Santa Barbara Reading, 1438

A Pharmacy, 1488-1495

A woman purchases medicinal herbs, seen weighing in the pharmacist’s balance. The man in the left is keeping the books, while an assistant from the lower classes (as evidenced by his torn clothing) crushes various substances with a bronze mortar and pestle. This was hard and tiring work. All the vases are labeled in Latin.

The Battle of the Mice and the Cats, c. 1150

A doctor feels the pulse of a patient and scrutinises his urine.

The Punishment of the Adulterers, twelfth century

The Captains of Compassion Hand Abandoned Children over to Foster Mothers, 1386

Epic braid.

Giordano da Pisa, preaching a justification for the existence of the poor as a means through which the rich may achieve salvation.

Burial of the victims of the plague at Tournai in 1349

Late fourteenth century; top: selling fish in the street; bottom: butcher’s shop, specializing in mutton

View of Panissieres in the Loire Valley with the Borghi near the City Walls, by Guillaume Revel, fifteenth century

Houses gathered outside the walls of a city when space was limited within. These houses formed borghi, which were usually positioned along the roads that radiated away from the city.