Medieval mosquito nets

[sister_raphael]

I've been reading, as I do, about medieval households and thought to share a snippet I found from one of the translations of the Goodman of Paris where he briefly mentions a mosquito net. I posted to fb about this and the post almost immediately became a hive of comments about malaria through history, which really wasn't the point of the post. I do enjoy reading different translations of books and this one by Tania Bayard, A Medieval Home Companion, is worded a little differently in a few little places. I also find that each translation sometimes omits things and has inclusions.

I mean, I'm glad people are enjoying the post, but the comments about malaria have taken over the thread.

One other lady said that she sees them as bed canopies all the time in manuscripts, and while bed canopies are definitely an actual thing, I believe their purposes were both warm and privacy rather than mosquito nets. The fact that the work net was used, I feel, hints at this.

Anyway, I thought it was rather cool that a passing comment about an everyday item in this one manuscript from France mentions an item I don't see talked about a lot in other manuscripts or books.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Malaria was a terrible killer from the crusading days right though to my early modern period.

There is a view that it might have been what killed Cromwell.

[sister_raphael]

It's a savage thing all right. It's funny that any number of people will happily accept a malaria shot before traveling but were all point blank refusing to get a covid one. Our city is unmasked last week because of the low number of cases (in spite of the number of positive patients we've had the last few weeks) so we are expecting another big spike in a week or so. The reason we had low numbers is because... drumroll please... taking precautions works? I get it, everyone's heartily sick of wearing them. Our hospitals are still clogged up though.