Preventative Healthcare among Miners in Europe, 1200-1550

This chapter examines the dangers preindustrial miners faced (or thought they faced), both below and above the ground, and the suite of preventative programs they devised to address them, on the basis of several types of sources. It also seeks to tentatively assess the latter’s impact, as they emerge from documentary and (bio)archaeological evidence. Tracing the preventative practices of these mostly rural laborers sheds much new light on the variety and dynamism of community health in preindustrial Europe and its relations with the era’s prevalent medical paradigm of Galenism, which is increasingly better understood among townspeople. Furthermore, it tests new methodologies to recover and analyse miners’ sub/terranean spaces, including their materiality and mobility regimes. Miners’ often unique spatial, material and social conditions placed them on the cutting edge of group prophylactics, ranging from protective gear and underground guidance systems, to expensive drainage and ventilation equipment, to balanced diets and zoning above the ground.