Colonial medicine is a thriving field of study in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century medicine. Medicine can be used as a lens to view colonialism in action and as a way to critique colonialism. This article argues that key debates and ideas from that modern field can fruitfully be applied to the Middle Ages, especially for the early empires of Spain and Portugal (mid-fourteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries). The article identifies key modern debates, explores approaches to colonization and colonialism in the Middle Ages and discusses how medieval and modern medicine and healthcare could be compared using colonial and postcolonial discourses. The article ends with three case studies of healthcare encounters in Madeira, Granada and Hispaniola at the end of the fifteenth century.
Objectives: During the Middle Ages, Portugal witnessed unprecedented socioeconomic and religious changes under transitioning religious political rule. The implications of changing ruling powers for urban food systems and individual diets in medieval Portugal is poorly understood. This study aimed to elucidate the dietary impact of the Islamic and Christian conquests. Materials and Methods: Radiocarbon dating, peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS) and stable isotope analysis (δ 13 C, δ 15 N) of animal (n = 59) and human skeletal remains (n = 205) from Muslim and Christian burials were used to characterize the diet of a large historical sample from Portugal. A Bayesian stable isotope mixing model (BSIMM) was used to estimate the contribution of marine protein to human diet.Results: Early medieval (8-12th century), preconquest urban Muslim populations had mean (±1SD) values of À18.8 ± 0.4 ‰ for δ 13 C 10.4 ± 1 ‰ for δ 15 N, indicating a predominantly terrestrial diet, while late medieval (12-14th century) postconquest Muslim and Christian populations showed a greater reliance on marine resources with mean (±1SD) values of À17.9 ± 1.3‰ for δ 13 C and 11.1 ± 1.1‰ for δ 15 N. BSIMM
Recent historians have rehabilitated King Duarte of Portugal, previously maligned and neglected, as an astute ruler and philosopher. There is still a tendency, however, to view Duarte as a depressive or a hypochondriac, due to his own description of his melancholy in his advice book, the
Loyal Counselor
. This paper reassesses Duarte's writings, drawing on key approaches in the history of medicine, such as narrative medicine and the history of the patient. It is important to take Duarte's views on his condition seriously, placing them in the medical and theological contexts of his time and avoiding modern retrospective diagnosis. Duarte's writings can be used to explore the impact of plague, doubt and death on the life of a well-educated and conscientious late-medieval ruler.
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