HOW GROSS IS IT?

Would you want to live in the middle ages?  Students in Mrs. Barry's Social Studies class had the opportunity to research and read about life in the middle ages.  They found out how gross/difficult life might have been there.  After completing research, they were assigned a paper of the top 5 Gross things that they discovered about living during the middle ages.  Below are a few samples of what my students found!  Enjoy!

How Gross Is It?
Emily Wolfe Mod2

There were many disgusting things about the Middle Ages.  Some that I thought would be the grossest things to do were: be a gong farmer, eat a blackbird pie,  be a witch hunter, be a street cleaner, or get trench mouth!  All these things sound super disgusting and gross!

    In Medieval towns there was no plumbing.  So where did the waste go? The gong farmer had to remove human waste from privies (toilets from the Middle Ages).  The waste had to be taken out of the city boundaries.  The gong farmers were only allowed to work at night and could only live in certain areas.  The gong farmers didn’t smell the best but the were paid pretty well.
    Have you ever heard of the nursery rhyme “Sing A Song Of Sixpence” (Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie...).  The song actually relates to the Middle Ages when cooks would put blackbirds in pie!  They would do this as a joke and for entertainment. The cooks wouldn't bake the birds in the pie.  Their pie crust was thick so they could bake the crust then put birds inside and put the lid over them. When they cut the pie at the feast the blackbirds would fly out.

In the Middle Ages some people were accused of being witches. Witches were supposedly worshipers of the devil.  People thought that witches caused accidents, bad luck, illness, or death. But there were other witches that could make love, health, good luck, and wealth. Witchcraft was hated mostly by the Christians and the church. The church started witch hunts; if you were accused of being a witch you were put on trial.  Almost everyone that was accused was tortured and beaten until they confessed.

The street cleaners job was to try to keep the gross streets clean.  The streets were muddy, full of animal and human waste, and everything else that fell on it.  The people would throw their garbage out onto the street.  There were never enough street cleaners.

In the Middle Ages people ate out of trenchers. Trenchers were pieces of wood shaped like a bowl. They were often made out of old, stale bread. Trenchers would soak up the juices of the meal being served and could be eaten as part of the meal.  They were never washed so sometimes they would get moldy and wormy. After eating off the wormy trenchers, they would get trench mouth.  Trench mouth was like a painful form of gingivitis.

The Middle Ages had some very gross things!  Like gong farmers, blackbird pies, witch hunters, street cleaners, trench mouth, and lots, lots more!  These are all pretty weird and disgusting.  So which one do you think is the grossest?

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Harrison Langfitt’s Mod 4:  How Gross is it?

    Life as we know it is a lot of things, one of those is how gross is our life today compared to life in middle ages? You may think that our life is more gross because of pollution and processed food and an assortment of things. Middle ages life was worse and they did not even know. Here comes the grossness.
    Those educated enough may already know a mass amount of chemicals and other things we would never consider eating go in some of the foods we love. If you examine a label on food there is a list of ingredients a lot of which aren’t household names. But you can’t be picky in the middle ages but even the rich ate some very gross food such as blackbird pie. This pie may sound good but they put live blackbirds in the pie. The problems can be found on a cellular level because avions can carry many diseases. And there is a possibility that a few birds might survive and fly out of your pie not to mention if any bird body fluids are released.

Street cleaner is a job that would sound decent today because you just sit in a large truck that cleans as you drive and people don’t put much rubbish in the street these days. In the middle ages there were no street cleaning truck and no garbage collection force. So the streets would be full and rotting leftover foods and horse feces and that would make one unbearable smell. The tools for this job were just a bucket of water and a hand brush or if you were lucky a broom. So of course this job was left for the slaves because it was so nasty.

Gong farmer is pretty self explanatory on why it was disgusting and as described with the street cleaner this job not only deals with feces but thats the main focus. Since feces human or nonhuman contain nutrients and minerals they make great fertilizer. So these sad people would actually look for this stuff even dig it out of the ground.

