Presenter: Helena Klein
Mentor: Michael Peixoto, Honors College History
Oral Presentation
Major: Biology
Parents will go to amazing lengths to protect their child, from avoiding anything potentially toxic during pregnancy to refusing vaccines to prevent even a slight risk of complications. Even today, modern pediatrics mixes with traditional and superstitious views, many of which are constructed from a psychology of fear and hope. In the Middle Ages, parents treated their children using not only the latest techniques recommended by the Church and based on Galen’s philosophy of balancing humors, they also resorted to traditional, pre- or quasi-Christian medicines. Much of the study of medieval medical practices has assumed that medieval parents and doctors believed the balance of humors was constant throughout one’s lifetime, which would lead to children receiving the same treatments as adults. Furthermore, there is little scholarship on the place of children in medieval families more generally. My research examines the social history of medical and quasi-medical practices in the case of young people. Through an examination of medical and culinary treatises, inquisitorial and confessor records, and archeological accounts from Western Europe in the High and late Middle Ages, I provide new insights and raise new questions regarding the balance of humors in children. By extension, my work seeks to understand medicine not as an anomaly, but as a total social practice that can reshape our views on the role of the child in medieval society.