What Diseases Count as Medieval?

According to Anna Gorman, that would include typhus, tuberculosis.

Medieval Diseases Are Infecting California’s Homeless
Typhus, tuberculosis, and other illnesses are spreading quickly through camps and shelters.
Anna Gorman and Kaiser Health News | Mar 8, 2019
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/typhus-tuberculosis-medieval-diseases-spreading-homeless/584380/

Actually, typhus seems to have been known since very late years of the Middle Ages:

The first reliable description of the disease appears in 1489 AD during the Spanish siege of Baza against the Moors during the War of Granada (1482–1492). These accounts include descriptions of fever; red spots over arms, back, and chest; attention deficit, progressing to delirium; and gangrenous sores and the associated smell of rotting flesh. During the siege, the Spaniards lost 3,000 men to enemy action, but an additional 17,000 died of typhus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhus#Middle_Ages

OK. Middle Ages can in Spain be counted from 465 ...

The Vandals completed the conquest of North Africa when they took Carthage on October 19, 439 and the Suebi had taken most of Hispania. The Roman emperor Avitus now sent the Visigoths into Hispania. Theodoric II (453–466) invaded and defeated the King of the Suebi, Rechiarius, at the battle on the river Órbigo in 456 near Asturica Augusta (Astorga) and then sacked Bracara Augusta (Braga), the Suebi capital. The Goths sacked the cities in Spain quite brutally: they massacred a portion of the population and even attacked some holy places, probably due to the clergy's support of the Suebi.[14] Theoderic took control over Hispania Baetica, Carthaginiensis and southern Lusitania. In 461, the Goths received the city of Narbonne from the emperor Libius Severus in exchange for their support. This led to a revolt by the army and by Gallo-Romans under Aegidius; as a result, Romans under Severus and the Visigoths fought other Roman troops, and the revolt ended only in 465.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigothic_Kingdom#Federate_Kingdom

... to 1492:

This new focus in art, literature, quotes and science inspired by the Greco-Roman tradition of Classical antiquity, received a major impulse from several events in 1492:

• Unification of the longed-for Christian kingdom with the definitive taking of Granada, the last Islamic controlled territory in the Iberian Peninsula, and the successive expulsions of thousands of Muslim and Jewish believers,
• The official discovery of the western hemisphere, the Americas,
• The publication of the first grammar of a vernacular European language, the Gramática (Grammar) by Antonio de Nebrija.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Renaissance

465 to 1489 = 1024 years.
1489 to 1492 = 3 years.

So, typhus is known since three years before Middle Ages ended in Spain, therefore it is a Medieval disease, despite mainly plaguing modern times.

How about tuberculosis?

Tuberculosis has existed since antiquity.[14] The oldest unambiguously detected M. tuberculosis gives evidence of the disease in the remains of bison in Wyoming dated to around 17,000 years ago.[120] However, whether tuberculosis originated in bovines, then transferred to humans, or whether both bovine and human tuberculosis diverged from a common ancestor, remains unclear.[121] A comparison of the genes of M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC) in humans to MTBC in animals suggests humans did not acquire MTBC from animals during animal domestication, as researchers previously believed. Both strains of the tuberculosis bacteria share a common ancestor, which could have infected humans even before the Neolithic Revolution.[122] Skeletal remains show some prehistoric humans (4000 BC) had TB, and researchers have found tubercular decay in the spines of Egyptian mummies dating from 3000 to 2400 BC.[123] Genetic studies suggest the presence of TB in the Americas from about 100 AD.[124]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis#History

So, TB exists thousands of years before the Middle Ages begin, and it is, therefore, a Medieval disease?

Although Richard Morton established the pulmonary form associated with tubercles as a pathology in 1689,[126][127] due to the variety of its symptoms, TB was not identified as a single disease until the 1820s.

Ah, in other words, TB was unidientified by - Western - medicine well past the end of the Middle Ages (which in England can be seen as ending in 2.IV.1502 due to Arthur dying and being replaced by Henry as heir apparent to Henry VII).

1502 to 1689 = 187 years.

Did TB exist in Europe during Middle Ages? Yes, at the margins, Spain and Hungary:

During the Middle Ages, no significant advances were made regarding tuberculosis. Avicenna and Rhazes continued to consider to believe the disease was both contagious and difficult to treat. Arnaldus de Villa Nova described etiopathogenic theory directly related to that of Hippocrates, in which a cold humor dripped from the head into the lungs.

In Medieval Hungary, the Inquisition recorded the trials of pagans. A document from the 12th century recorded an explanation of the cause of illness. The pagans said that tuberculosis was produced when a dog-shaped demon occupied the person's body and started to eat his lungs. When the possessed person coughed, then the demon was barking, and getting close to his objective, which was to kill the victim.[39]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tuberculosis#Europe:_Middle_Ages_and_Renaissance

Avicenna and Rhazes were Arabic world, Arnaldus de Villa Nova was born near Valencia, and Hungary was just the Eastern outskirts of Latin Christendom.

But the bacterium has been found in mummies from Egypt!

I can only conclude, Anna Gorman considers Middle Ages as equivalent to 1347 - 1349 and typhus with TB as equivalent to plague, since also infectuous.

And that means, some guys still suck sorely at history (as well as basic distinctions).

The news is of course bad. Those who can should try helping California's homeless. But this is no reason to bash the Middle Ages once again. Indeed, helping the homeless is a Medieval virtue (Matthew 25 compounded with absence of persecutors cramping the style of Christians, Middle Ages can in this sense be considered as beginning when Constantine the Great opens charitable shelters - for sick, old, homeless - in Constantinople, or when Coliseum is repurposed as "cotarro").

Hans Georg Lundahl
Cergy
Wednesday of Pentecost Novena
5.VI.2019