Exploring medical writing in England in the 100+ years after the advent of the "Great Mortality", this book examines the storytelling practices of poets, patients, and physicians in the midst of a medieval public health crisis and demonstrates how literary narratives enable us to see a kinship between poetry and the healing arts.Looking at how we can learn to diagnose a text as if we were diagnosing a body, Salisbury provides new insights into how we can recuperate the voices of those afflicted by illness in medieval texts when we have no direct testimony. She considers how we interpret stories told by patients in narratives mediated by others, ways that women factor into the shaping of a medical canon, how medical writing intersects with religious belief and memorial practices governed by the Church, and ways that regimens of health benefit a population in the throes of an epidemic.

AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction The Making of a Medical Discourse Narrative Medicine and Medical Humanities Microcosmic Bodies Chapter OverviewChapter 1 Honoring the Stories of Illness in Chaucer Physician, Heal Thyself Charting "Pestilence" The Wounded Child Diagnosing the Summoner and the Friar Diagnosing the Pardoner: "This" Pestilence Wounded Knight / Wounded Storyteller Medicinal Barnyard Medicinal Gardens and the Hortus Conclusus Toward a Healing PhilosophyChapter 2 Therapeutic Dialogue and Intersubjective Medicine in Gower and Langland Pestilence and Penitence Confession and the Seven Deadly Sins Medical Consciousness and the Psychophysiological Body Practitioner and Priest Reading the Cardiocentric Body: Langland Reading the Cardiocentric Body: Gower Gower's "Physique" and the "Parfit Practisour" Health in an Unhealthy World: Langland Health in an Unhealthy World: Gower Diagnosing the Storyteller's IllnessChapter 3 Lydgate and Hoccleve: Dietetic Medicine and the Medicalization of Madness "A Doctrine and Diet for the Pestilence" "How the Plague was Ceased in Rome" "Fabula Duorum Mercatorum" Death and its Dance Death and the Physician: A Dialogue Lydgate Meets Hoccleve Virtually Knock, Knock, Who's There? Learning to Die Fables from the Gesta Romanorum Reading the Fables Allegorically Go Little Book, Go!Chapter 4Inscribing Medicine: Thornton Household Remedies John of Burgundy's De Epidemia and Thornton's "Medcynes for the Pestilence" From Pestilence to Wounds From the Literal to the Literary: Wounding Reading for Dis-ease The Healing Power of Blood Fever Toothache Childbirth Narrating Medicine in Thornton Household RecipesChapter 5 Women Healers, Life Writing, and Therapeutic Reading Women Healers and Communal Medicine Pestilence and Household Healing Chronicling the Pestilence Passion to Compassion Heart and Soul Therapeutic Reading for Women Medicine for Dis-ease Therapeutic Reading and the Vertu of Women's Healing Two Virtuous Women of Romance Bad Medicine: The Vilification of Women Healers Narrating Medicine for WomenChapter 6Afterword: A Prognosis Illness Narratives vs. Plague Narratives Looking Back Looking AheadBibliography