I’ve been watching a documentary on Amazon called Knights and, you guessed it, it is all about knights!
It’s a weird little show but quite a fun watch, and I’ve learned some crazy things about medieval times and knights in general!
Here are some of them:
Mouldy bread used as medicine
In medieval times, barbers were in charge of looking after battle wounds, and they would use mouldy bread wiped on the wound to stave off infection. Of course, mouldy bread is using the same principals as penicillin, even if the barbers didn’t know it at the time. Apparently, using mouldy bread even appears as a remedy in ancient Egyptian texts…
Women fighting in real trials by combat
Also, in medieval times, trial by combat was used in criminal cases, including treason, where there was no overwhelming evidence either way.
In Germany in the 1400s, a man named Hans Talhoffer wrote an instructional manual on how trial by combat duels should be fought. This included illustrations of women taking part in the duels!
Apparently, if a woman was fighting against a man, he would have to stand up to the waist in a hole to counter his natural advantage.
Check out these mad illustrations from the book! And yes, the figure in the bodysuit is a woman and yes, these pages are more than 500 years old.
Crazy stuff.
You can see more hereabout the manual, if you want.
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PJ Nwosu writes dark mystery novels set in epic fantasy worlds.
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