15. Medieval doctors were challenged by the lack of personal hygiene
Depending upon where one stood in terms of personal wealth, hygiene was a hit-or-miss affair in the medieval period, though it improved over time. People did wash, though not frequently, and most were aware of the need for cleaning their teeth, though the tools to do so efficiently were rare. Affluence and cleanliness went hand in hand, the presence of the latter descending with that of the former. Dental care, when confronted with a toothache, consisted of removing the offending tooth, a task that barber-surgeons were authorized to perform, but which was frequently done at home, without any form of anesthetic.
Erasmus, who lived in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, pointed out the threat to health presented by the habit in Europe’s northern regions and in England, of covering floors with straw and rushes. Though the straw was occasionally replaced by assiduous housekeepers, it was never completely so, and decades’ worth of detritus and debris was trapped in what remained, contributing to the less-than-healthy air in homes, as well as harboring fleas, ticks, lice, and other vermin. But the greatest threat to public health was the disposal of waste, including human waste, which was haphazard and for the most part unregulated, permeating water supplies and spreading disease in proportion to the population density of the region in which it was created.