In the middle ages, monks, nuns, and friars had it relatively easy. They lived quiet lives within friaries and monastic complexes, reading manuscripts, praying, and tending to gardens in which they grew their own food. They even enjoyed access to toilet facilities, while many of the peasantry at the time lacked even the most basic sanitation.
August 21, 2022
In the middle ages, monks, nuns, and friars had it relatively easy. They lived quiet lives within friaries and monastic complexes, reading manuscripts, praying, and tending to gardens in which they grew their own food. They even enjoyed access to toilet facilities, while many of the peasantry at the time lacked even the most basic sanitation.
You’d therefore expect medieval friars to be less exposed to parasites spread by fecal contamination than the townsfolk who lived around them. But our study, conducted on the remains of 44 medieval citizens of Cambridge, has found the exact opposite. It turns out that the local Augustinian friars were nearly twice as likely as the city’s general population to be infected by one group of parasites: intestinal worms.
Our findings suggest that something about the lifestyle of friars in medieval England brought them into regular contact with feces, despite their superior facilities. Unfortunately, it’s likely that the holy men’s horticultural pursuits undermined the sanitary benefits bestowed upon them by life in the friary.
In medieval times, medical practitioners believed intestinal worms developed from an excess of phlegm. To treat an infection, books preserved from the period prescribed the consumption of wormwood, or the drinking of a solution containing powdered moles. This lack of medical understanding demonstrates why many people lived with parasites and other conditions in the middle ages.
Previous studies have looked at the types of intestinal parasites present in medieval Europe by analyzing the sediment from cesspits and latrines, which would have been used by many different people over time.
More recently, researchers have started to assess what proportion of a population may have been infected by intestinal worms. They measured this by sampling the sediment from the pelvis of burials, where the intestines and worms would have been located during life.
