The Middle Ages Starved People Into Madness

Medieval famine ran in a set order. Livestock went first, then the seed corn, then bark and clay, and near the end the dead. Chroniclers of the Middle Ages wrote each stage down. Rodulfus Glaber saw cooked human flesh on sale at Tournus in 1033. Crusaders ate corpses at Ma’arra. The physician Abd al-Latif recorded cannibalism in Egypt after the Nile failed in 1200. During the Great Famine of 1315, Ypres paid a hospital brother per body carted off its streets. Ergot in the rye turned limbs black, and the Minnesota Starvation Experiment explains the madness. Black Death skeletons still carry the famine in their teeth. If you’d like to support the channel, you can become a Patreon member here:   / eternalmysteries   You can also support the channel by becoming a YouTube member here:    / @theeternalmysteries   Timestamps: 0:00 How Hunger Became Cannibalism 12:16 Burgundy’s Famine of Horror 26:26 What Starvation Does to the Mind and Body 43:18 Poisoned Bread and Saint Anthony’s Fire 58:25 Hunger, War, and the Price of Power 1:15:37 Egypt’s Cannibal Famine 1:31:10 Cities and Kingdoms Left Starving 1:39:57 The Volcano That Brought Famine to England 1:50:45 The Great Famine of 1315–1322 2:21:08 Persecution, Dancing, and Fairy Tales