(pen scribbles)
(medieval music) (mellow music) - [Narrator] York, second city of England in medieval times. Daily life is hard enough
without the ever-present shadow that stalks all members of society, from kings to beggars. Centuries before the
discovery of penicillin, people go about their lives knowing it's only church or meager charity will be their help if they fall prey to the specter of disease. For more than 700 years, a woman lay buried below the
old stone streets of York. There was no record of who she was, nor of the awful conditions
she had to endure without hope of cure. - You accepted death was
gonna be with you soon. - [Narrator] Now, new
research is unlocking the story of her life by uncovering the evidence
contained in her bones. - It could be the proto-NHS,
but a long time ago. - [Narrator] The medieval world, the 5th to the 15th century. A team of archeologists
investigate medieval life by exploring the world
of the medieval dead. (dramatic music) - We have a classic view of
the story book medieval life. We don't hear the stories
about the common man trying to keep his family alive. - In our stores there are
hundreds, if not thousands of skeletons. - Archeologically speaking, we can now focus in on
the medieval dead people. - You're looking for clues
in the skeleton all the time. - And you couldn't help
almost look through their eyes thinking, "What did they
see, how did they die?" - [Narrator] "I forbid you
ever to enter a church, a monastery, a fair, a mill, a market, or an assembly of people. I forbid you to leave your house unless dressed in your
recognizable garb, and also shod. I forbid you to share house
with any woman, but your wife. I command you
(dramatic blast) if accosted by anyone
while traveling on a road to set yourself downwind
of them before you answer. I forbid you to enter any narrow passage, lest a passer-by bump into you. I forbid you, wherever you go, to touch the rim or the rope of a well without donning your gloves. I forbid you to touch any
child, or give them anything. I forbid you to drink or eat
from any vessel, but your own." The words of the mass of
separation thought by some to have been spoken by medieval churchmen to sufferers of leprosy. (upbeat music) In the middle of the Middle Ages, around the 10th to 11th century, the medieval world rises. As the dark ages are
gradually left behind, the rate of change within
societies gathers momentum. Across Europe and the near east, societies experience huge change. Birth rates increase,
and populations grow, migration between countries increases, and within countries migration
from the land to urban areas. Towns and cities grow to
accommodate vast new populations. And more people brings more
problems, such as overcrowding, poverty, war. As if the everyday folk
of the medieval world didn't have enough hazards to contemplate, it's a time of expansion too for mankind's greatest enemy, disease. It's an age still several centuries before the discovery of bacteria and penicillin. In cramped towns and
remote rural areas alike, sanitation and hygiene were misunderstood or completely absent. The 15th century Dutch cleric Erasmus knew how filthy were the
houses of most people. Floors are laid with white clay,
and are covered with rushes occasionally renewed but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed sometimes for 20 years, harboring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs
and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned. Conditions were perfect for bacteria, and the spread of infection. Disease had no equal in the
misery it could inflict, there were no defenses against it, no inoculations, no cures. By our standards today, it's inconceivable the people of medieval England endured such living conditions. - Did they have a really pleasant life, live a life of luxury,
eat the right foods, have a really pleasant, rich lifestyle? Or did they suffer some of
the most horrendous diseases known to man, leprosy, syphilis, things that really affected them, and even took the evidence
with them to the grave. And so looking at the skeleton
you can see them, and say, "That was not a nice
way to live or to die." (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Archeologists now recognize that much can be learned
from the study of disease. Its effects are locked away
in the archeological record, in the skeletal remains of the population of the middle ages, the medieval dead. Charlotte Roberts has spent her career studying archeological human remains through the lens of biological research. She's a bio-archeologist. - I think the term bio-archeologist melds the two disciplines of biology, so looking at the biological
evidence of a disease, with the archeological context. I need to understand the
archeology of the site from which these skeletons come from to be able to interpret
the evidence for disease that I see in the skeletons. - [Narrator] Charlotte is
an expert in paleopathology, the study of diseases within
the archeological record, tracing their history and development. It's a relatively new discipline having grown primarily
over the past 50 years, but now recently it's been helped by developments in new methods, such as DNA analysis of the pathogens that cause infectious disease. It's a branch of archeology, which has the potential to influence current or future healthcare. - Can we, as paleopathologists, actually study those
