Wellness Guides for Seniors in the Middle Ages

Summary

Mentioning to non-medievalists that one's research interest is investigating regimens for old people in the Middle Ages invariably draws the following baffled reaction, “but I thought there were no old people in the Middle Ages. Wasn't the life expectancy much lower then, and weren't these folks all dead before the age of forty?” While it is true that the medieval life expectancy was lower than the life-span is in today's industrialized world, some seniors may have profited from wellness guides. Once certain groups are taken out of the calculation — namely children, with infant mortality registering as substantially higher than it is today, women of childbearing age, men of fighting age, peasants whose bodies had aged prematurely from decades of hard manual labor and inadequate nutrition, and the poor (“people without history”) — the potential average age of seniors rises dramatically. Among the individuals whose age was the highest were the religious and members of the medical profession; moreover, both of the latter groups belonged to the knowledgeable elite of the time and could therefore record their experiences and ideas about old age.

That this discourse is predominantly a male one should not be surprising since women were excluded from medical schools, and since there were many more male than female members of religious orders. There were exceptions, of course, notably the nun Hildegard of Bingen, who included some information on aging women in her medical works, especially in connection with sexuality, menstruation, and bloodletting.