A study shows that those living in friaries suffered from intestinal parasites twice as frequently as everyone else.
, medieval remains from the city of Cambridge reveal that intestinal worms were practically two times more prevalent among the population of Augustinian friars than the rest of the city’s inhabitants.A wide variety of merchants, artisans, agriculturalists and workers, as well as university staff and students, made up the population of medieval Cambridge. Added to the mix were the residents of religious friaries, monasteries and nunneries.
Putting this idea to the test, a team of archaeologists studied soil samples from friary and non-friary cemeteries in Cambridge. “This is the first time anyone has attempted to work out how common parasites were in people following different lifestyles in the same medieval town,” says Piers Mitchell, a study author and an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, in aUltimately, the team's results were rather surprising.
Analyzing 19 individuals from the friary cemetery and 25 individuals from the church cemetery, the team found that 11 of the friars were infected with intestinal worms, while 8 of the townsfolk were infected with the same issue, a percentage that mirrors the data for medieval remains elsewhere in Europe. Put simply, the worms were much more common among the residents of the Augustinian friary.
Two types of worm were discovered in the remains — roundworm as well as whipworm — and because both are brought on by bad sanitation, the archaeologists theorize that the different infection rates relate to different approaches to waste management. Though the team crossed the absence of clean toilets off their list of likely causes, one possibility for the difference comes from the friars’ use of their own waste to fertilize plants in their gardens.
Despite their increased risk of infection from parasites, prior studies suggest that the individuals interred in friary cemeteries tended to live longer than the townsfolk interred in parish cemeteries, potentially thanks to a difference in diet. In the end, everything is a tradeoff. While the friars’ lives were longer, their intestines were also writhing with worms.
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