diseases and help explain, inform what we see today, and perhaps predict the future? We know, even just from
historical documents in the past, that a lot of infectious
diseases were pretty rife in the medieval period. And a lot of that was to do with the type of living
conditions people had, the types of diet they were eating, or what diets they weren't eating. So these people are
from late medieval York, buried at a site called Fishergate House, about 200 of them. And a lot of them were,
we would call non-adults, so they're not adult in age. - [Narrator] At the University of Durham, students learn how to
spot evidence of disease. It's part of the skill
of a bio-archeologist, detecting the traces of
infection on skeletal remains. - [Woman] That's the ribs,
and it actually is... - To be able to teach and research in paleopathology, you need
to have skeletal remains, or mummified remains to work with. In the medieval period, there seemed to be a huge range of infectious diseases, many of which we wouldn't
actually be able to see on the skeleton, because they
only affect soft tissues. But the key ones for me would
be tuberculosis and leprosy, both caused by a bacteria, as is something called treponemal disease. So those three what I would
call specific infections were ones that could cause
damage to the skeleton, and were pretty frequent
in the medieval period. - [Narrator] One of the most prevalent of these medieval diseases was syphilis, still known today as a venereal condition. Archeologist and
paleopathologist, Don Brothwell, has studied ancient diseases
in human and animal remains for almost half a century. - That is suspicious, as
if it could be surgical. - [Girl] Say cheese!
(all laugh) - First of all, you've got to realize that there are three clinical diseases, and venereal syphilis is just one of them. And that probably, if
you're thinking in terms of an evolutionary tree of diseases, that is close to the other two, but in fact probably is the last evolving, venereal syphilis, from this other group called the treponemes, or treponematosis the
whole group is called. And the other two are
endemic syphilis and yours. Endemic syphilis, you pick it up usually during the first
10 years of your life, it's linked with poor
hygiene, sharing food vessels, and that sort of thing. So it's within family groups,
you're all together eating, sharing food utensils and so on. So this is where it all begins. So it's easily caught during childhood, and then it gradually progresses through into the adult period. Now, endemic syphilis
most probably affected a lot of the populations
during medieval times in the near east. Now our connection there, of course, was with the Crusades, for instance. So we're likely to have probably
picked up endemic syphilis, and brought it through
into Northern Europe. I think at that stage, probably well-defined venereal syphilis, sexually transmitted syphilis, probably wasn't around,
or was extremely uncommon. - [Narrator] Through his
work in paleopathology, Don believes that syphilis
underwent a fundamental change, identified through remains
in the archeological record. The transformation happened
within the medieval period at the height of the
great population changes then occurring. - But what I think was happening
during the medieval period was that, in fact, the
disease endemic syphilis was becoming transformed, and
it was becoming transformed, because it had to move
through into Northern Europe, into different societies in
colder climates, and so on. So the medieval world was very interesting from this point of view for the evolution of
venereal syphilis, I think. This was really quite an
interesting phenomenon that was going on during
the medieval period. We know diseases have changed, they change their face through the years, modifying themselves and so on. Darwin would have been excited by this, only he didn't know about it at the time. We don't know how many times it's changed. This is something which we
still really have to study. We can study the evolution of
man, but in relation to that, there's also the
evolution of the diseases, which were following him
through time as it were. - [Narrator] The work of paleopathologists is being aided as more skeletal remains become available for study. Less stigma is attached
now than in previous eras to excavating Christian burials
from the medieval period, and even later. - Now, in terms of numbers
of bones or skeletons, let's just take England, or Britain, now we're excavating more
Christian burial grounds. And that's why they're beginning
to turn up in more numbers. So we have now quite a few cemeteries, either earlier medieval or later medieval. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] One of the
most notorious diseases of the medieval period
still carries with it today the stigma of uncleanliness and decay. It was a terrible condition
to endure in medieval times, though it was, and still is,
one made worse for sufferers by the plethora of myths,
superstitions, and inaccuracies, which surround it. The Bible did nothing to alleviate this. - One myth about leprosy is that it's described in
