Nothing calls to mind nonsensical treatments and bizarre religious healing rituals as easily as the notion of Dark Age medicine. The “Saturday Night Live” sketch “Medieval Barber Theodoric of York” ...

Medieval doctors saw fertility as having a cutoff point rather than slowly declining with age, ancient medical texts show. Male and female reproductive aging were seen as similar processes that ...

Medieval medical advice mixed superstition, philosophy, and bad observation. Doctors prescribed vomiting, animal waste, fumes, and strange rituals as cures. Disease was blamed on vapors, imbalance, or ...