ABSTRACT
Carole Rawcliffe It has long been recognized that the medieval English hospital was chiefly, sometimes almost exclusively, concerned with the promotion of spiritual health.1 In marked contrast to the larger institutions of continental Europe, medicalization came late, and during the Middle Ages little in the way of professional treatment was available to the sick, impotent and aged poor who constituted the great majority of patients.2 Standards of physical care were extremely variable: mismanagement, financial problems and corruption took their toll, as did the social, economic and demographic crises of the fourteenth century.3 Yet despite these difficulties some of the richer hospitals, such as St Leonard's, York, were able to provide their patients with plain but nourishing food, medication based on home-grown herbal preparations, high-quality nursing and a relatively clean environment with adequate bedding and heating.4 Such a regime was entirely in keeping with recommendations for the management of the body made by medieval physicians: peaceful surroundings, a moderate diet and the avoidance of stress figured prominently in the advice manuals produced for those who could afford the services of a physician. The holistic approach to healing adopted in the larger, quasi-monastic hospitals of medieval England was thus remarkably similar to that of the regimen sanitatis, with its emphasis on mental as well as physical equilibrium.S The cure of souls - including those of founders and benefactors - was, however, accorded absolute priority, and may without exaggeration be described as the raison d'etre of the institutions examined in this essay.