the Bible, and unfortunately, that myth has led to the continued stigmatization of people
with leprosy today. But it is believed now
that the word in the Bible that people have used
as indicating leprosy, was a mistranslation of a Hebrew word, which basically means
skin diseases, impurity, but not leprosy specifically. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] Misrepresentations
like this mean leprosy is still generally regarded
as being incurable. - Another myth is that
leprosy is incurable, but it is curable with antibiotics. And, in fact, the treatment's
been free since 1995, so if people can get
access to the treatment then they can be cured. So leprosy is curable, but
people call it the living death. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] By modern standards, it's a serious, but curable infection. - Leprosy's a bacterial infection,
so caused by a bacteria. The bacteria ends up in the lungs, usually from someone with leprosy coughing and sneezing over someone else, and then they inhale the
droplets containing the bacteria. So it establishes itself in the lungs, and then potentially it will spread to other parts of the body. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] The bacteria
affects the bones of the face, mainly the architecture of the nasal area. It can also affect the nervous system, the sensory nerves, motor nerves, and the autonomic nervous system. Sufferers lose their sense of feeling, leading to damage to the fingers
and toes going unnoticed, and becoming ulcerated and infected, which can then spread to the bones. Another crude myth dogs leprosy sufferers, that they lose fingers and toes. Again, it's a misrepresentation
of the disease's symptoms. - When the infection
affecting the hands and feet, or the hand and foot
bones, gets established, the fingers and toes are affected and they tend to absorb. So the ends of the
fingers and toes absorb, and the fingers and toes
get shorter and shorter. But the skin contracts around what's left of the fingers and toes, and the actual nails, the
fingernails and toenails, are actually retained. So, they don't drop off, the toes and fingers just get shorter. So to be able to recognize leprosy in skeletons, we're looking for those facial changes, and we're looking for changes
in the hands and the feet. - [Narrator] Probably the greatest myth surrounding leprosy is
that it causes fatality. In fact, it weakens the immune system, meaning death can occur from
whatever other infections the individual is also exposed to, such as tuberculosis in medieval times. Yet leprosy sufferers were just as likely to die from everyday conditions, such as heart attack or stroke, though they might have
lived with the disease for decades beforehand. - Leprosy's called the
living death because you don't die from it, and you can live for many years with it. But you can get complications
that will eventually kill you, like kidney problems. But I think the living death
phrase attached to leprosy has perhaps come through history. And I'm not entirely certain that that would have been
the case for everyone in the medieval period, feeling that it was the living death. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] Is it possible
that medieval people had a more pragmatic
accepting view of leprosy than up 'til now we've
given them credit for? Our perceptions today of leprosy are influenced by 19th century attitudes, when sufferers were
banished to remote places like condemned criminals,
known as leper colonies. - So when we come to the 19th century and the treatment of people with leprosy, then we see a lot of islands being used for segregation of people with leprosy. Robben Island off the
south coast of South Africa was where people were sent with leprosy, Spinalonga, the island off
the side of Crete in Greece, and Molokai in Hawaii. Documentary sources suggest their existence wasn't very pleasant. So you can imagine the sort of existence these people were having at that time. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] The 19th
century was the time of mass transportation of criminals, as well as the suffers
of infectious disease. In the medieval period, this practice was still
hundreds of years in the future. They had to deal with the problem of leprosy in society in different ways. Medical knowledge of disease
was still in the realm of alchemy and superstition. - If you went to a doctor
in the medieval period, they would have described
the cause of illness as being due to an
imbalance of your humors. At that time, the idea of health was based upon the four humors of blood, phlegm, black bile and
yellow bile being in balance. And if they were out of balance,
or if they were corrupted, then that led to illness. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] Piers Mitchell
is a consultant doctor and bio-archeologist. He's studied the principles
on which medieval medicine was taught and administered. - Now, among the higher clergy, we have this concept that sin
may be a cause of illness. In the 13th century, for example, the Fourth Lateran Council
specifically states that before a doctor
should treat a sick patient they should have abolition of their sins, because certain diseases
