Medieval Superstitions & Medicine

Use the following websites to start your research:

1. http://listverse.com/2014/03/03/10-completely-uncanny-superstitions-from-the-middle-ages/
2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8913709/Tony-Robinson-on-the-top-fivesuperstitions-that-gripped-medieval-Britain.html
3. http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/13-strange-superstitions
4. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/health_and_medicine_in_medieval_.htm
5. http://listverse.com/2013/07/31/10-bizarre-medieval-medical-practices/
6. https://www.aimseducation.edu/blog/medieval-medical-practices-still-use-today/
After skimming the websites above, choose the 1 superstition AND the 1 medical
practice that intrigue you the MOST. Continue your narrowed research to learn the
specific details of each. Compile a list of at least 10 facts about each. Bookmark the
website(s) where you found your information on your Pearltrees account.
Superstition: Drangey Island, A Place for Evil.
1. Drangey is located in Skagafjrur fjord in the North of Iceland.
2. In Icelandic culture it is connected to the Saga of Grettir the Strong, an antihero and an outlaw who
spent his last years in the island in the eleventh century with his brother Illugi. To make things a bit nicer
for them they had a slave with them.
3. The forming of the island was explained by a tale of two giants, one female and one male, crossing the
fjord with the fjord with their cow in tow.
4. Apperantly the island is a home to guillemots, black-legged Kittiwake, ravens, falcons, fulmar auk and
the ever popular hole digging and photogenic puffin.
5. You can swim the straight between the island and the mainland, 15 people have accomplished this
challenge.
6. The rocky island Drangey in the middle of Skagafjordur is a flat topped mass of tuff, rising almost 200
meters out of the ocean.
7. The cliffs serve as nesting sites for around million sea birds and have been used throughout Icelands
history for egg collection and bird netting.

8. The island is remnant of a 700,000 year old volcano, made of volcanic tuff, forming a massive stone
fortress.
9. Used ropes to climb downwards, fowling eggs, birds caught using rafts placed in sea underneath clifts.
10. Drangey represents cow, kerling( supposedly female giant, name means old hag) south of it, Karl (the
male giant) north of the island, disappeared long ago.

Medical Practice: Bloodletting

1. Bloodletting is one of the humanity's oldest medical practices, dating back thousands of years and linked
to many ancient cultures, including the Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians and Mesopotamians.
2. The main process of bloodletting in 19th century medicine included the use of leeches to drain blood
from a patient.
3. It comes as no surprise to modern readers that bloodletting killed far more people than it cured.
4. The patient was pierced or cut and then drained of several ounces of blood until they fainted.
5. Bloodletting was also prominent in the early days of some of the world's most practiced religions.
6. Galen would cut his patients in different areas, depending on what area he wanted to treat.
7. Bloodletting is also referenced as a treatment for fevers is some early Islamic texts.
8. Galen believed that blood didn't circulate, but stayed motionless in the body until it either went stagnant
or was let out.
9. The typical purpose was to cure a person suffering from some kind of infirmity (leprosy, plague,
pneumonia, stroke, inflammation, herpes, acne pretty much anything).
10. Bloodletting as a medical procedure migrated to the Americas along with the European colonists,
stretching in time from the residents of Plymouth to the Founding Fathers.