Beyond the Medical Text: Health and Illness in Early Medieval Italian Sources
Clare Pilsworth
The vast majority of surviving evidence for health care, medicine and attitudes to illness in early medieval northern Italy comes not from traditional medical texts, but legal, hagiographical archaeological sources. political history Italy, following the formal end Western Empire AD 476, was complex. One consequence this that law codes applied were dependent on how individual defined ethnically rather than territories: makes a rich varied source illness. I argue law-makers sought include exclude or marginalise sick social legal transactions. Using ninth-century official Petrus Niviano as case study, show that, hands high-status at least, inclusion could become reality simply pious intention by rulers.
Social history of medicine|Europe PMC (PubMed Central)