will not get better, regardless of how good a doctor is, unless God forgives the
sins that caused it. Most people who fell ill
in the medieval period would just be looked after by their family until they got better or died. Those who were wealthy, who
could afford a physician, or in fact the Nobles
who would have employed a physician to look after
them full time as such, these people would have had medical intervention and treatment. And of course, the physician would assess their humoral balance by
looking at their urine, checking their pulse,
and all the other ways they would interpret humoral balance. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] Around the 11th century, as the problem of leprosy
grew in European cities, special hospitals began to appear. - In the medieval period, we start to see the setting up of hospitals
known as leprosaria, which was specifically for
people they felt had leprosy. People with leprosy generally wanted to be in these leprosaria. They were felt to be a good place to be. They were looked after,
they were fed and watered, they had a chaplain, and
they could say prayers and prepare themselves for the next life. And they often saw having leprosy as a way of making penance for their sins so that they already had
been cleansed of their sins, so that they were in a better
position to get into heaven. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] Leprosaria were places where, by relative standards, a genuine humanist approach was adopted rather than being places to hide away unsightly or undesirable
elements of society. - Historians are now saying
from documentary data, that they were actually
fairly pleasant places to be, because at least you got fed, and you got a roof over your
head, somewhere to sleep. And it was probably better
than living in a gutter with no food and no shelter. - They are often independent institutions set up by a rich Nobelman,
or a businessman, who would want to have a philanthropic way of spending their money, so everyone in town thought
they were really nice. But also it was a way of getting prayers said for their soul,
so that when they died, if they were not able to
go straight to heaven, there were people praying for them, so that they would then be able to proceed to go into heaven to make up for the sins that they may have made during their life. And so we find from the
11th century onwards, a rapid rise in the foundation
not only of leprosaria for people with leprosy, but also of general
hospitals, and arms houses, and any way that you were providing care for the poor or the needy, where they would say
prayers for your soul. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] Medieval leprosy
hospitals were different to the later 19th century colonies. They were no places for
people cast out from society in forbidden, remote places. They were more a part of society, and their siting reflected this. Leprosaria were often in the midst of the new busy towns and cities. - People talk about the
siting of leprosy hospitals outside city walls. But if you think about it, it was quite a logical place to put them, because they were often on road sides, at crossroads, by bridges. And it was a good place to get charity, to get people to give them money, to get them to give them food. (tense music) - [Narrator] Skeletal remains showing signs of leprosy are rare. The effects of the disease
only manifest in the bones in a very small number of cases. Due to the way the disease affects particular parts of the skeleton, such as the bones of the face, they often don't survive
well in the ground. In 2007, a skeleton was found following development
work in Dixon Lane, York, in the Walmgate area,
within the medieval walls. The York Archeological
Trust excavated the site believed to be the cemetery associated with the lost church of St. Stephen's. Osteo-archeologist Malin
Holst was asked to carry out a full analysis of the skeleton, and to confirm that the individual had suffered from leprosy. - This skeleton here is
from the medieval period, probably the high medieval period, so the 12th to 15th century. And she was found together
with 116 other skeletons in the center of York, not
too far from Clifford's Tower. And it's a female skeleton, you can tell by this
area here of the pelvis, which is very wide. And she was quite old, well,
for medieval standards. She was at least 46-years-old,
but probably older. But unfortunately because
the aging of the skeleton relies on the deterioration of the joint, we can't age skeletons
beyond the age of 46. So she could have been 93-years-old or 47, we can't tell. So the interesting thing with this skull, we've got some lesions that
are associated with leprosy. So the area here of the nose
is more eroded, or is eroded, which normally wouldn't be the case. And that's typical of the
so-called rhinomaxillary syndrome in skeletons of individuals with leprosy. She also has lesions in the fingers that could be associated with leprosy. You can see here, this is the
first digit of the finger, this part here, and this bit
is the middle digit here, so it's this digit there. And you can see that
this is normal in shape, but this part here is actually
tapered at the distal end. And that's probably the result of leprosy. And it's the same in all
