It remains one of the country's most significant samples of human remains to have been recovered from an English medieval leper hospital – a fact which has enabled a benchmark study of the changing history, archaeology and palaeopathology of both the treatment of infirmity and the development of disease.
In the book, John and his co-editors describe the excavations in detail, including the phasing, layout and distribution of bodies, which are now at the University of Bradford.
As John says, leprosy was a serious social problem certainly by the 12th century – though at the beginning of the 14th century, leper hospitals were finding it difficult to fill their beds.
"One theory was it was dying out because TB was taking over. TB carries with it a degree of immunity from leprosy, and TB was becoming more prevalent."
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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