Underground and Over the Sea: More Community Prophylactics in Europe, 1100-1600

Abstract

Public health historians have repeatedly shown that the theory, policy, and practice of group prophylactics far predate their alleged birth in industrial modernity, and regularly draw on Galenic principles. While the revision overall has been successful, its main focus on European cities entails a major risk, since city dwellers were a minority even in Europe’s most urbanised regions. At the same time, cities continue to be perceived and presented as typically European, which stymies transregional and comparative studies based at least in part on non- or extra-urban groups. Thus, any plan to both offer an accurate picture of public health’s deeper past and fundamentally challenge a narrative of civilizational progress wedded to Euro-American modernity (“stagism”) would benefit from looking beyond cities and their unique health challenges. The present article begins to do so by focusing on two ubiquitous groups, often operating outside cities and facing specific risks: miners and shipmates. Evidence for these communities’ preventative interventions and the extent to which they drew on humoral theory is rich yet uneven for Europe between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Methodological questions raised by this unevenness can be addressed by connecting different scales of evidence, as this article demonstrates. Furthermore, neither mining nor maritime trade was typically European, thus building a broader base for transregional studies and comparisons.

The Medieval and Early Modern Hospital. A Physical and Symbolic Space

“…The existence of mortality crises caused by epidemics before 1348 (Maltas 2019), the confirmation that hygienic measures were applied before the Black Death (Geltner 2020;Rawcliffe 2013;Roca 2022) and the fact that the epidemic was not perceived as a new type of mortality until the end of the 14 th century (Arrizabalaga 1994: 243) are factors which have reduced the importance placed on the Black Plague in the implementation of new public hygiene measures, and have led to an interpretation of the event as merely consolidating these pre-existing measures. Prior to 1348, the authorities acted according to the principals of Galenism, even in non-urban contexts, in the same moment in which medical professionals were gaining social prestige and participating in some institutions, such as courts (Geltner, Weeda 2021;.…”

An unproblematized truth: Foucault, biopolitics, and the making of a sociological canon

“…Archaeological evidence supports the ubiquitous presence of these prophylactic insights, and their social or public nature, for instance in the construction of mines and military camps (Coomans and Geltner 2013). This newly emerging area of research is particularly important to pluralize histories of healthcare because it shows that the politicization of medicine and group health didn't happen only at the urban level (the city as forerunner of the modern State) but also in non-sedentary contexts: rural miners, itinerant armies, and mariners, all premodern 'populations' to which principles of prophylactic care were applied following Galenic insights and whose development often preceded the urban politics of health (Geltner 2019b(Geltner , 2021Geltner and Weeda 2021).…”

Kinetic health: ecologies and mobilities of prevention in Europe,c. 1100-1600

“…Next, many mining communities were occupationally diverse, not only in terms of labor division and specialization underground, but also thanks to metallurgical and mineralogical processing above ground, including by women and children. Thus, and perhaps in contrast to their rough, isolated and masculine ethos since the nineteenth century (Barragán Romano and Papastefanaki 2020), earlier miners could live in multigenerational communities, occupy family households, engage in animal husbandry, artisanship, horticulture and trade, see a doctor and celebrate mass in similar fashion to members of any urban parish (Bailly-Maître and Benoit 2006 ; Verna 2020 ; Geltner and Weeda 2021 ). I emphasize their relatively stronger resemblance to city dwellers since, unlike the vast majority of rustics (and not a few members of the urban underclasses), miners had significant privileges both individually and as a community, in recognition of their unique hardships and special contribution to landlords’ coffers.…”