of the central digits, or parts of the digits in both hands. I think from looking at the skeleton, you can certainly say
that she was cared for, because she lived to a good age. She probably had the leprosy
infection for some time. And normally leprosy infection occurs during childhood or young adulthood. So, the fact that she's
at least 46-years-old means that she's lived for
some time with this infection. Now, what is interesting as well is that she's got very thick dental
plaque on some of the teeth. You can get an awful lot of
information from this material, because basically everything
that goes into your mouth can be trapped in this material. This is rock hard, this
is very tough stuff. So it can literally trap
anything that can be evidence for smoking, or for what people ate, for example, raspberries, and so on. There can also be flour weevils. So all sorts of things can
be trapped in these things. And now we have the
technology to analyze it. So this is very interesting stuff, and the thicker, the better. Also the person's DNA
that can be trapped there. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] Research is now being done to broaden the understanding of leprosy and other infectious
diseases in archeology. Up to now, it's not always been possible to say for certain that
an individual had leprosy, only if they had had it long enough for it to make recognizable
changes on the surface of bones. Yet now, with new DNA techniques, it's becoming possible
to unlock information preserved within skeletal remains. At the University of York's
Department of Bio-archeology Sarah Fiddyment and Camilla Speller are developing new techniques to do this. One involves sampling
organic material from within one of the best preserved parts
of the skeleton, the teeth. In particular, they're interested
in the dental calculus, or plaque, that builds
up through daily life. If it isn't brushed away,
the calculus forms deposits as hard as enamel itself, which can last for thousands of years. - [Malin] So this is the
skeleton from Dixon Lane, and it does have nice thick
deposits of the dental plaque. - Oh wow, yeah, no, that is a lot. - [Malin] Do you think
that's thick enough? - I think so.
- Definitely. - We think so. I think if we start with these, and see how much we collect. - [Sarah] Yeah, there's at least five with considerable amounts. Calculus is basically the
best reservoir we have of the bacterial history of that person. So we have remains of any
of the possible diseases caused by a bacteria. The remains are basically mineralized and preserved perfectly. So we're managing to get
really good information, both from DNA and proteins. So it's an invaluable source really. It starts off as a biofilm on the teeth, so a thin layer covering enamel, and as the bacteria grows,
and as time goes on, what was a film, will become mineralized. And that basically is what
preserves all the bacteria in a perfect state. And layers just consecutively grow on top. If you don't clean your teeth, then it just accumulates
layer after layer. And these have particularly good calculus. - It seems a shame that
the dentist comes along now and scrapes off all our calculus. We pay them so much to remove it. We hope to do two different
analysis on it, or three. We'd like to look at
the protein component. So looking both at the human proteins, but also at the bacterial proteins. And we're gonna do DNA analysis on it, and amplify the bacterial DNA of all of the different bacterial
species that are in there. And hopefully we'll be
catching the mycobacterium that causes leprosy, so
mycobacterium leprae. And so we're looking
specifically at this skeleton to see if we can reconstruct
the ancient genome of mycobacterium leprae. So we can see the genetic
makeup of leprosy in the past, and compare it to today. We're just only discovering
really what a rich reservoir calculus is for these bacteria. And so this is one of
the first applications, is to look beyond oral bacteria, and now look at other
maybe systemic diseases. Once you combine that with
the archeological context, and also with other information that you can get from the skeleton, you can sort of piece
together quite a full picture of somebody's life. (tense music) - [Narrator] Sarah and
Camilla's research is ongoing. And just one means by which the long term history of diseases can be explored and tracked through time, the same way human and other behaviors are contained within the
archeological record. Piers Mitchell too, has studied
the archeological evidence for infectious disease, in particular, through his work in the Middle East relating to the Crusades, he studied how one of the
military orders of knights was dedicated to helping
with the problem of leprosy, in the disease-ridden Crusader states. - The Order of Saint Lazarus
was a Latin European style monastic order that was actually set up in the early 12th century
in the Middle East as a result of the Crusades. It started off as a medical order where people with leprosy
would be looked after by healthy people who are often pilgrims, who came out to the East
and decided to settle. By the 1140s, The Order
of Saint Lazarus expanded. So it didn't just have this
leprosaria outside Jerusalem, it set up one in Acre,
