Former SWAAG member, the late Jocelyn Campbell (1927-2022), undertook research into the history of health, sickness, and medicine in the two dales and produced the comprehensive 49-page study accessible by the link below.
Jocelyn’s piece begins with a summary of human occupation of the dales up to the 14th century when the Black Death is the first well-documented and most-catastrophic sickness event. She describes the many other epidemics and strange cures of the Middle Ages before focusing on the two dales in more recent times. She investigates extensive information gleaned from parish burial registers that reveal insights into infant mortality, the social status of adults who died young, and of deaths caused by a range of accidents. Jocelyn explores the health issues related to the desperate working and living conditions of poor lead miners, and gives examples of relief for the poor, and the work of medical doctors, much of it extracted from Poor Law records.
She discusses a history of public health management. Examples of sickness affecting children are extracted from school logbooks. Jocelyn gives accounts of two notable and much-loved doctors who served the communities in Wensleydale and Swaledale during the first half of the 20th century and concludes with the great advances in healthcare after the Second World War.
Click here to read: A look at health and sickness in upper Swaledale and Arkengarthdale, by Jocelyn Campbell
