Life in the Middle Ages was fraught with danger – and few threats were more constant or devastating than disease. With poor sanitation, limited medical knowledge and tightly packed towns and armies, illnesses like plague, tuberculosis and smallpox spread rapidly and often fatally.
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Deadliest medieval diseases
The Black Death (Bubonic plague)
In the 1340s, an outbreak of bubonic plague swept through Europe. The most common form of plague, the bubonic plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents. It creates skin sores which become black, hence the name ‘Black Death’.
While statistics vary, the 14th-century plague was deadly, killing an estimated 25 million people, almost a third of the continent’s population. It paved the way for numerous public health initiatives, such as the use of quarantine and the establishment of hospitals.
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis has plagued civilisation for many generations, a permanent challenge over the course of human history for the medical profession. In the medieval period, it was highly contagious and difficult to treat, with cases of the disease growing progressively through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, peaking in the 18th and 19th centuries.
During the Middle Ages, TB was referred to as phthisis, the ‘white plague’, or consumption – names referencing the progressive wasting away of the victim’s health.
Smallpox
A highly contagious disease with a high mortality rate, smallpox was a major problem in the Middle Ages, having been introduced to Europe between the 5th and 7th centuries.
Like tuberculosis, smallpox was a leading cause of death into the 18th century, until a vaccine was invented in 1796 – but it continued to plague indigenous populations in regions where smallpox had been introduced. In the Middle Ages, waves of smallpox epidemics eradicated entire rural populations.
Dysentery
Dysentery was one of the most common and lethal diseases suffered by medieval armies, often striking during long campaigns when sanitation was poor and supplies were contaminated. While it does include vomiting and fever symptoms, it predominantly afflicts the victim with debilitating diarrhoea – so violent it causes bleeding (and death). It is highly contagious, spreading through contaminated food.
One of England’s most hated monarchs, King John, died from dysentery at Newark Castle in 1216 – one of the most gruesome deaths of any English monarch. He wasn’t the only one to fall foul of this terrible disease: the French King Louis VIII also died from it during a siege in 1266, as did the English King Henry V in 1422.
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Top image: Plague bacteria (Yersinia pestis). Yersinia pestis are gram-negative bacteria from the Enterobacteriaceae family, and causes bubonic plague (the Black Death of the Middle Ages) (credit: Getty Images)