The British History Podcast

Today we are beginning our project on the Staffordshire Hoard.  We will be featuring interviews from major figures within the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent, and with the Staffordshire County Council. The Staffordshire Hoard: www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk The Potteries Museum: www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: www.bmag.org.uk Support the Show

61 – Staffordshire Hoard: Introduction

Today we are beginning our project on the Staffordshire Hoard.  We will be featuring interviews from major figures within the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The Potteries Museum in Stoke on Trent, and with the Staffordshire County Council. The Staffordshire Hoard: www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk The Potteries Museum: www.stokemuseums.org.uk/pmag The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery: www.bmag.org.uk It’s July 5, 2009, and veteran metal detectorist Terry Herbert is methodically pacing through the field near Hammerwich village in Staffordshire, just a short walk from the old Roman road now known as Watling Street. He slowly swung his metal detector in front of him as made his way through the field. This wasn’t Terry’s first trip to the field. Only a week earlier he had visited the site and found nothing of worth despite spending half the day combing through the farmland. But this time was different. It was only 15 minutes until his metal detector gave off a familiar beep. There, hidden underneath mere plough soil, was a bit of twisted metal. At first he thought it was brass, but upon closer inspection, Terry realized he was holding gold. And he couldn’t have known this at the time, but this was gold that hadn’t been touched by anyone for approximately 1,400 years. He moved a little further down and his metal detector went off again, and again, and again. And with each beep, more gold and garnet objects were being unearthed. Things continued in this way until about 3pm, at which point Terry decided to show the landowner, Fred Johnson, what he had managed to discover.

I'm back! I really missed this. In fact, this music doesn't really capture how pleased I am to be recording again. Now I know I've been gone for a bit. You might recall that I was over in the UK doing interviews and also meeting some pretty fantastic listeners. Well, that's finished for now and over the next few weeks you'll be hearing from the various experts I've been speaking to but for right now I think we need to bring to a close the saga of Unferth and his incredible collection of maladies. And lets open up with a comment from Listener Claudia. You might recall the use of breast milk to cure Unferth’s eye troubles from the last episode? Well, Claudia says that using breast milk to treat your child’s conjunctivitis is common advice in New Zealand to this day. So some of these cures we’ve been speaking about live on. Now in order to wrap up this discussion on medicine in a single episode, we’ll need to make this something of a catch all episode. We're are going to cover surgery, magical cures, issues of contraception and family planning, and childbirthing. It's going to be a busy one! So lets do this! So surgery... Much of western medicine, I think many of you will agree, has been surgery focused. "Is something wrong with you? If so, can we cut if off? Then why are we still talking? Hand me my scalpel."

Ok, so last week we chatted a bit about treatments. And from the comments that I’ve received, it seems like many of you were quite interested in the treatments and wanted to hear some more. And frankly, I had fun putting it together. So lets talk about some more. Lets begin with trauma since there would have been a fair amount of that in Anglo Saxon britain. If Unferth was in a fight and received a cut that went down into the senews and severed them (and lets face it, this was probably not an uncommon event)... Bald’s leechbook suggests that the physician pound some earthworms and then put them on Unferth’s open wound. Yep. Ground up earthworms. I suppose he should just be happy it isn’t the powdered fresh horse dung from last week. But it really makes you wonder who thought worms were a good idea and why, after it undoubtedly failed on numerous occasions, they kept doing it and wrote it down.

Ok, so last week we spoke about medicine, but largely on the theory of practice, training, and who was involved. It was all a bit high brow and might have sounded rather impressive. Especially when I pointed out that with Bald's Leechbook, people in England had the potential of having state of the art medicine for the time. Think of it. State of the art medicine! That sounds pretty good, right? Well, now that I have you all excited about the status of English medical knowledge, I'm going to break your hearts by talking about what this medicine actually looked like and remind you that state of the art is relative.

You should come to The Black Swan Inn in York on November 25 at 5pm to meet up with me and Jamie Redfern of A History of Hannibal! You should also come to The George Inn in London on December 1st at 5pm to meet up with me and Roifield Brown of How Jamaica Conquered the World. It'll be fun!

Ok, so Anglo Saxon medicine. Before you fans of kings and war hit skip, consider this. Who are you most looking forward to hearing about from this era? If you're all about kings, my guess is you're excited to hear about Alfred the Great. Did you know he was sickly? Like... really sickly. There are a variety of theories of what he might have had, but what we can be sure of is that he was forced to avail himself of all that Anglo Saxon medicine had to offer... so aren't you curious about what he had to deal with? I know I am! Alright, to start with, if there's medicine, and we know there was, then there must have been practitioners. But what did that look like? Who were these people and how did they get that position? In the US you have to have a 4 year degree, then go to medical school, then get through residency, pass exams, get licensed, etc etc. There are plenty of hoops to ensure that a doctor has the minimum required knowledge in his or her area of practice. And so we can be reasonably sure that doctors know what a spleen does, are familiar with osmosis, and hopefully know a great deal more than that too. And in large part that assurance is the result of the regulations that force potential doctors to overcome certain hurdles and enforce a certain level of uniformity in medical practice.

They're coming...

60 – The Return of the Kings

They're coming... Support the Show

As you might imagine since I’m doing an episode on it, Halloween has a lot of British influence upon it. In fact, the name itself comes from Scotland, where All Saint’s Eve (also known as All Hallow’s Eve) was shortened in the 16th century to Halloween. And the name stuck. But as you have probably gathered, originally the day was simply the day before All Saint’s Day (also known as All Hallows or Hallowmas). And this might come as a shock to you, but All Saint’s Day was the day in which early Christians commemorated all their saints... and it is still practiced today. But how did the day before All Saint’s Day become such a big holiday? And what’s with the costumes, candy, and jack-o-lanterns?

59 – The Halloween Special

As you might imagine since I’m doing an episode on it, Halloween has a lot of British influence upon it. In fact, the name itself comes from Scotland, where All Saint’s Eve (also known as All Hallow’s Eve) was shortened in the 16th century to Halloween. And the name stuck. But as you have probably gathered, originally the day was simply the day before All Saint’s Day (also known as All Hallows or Hallowmas). And this might come as a shock to you, but All Saint’s Day was the day in which early Christians commemorated all their saints... and it is still practiced today. Support the Show

58 – Dark Age Medicine