and it set up a number of other leprosaria in Caesarea, and other places in the
kingdom of Jerusalem, and the other Frankish states. We find them expanding
so that the leprosaria that had been built as
independent institutions in Europe were then donated by people who couldn't really afford
to run them anymore, and given to The Order of Saint Lazarus. So it was then their
job to look after them. What we find is over time, where knights and crusaders
either develop leprosy, or develop leprosy in Europe, but wanted to spend the rest
of their life doing something what they felt was really important, they could join The
Order of Saint Lazarus. So that we find that by the 13th century, The Order of Saint Lazarus has a significant military component, where they fight with the
army of the King of Jerusalem. And the knights of The
Order of Saint Lazarus would fight in their own component as part of the King's army. But they do tend to have had a reputation of rarely coming back. So while it may be that they deliberately wanted to fight to the death, because they felt if you're going to die fighting the enemies of Christendom, then that may well have
meant that you would then go straight to heaven from there, their views on what happened after death. But a number of battles
in the 1240s and 1250s, we find that either all the members of The Order of Saint
Lazarus that took part died, or only a few returned alive. - [Narrator] Within decades,
the Order's influence extended from the holy land
in the East to England. - In England, there were
about perhaps 320 leprosaria built altogether during
the medieval period. And only eight of them were part of The Order of Saint Lazarus. So you can see how the
majority of leprosaria were still independent institutions, paid for and run by
towns or by the nobility. - [Narrator] So far as is known, The Order of Saint Lazarus
operated no hospitals in the city of York. Yet Charlotte Roberts believes
the woman from Dixon Lane could still have received
treatment in the city. She's come to the University of York's Department of Archeology at King's Manor. Her aim is to find out what she can about medieval York's leprosy hospitals, and whether there's a
link between any of them and the Dixon Lane burial site. Marin Holst knows the
city's archeological sites. She's carried out osteological analysis on many of the skeletons from them. - I did a little bit of
research trying to find out how many leprosaria there were in York in the medieval period. There was quite an early
one in the 12th century, Saint Nicholas. - [Marin] Right, yeah. - [Charlotte] I think you
found that one, haven't you? - [Marin] Yes, that was excavated by the York Archeological Trust. - [Narrator] The records that remain seem to indicate that
the city's leprosaria were places where people in need, who did not necessarily have leprosy, could also receive shelter. - I noticed in the documentary
evidence for this hospital, that both people with
leprosy and also the poor were admitted to this hospital. - Oh, right. - So it was a big mix. - [Marin] The Dixon Lane
skeleton was part of the St. Stephen's Cemetery
skeletal assemblage, which was excavated here in this area, which was right next to
the King's fish pool here. And I think that was
excavated together with 113 other skeletons, again,
none of which had leprosy. Is that common then, that
they had a marginal position? - Well, it's been suggested that they had a marginal position, but my research also
suggests that generally skeletons with leprosy
from archeological sites, and this is all over the
world that I've located, are usually not in leprosaria. And if they are in just
normal parish cemeteries, they're not marginalized,
they're with everyone else. They're not made special. - She was just right amongst
all the other skeletons, yeah. - [Narrator] If the skeleton was buried in a marginal position,
(dramatic music) this could indicate an
association with leprosy, that the burial was
deliberately placed away from other graves. The next step is to try
and locate the church where the Dixon Lane woman
might have been a parishioner. But the area has changed dramatically with modern development. Looking at the medieval
layout of that area might offer up clues. Helen Goodchild helps
Charlotte try to zero in on the archeology around Dixon Lane, where the lost church of St. Stephen's is thought to have once stood. - Is there any evidence on early maps perhaps of this St. Stephen's Church? - So in what period are we talking about? - [Charlotte] We're talking about 12th, 13th, 14th century. - Well, the earliest map
that we do have for York, or that actually shows
any kind of real detail for the city itself,
is the John Speed map, which is actually much later. But it's about 1610. So this is just the modern
ordinance survey map, so its correct geographic coordinates. If I turn that on here, and switch off the ordinance survey map. So Clifford's Tower is here. So the whole castle precinct is here. And just to the east of
that is what is probably the area of Dixon Lane. (dramatic music) - [Narrator] The map
doesn't show a connection with St. Stephen's, but there are several other churches within a very close area, several of which have
connections with leprosy. - [Helen] St. Mary, St.