The Black Death is by far the worst and most gross out of this entire paper. This disease is caused by fleas from rats and is transferred to humans this disease could be simply stopped with soap and water. Back in the middle ages freshwater was scarce and people could not afford to bathe or thought that if they bathed the next day they would get dirty again. But they did not know this sadly so over one million people died, first people got bad hacking coughs and even started coughing up blood, and they would get big ugly blood and pus filled boils on their body and die. When they died they were buried, burned or thrown into a large cart full of other dead bodies being pushed down the street. But humans eventually grew immunities to this disease.

Today is a lot better than the middle ages wouldn't you agree. And someday people in the future will look back on us and think we are gross.

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How Gross Is It?
Sierra Christensen
Mod 3

    When I imagine the Medieval Era, I think of giant castles with sparkling moats, fantasy and magic, and knights in shining armor. I think how cool it would be to live in a castle! But the truth is, it wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows. In fact, it was absolutely disgusting! From their jobs to moats to hygiene, it was about as far from wonderful as you can get!
   
    Surrounding many castles was a moat. It stretched around the wall, and was crossed by a drawbridge. One of its purposes was to help keep out invaders, but the other purpose was to be a sewer. When a person needed to relieve themselves, they dumped all of their body wastes into the castle moat. If they had dirty water from anything, they also dumped it as well. The moat was very large so they couldn’t cover it or clean it out, so the stink was awful! Imagine living in a place that always smelled of human waste! That alone would drive me away!

    Not only did the castle smell, but they smelled as well. Before the Middle Ages, there were lots of opportunities to bathe. There were lots of bathhouses, and many people had personal tubs as well. But you see, they often took their baths outside. They liked to heat their water. Out of control fires spread very quickly, burning down lots of forests. Firewood became extremely expensive. The bathhouses shut down, and only the very wealthy could afford it any more. The poor people only got to take a bath every once in awhile, and when they did, the entire household had to share one tub of water. Imagine how gross it would be if you were the last person allowed to use the water! It would practically be mud by the time you got it!

    Another reason that the people smelled was because of their clothes. Back then, they didn’t have washing machines or soap. A fullers job was to clean the wool that was to be made into clothes. The “dishwasher detergent” of the Middle Ages was human urine. It contains ammonia which is a sterilizing chemical. The fuller would first beat out the wool with a club and wet it with urine. They would then walk on the wool while it was still wet to spread it through the fabric. Then they sent it off to be made into clothes. How would you like to wear a urine cleaned shirt?

    Now, during the Medieval Era, there was a lot of disease and infection, and the doctors didn’t know very much about good ways to cure it. When a person had a blood infection, the doctor would use a method called bloodletting. They would put leeches on the infected area, and let them freely drink the persons blood. They believed that this would get rid of the bad blood, but most of the time it would only make their condition worse. The imbalance of blood in the person's body would cause them to get sicker, and, in some extreme cases, die. With disease everywhere, bloodletting was a commonly used method, and they didn’t figure it out till a lot later.

    Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s Disease,  was one of the many disgusting diseases of the Middle Ages. It would deform your fingers and toes, and your skin would pretty much be falling off. Now 95 percent of people are immune to it, but back then, it was all over. Leprosy is an airborne infectious disease, which means it is spread when you breathe it in. Since it spreads so quickly, lepers were rarely allowed anywhere near the manor, and if they were, they had to walk on a certain side of the street, according to the wind direction. They carried bells and clappers to warn the people that a diseased person was coming, and to ask for charity donations. It was really sad because they didn’t have a cure for it, so if you got it, you usually stayed that way - gross and deformed - for the rest of your life.

    So you see, the Medieval Ages weren’t all that the books and movies make them to be. Their hygiene and knowledge were terrible. I now realize that if I just want to be part of the fantasy and adventures that I read about, then I should just go to a renaissance fair! I’d rather not live in such a disgusting time period.