The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser].

  • Wilfrid Bonser
Date:
1963
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    c CHAPTER XXIX Veterinary Medicine and Charms for Livestock he chief occupation of the Anglo-Saxon peasant, apart from cultivation of the fields, was the rearing of cattle and sheep. Second only to this were pig-breeding and the keeping of bees. The comparative values of farm animals at the time of Athelstan are mentioned in one of his laws: ‘An ox shall be valued at a mancus [30 pence], a cow at twenty pence, and a sheep at a shilling.’ 1 The Domesday Survey (1086) gives invaluable information as to the amount of livestock then in England, except for the north, and particulars are often added which relate to the time of Edward the Confessor. If there were no fresh vegetables or fruit for human consump tion during the winter months, still less was there any supply of root-crops on which to feed the animals. Owing to the large area not yet reclaimed from fen and forest, the amount of land pre served as meadow was probably restricted in Anglo-Saxon times, and consequently the amount of hay grown for winter pasturage was also restricted. Many animals which were not essential would therefore be killed at the end of the autumn and their carcasses salted down for winter use. This condition of things prevailed until the ‘agricultural revolu tion’ in the eighteenth century. The enclosure then by hedges of fields in which sheep and cattle could be pastured on good grass produced a larger and healthier animal than when it was allowed to obtain what food it could from the common or from the stubble left in the cornfields. The winter supply of salted meat was now replaced by fresh beef and mutton. 1 2 1 Laws of Athelstan, vi. 6, § a (F. L. Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest English Kings, 1922, p. 161). 2 See G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History, 3rd ed., 1946, pp. 299, 377-8. {a) Introduction