Greetings everyone! After last week's post on rearing animals, I thought this week we would return to a subject closer to home, that is to say my own current predicament as I am 'under the weather'.
Thanks to modern medicine and a great deal of rest, I am on the mend, but what does it look like when the former and perhaps even the latter isn't an option? Well, let's take a brief detour into the world of Medieval medicine.
Traditionally Medieval medicine is portrayed through Humorism, a theory developed by the Ancient Greeks and Romans that there were 4 humours of the body in the same way that there are 4 elements, and that an imbalance of these humours caused sickness. Thus in order to become well again, one needed to rebalance the humours through specific food types, exercises and other methods (such as the famous leeches).
This was the medicine of classically trained physicians, though these were few and far between, for the vast majority of people you would need to rely on 'wise women/men' who were more herbalists than anything else. Of course, this blended with everything else in the middle ages with a good mixture of praying and magic involved too.
For major injuries there was also the barber, or the blacksmith, who would always be happy to pull a tooth or saw off a gangrenous leg.
So what does this mean for Under The Yoke? By making use of the forest and your croft, you will be able to procure the necessary herbs for medicines and then if you plop down a Herbalist table you can craft medicines to help balance your humours. For those who are not so medically inclined a sufficient donation to the church for prayers or a change to your diet may help too.
That is of course if you do want to re-balance your humours, though Eukrasia (the name for having properly balanced humours) can have it's advantages to your health; unbalanced humours can have advantages such as a sharper mind, sharper tongue or a more mellow outlook.
Whatever the case may be, I can assure you I prefer to live in the time of vaccines and painkillers than magic stones and animal dung ointments.