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 CHAPTER VIII

Circa 1348—1399

DEPOPULATION

HE sufferings inflicted by the punishments of the Middle Ages must have been slight compared to the miseries produced by the gross ignorance of the doctors and surgeons of these old times. It is impossible not to smile at their strenuous efforts to appear learned before their unhappy patients. Our forefathers suffered from much the same diseases as we do to-day: they had consumption and cancer, gout and rheumatism and measles, epilepsy and whooping-cough; they had wounds and sores to be treated with no antiseptic dressings, operations to be performed