Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

• Contents: Introduction; Fit to preach and pray: health, sickness and the friars' vocation; Pro salute: the convent and infirmary environment; In operibus pietatis: the infirmarers, their duties and equipment; Omnia computare: the patients, standards of care and finance; Dangers and disorders: the decline of the frater medicus; Let us honour the physicians: secular medical practitioners; Quod curabit?: the plague outbreaks; Strengthening nature: food for the healthy and the sick; The hand of Christ: drugs for the sick friar; Cures of other ills: surgical and ancillary treatments; Conclusion; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.

'... a thorough piece of research that carefully deploys the available evidence to paint a new picture of the medical practices to be found in the convents of the medieval friars.' Medical History '... a worthwhile addition to collections on medieval medicine or on the mendicant orders.' Parergon 'Angela Montford has written a lucid, well focused and original study of medical practice by mendicants inside and outside their convents, their resort to secular physicians, surgeons and apothecaries and the medicinal remedies given to their sick brethren in this changing environment.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History ’One of the great merits of the book is its wide focus - taking in conventual buildings, including the infirmary, the offices of infirmarer and frater medicus, the importance of health and strength to the mendicants' religious mission, their response to the challenge of plague, and the practice of diet, medicine, and surgery on the brothers as patients. [Angela Montford] has been able to bring all these topics together in a coherent way because her work is built on the foundation of detailed archival research into the Dominican and Franciscan houses of Bologna... an extremely valuable contribution to a hitherto neglected subject.’ Speculum