Margaret's, St. Dennis, and St. George's all were
very near to each other. - There's a number of saints actually associated with leprosy, and the foundation of leprosaria. George is one of them, but
also Giles, Mary Magdalen. There's probably a dozen
saints associated with leprosy. It is interesting that St. George's Church is actually located very close to where we think St. Stephen's was, and where this lady
with leprosy was buried. But what that tells us! - [Narrator] Disease was
almost impossible to avoid for everyday people in the middle ages. So much so that this influenced attitudes towards life and death. - Now infectious diseases
in the medieval period were clearly feared. We hear of people that
ran away from epidemics. So we know that they wanted to live, they didn't all want to die. But we do also know that
attitudes to disease in the medieval period were
fairly tolerant of death. They understood that death happened. They didn't all expect to
live to a ripe old age. - Until relatively recent times, the last hundred or two years, your life expectancy was low. So around earlier populations, medieval and prehistoric and so on, they were seeing people dead
and gone, their parents, by 30, 40 years of age. And that we can't understand nowadays, we can't really get a feel for that, that life was short for them all. They didn't see many old folk around, old in the sense of 80,
90, or 100 years of age. A few would make it, but very few. I think we don't realize how
much people of those days accepted life was short and tough. If you got a serious condition, you accepted death was
gonna be with you soon. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] The church encouraged a fatalistic yet essentially positive view as to how to live life, knowing that death was
never very far away. - The teachings from the church told them that if they did die, so long as they had confessed their sins
and lived a good life, it didn't matter that
they were going to die, because they were going to go to heaven. And in that context, the fear of death was something that we would
expect would be very different in the medieval period, and much less of a problem
than we might expect to find in modern people who may not
follow a particular religion, and who often fear death as a result, because they think the end of their life is the end of everything for them. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] On the streets of York, Charlotte finds the spot in Dixon Lane where the woman lay buried
for more than 700 years. - All right, so this is Dixon Lane where the St. Stephen's Church was, and where the cemetery was excavated, obviously in advance of
these new buildings here. And it's where the lady
with leprosy was found. Whether there was actually
any hospital nearby where this person had access
to treatment is another matter, but she was buried in a
normal parish cemetery, but she had bone changes of leprosy. Whether she'd actually
been diagnosed with leprosy is another matter. But I would suggest that she was probably accepted in the community
as part of that community, and was buried in their
community churchyard. Perhaps she was a valued
member of the community, even though she may have been recognized as having this infectious disease. (melancholy music) - [Narrator] It will never be known if the woman buried at Dixon Lane received special care for her leprosy. Yet where she lay was
in consecrated ground in the heart of a city parish, within a short walk of a
church whose Patron Saint was connected with sufferers
from that terrible disease. Hers was no exile's burial. She lay at the heart of a community that seems likely to
have regarded her plight, at the very least, with compassion. She suffered from one
of the worst diseases in human history. And yet she wasn't sent away
to die in a closed colony. She was buried in the heart of the society in which she lived, and
of which she was a part. - To some degree, they are still here because we still have access to them. Sometimes when they develop a cemetery, and they have to clear it, the people have to come up. And as distasteful as
some people might find it, sometimes it's a necessity. Sometimes these people are found
by accident, the skeletons. And we have to do them a
service by allowing them to tell us their story. (melancholy music) And so finding the
evidence of these people brings it all back to life. It brings the evidence
back straight towards us, and it becomes unavoidable. So therefore we've got the
buildings, we've got the people, we've got everything. And this is the medieval world, and it's a privilege
to be able to study it. (melancholy music)
