#medieval stuff

[marginaliadesign]

[lhoandbehold]

Last we checked in with Marige, she was banished by Mother Superior. But the peace doesn't last long.

[Context - origin & design] [#1 Margie is discovered, immediately adopted] [#2 Margie immediately gets in trouble by being a little scamp]

[victusinveritas]

Two fun facts that I remember from my medieval studies days (sources: look I'm telling you about something learned sixteen years ago possibly while both myself and the instructor were drunk): 1) Dysentery was running rampant through the ranks of the English (and their Anglo-Welsh archers) so most of the archers probably fought either only in tunics or with slits in the back of their hose so they could just keep shitting while they launched volley after volley at the French knights and Genoese crossbowmen across a muddy field. This trick of just cutting yourself a shit flap to keep fighting while you had the trots continues to this day (and in no way started with the folks at Agincourt, folks have always found ways to shit and kill things at the same time, and this is usually the way--though you can also smear shit on pointy things and use that to cause infection trouble). 2. )Arrows were great and all that, and really good at slowing down or killing horses...but they way to really fuck up the day of a knight was to wait until they got on the ground with you and then out came the hammers, axes, and long knives and it was playtime. See, rules of chivalry were great, ya know, except when you wanted to, say, kill a bunch of pain in the ass nobility...that's when you use your auxiliaries, your bowmen and just 'Celtics'--Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Scots Border, the people you consider expendable, give them some nice close quarters smashing stuff to go along with their bows, and send them out into the mud and shit to kill baby kill. (Point 2 is almost verbatim from an instructor in a class called 'Violence in Medieval Europe')

[absinthe-and-alabaster]

hello my followers enjoy this mid-15th century yuri

[actualmermaid]

What's interesting to me about outdated medical theories like humoral theory and miasma theory is that these things were empirical and evidence-based, and they worked well enough for their time.

We moderns have this idea of premodern, pre-antibiotic medicine as like, quacks and wizards babbling nonsense and waving crystals at a person with a broken leg, and acting all surprised when the person gets gangrene and dies. ("God/the gods must hate us! Our magic spells didn't cure this person!") On the contrary, people who were educated in science and medicine understood the scientific method and they understood that some things worked better than others. They didn't always understand WHY, and they came up with theories to try and explain it, but they did in fact "believe in science." (Or, more accurately, they UNDERSTOOD science.) Medicine, magic, and religion were intertwined in ways that we no longer accept as empirical or evidence-based, but that's what evidence-based medicine does. It does its best with the tools that are currently available, and when better evidence is presented, old theories are retired.

This understanding of historical science and medicine is what made my recent writing experiment so fun and satisfying: "what is the treatment and prognosis for a traumatic knee arthrotomy in 1423?"

Translation: your medieval knight got shot through the knee with a crossbow bolt. Is this even survivable?

History (and common sense) tells us that medieval knights regularly survived traumatic injuries. An injury that penetrates the joint capsule, however, will absolutely fuck you up even now that we have things like antibiotics and reconstructive surgeries. So, when we take medieval medical knowledge into account, what's going to happen to our knight?

(Since I need him to survive for story purposes, I'm stacking the deck in his favor. He has access to a university-trained surgeon with experience in combat medicine, an experienced traditional apothecary, lots of money, servants, and people who love him. He has a best-case scenario.)

Medieval European physicians studied Galen, Avicenna, Hippocrates, and others. They had discourse with scholars from other cultures. They performed (or observed) dissections. They knew that bleeding and infection will kill you. To stop bleeding, they used cauterization. To stop infection, they understood that cleanliness was important, and they used medicines that we now understand as antimicrobials: vinegar, wine, spirits, honey, and certain herbs. They didn't have antibiotics yet, but they did their best. For everything they couldn't control, they prayed to God.

For an injury like this, the simplest solution is to amputate the leg at the knee. However, he doesn't want to lose his leg and his surgeon is confident he can save it, so they try something a little riskier: pulling out the bolt, dressing the wound, and hoping for the best.

They leave the crossbow bolt in until he's on the operating table, and when pulling it out triggers a popliteal artery bleed, they cauterize it with a hot iron. They wash the wound with antimicrobials and dress it with linen bandages and herbal compounds, which will be changed regularly. He has a friend coaching him through the Lord's Prayer during the procedure, since he's awake and in pain.

For afterward, wound care is critical in keeping infection at bay. The doctors also recommend a medicinal diet rich in oily fish and leafy greens, which we now understand to be anti-inflammatory and generally good for you. Their rationale, however, is that this diet is cold and moist, which will help balance out the hot, dry character of his painful, swollen knee. The knight himself understands this as a penitential Lenten diet, which is healthy for a sinful soul.

Our knight survives, and keeps his leg. He'll never walk without pain again, but he'll be able to ride a horse as long as he puts his weight on his good leg when mounting and dismounting. He'll train himself to work around his disability in combat, and he'll be able to work with craftsmen to come up with a custom orthotic contraption to stabilize his bad leg.

This then becomes a starting point to explore disability, class, and privilege as factors in medieval life, and whether or not any given person could have the same outcome.

[reckoning1187]

Random shenanigans that ensue when two nerds talk…

I sent my friend these memes:

And he responded with “hmm… I can lift one hundred sixty-six pounds. How many swords is that?”

(Oddly specific number btw 🤔)

Anyway— maths ensue on my end:

The average medieval short sword is two pounds.

The average medieval greatsword is six pounds.

So… my friend can carry about…

eighty-three short swords

or

twenty-seven and a half greatswords.

BUT…

I wasn’t including the weight of sword belts, because who wants to carry all of those naked blades with their bare hands.

The average sword belt (no frogs or large fastenings, and average leather thickness) is a little less than one pound. I’m just gonna round up to one because I’m lazy.

Assuming we’re being inefficient with our sword belt storage optimization, and saying one belt per sword, that’s about…

fifty-five and a third short swords

or

twenty-three and two thirds greatswords.

Now with scabbards — because let’s be honest, this is the modern age and SOMEONE’s going to enforce safety protocols.

Short sword scabbards are about one pound.

Greatsword scabbards are about two and a quarter pounds.

SO. If all the swords have scabbards, and each sword has a sword belt, how many swords can my friend carry?

Forty-one and a half short swords

or

about eighteen greatswords.

…

I wish these were my word problems in middle school maths.

[lycanjay]

drew some medieval stuff

my friend started geeking out about knights and it inspired me......

[goliardicsociety]

(1240-60). Medallion with Two Young Warriors with Falchions and Bucklers. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 17.190.2147.