The Middle Ages was a time of great hardships, including famines, plaques, and terrible living conditions, and so it is not uncommon to find medieval documentation of individuals inflicted with strange, foreign, and uncommon diseases. Many such diseases were not only disfiguring but also incurable like leprosy, a disease from which a fraction of the medieval population suffered. More specifically though, Margaret Wade Labarge, the author of A Small Sound of the Trumpet, notes that, in fact, Isabeau of Bavaria who married Charles VI, King of France in 1385, suffered from a disease known as dropsy. She comments that Queen Isabeau was "a gross figure of a woman suffering from dropsy...(Labarge, 69)." Seemingly, this disease appeared in medical literature as early as the third century B.C. (Kiple, 47), and often appeared on death certificates as an vague causes of death along with terms such as old-age and senility (Kiple, 212).
Apparently, the term "dropsy" is obselete and it is now referred to as "edema" or as "hydrops" (Mosby, 524). In layman's terms, this disease is an abnormal swelling of the joints and body cavities due to the build-up of clear watery fluid. Usually the fluid accumulates in the legs, abdomen, and chest, which would account for Margaret Wade Labarge's unusual description of Queen Isabeau. Dropsy in the whole body often occurs in infants who are born with severe blood Rh sensitization (Mosby, 524). Many times the cause of dropsy lies in congestive heart failure, hypertension, and malnutrition, as well as many other possibilities (Kiple, 212). Furthermore, it can be a result of scarlet fever where there may be an inflammation of the kidneys (Kiple, 212). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the common "medicinal" treatment of dropsy was mercuric oxide and other metallic oxides; these substances were used to "dry out" the patient's body. In addition, sulfur was used for the same effect (Kiple, 212).
In referring to the definition of dropsy, the disease which afflicted Queen Isabeau in the fourteenth century, we gain an illustration, or rather an image of one of the many disfiguring diseases of the Middle Ages. Thus, we gain some insight as to how difficult and disturbing not only the life of Queen Isabeau was, but also the lives of others afflicted with similarly disfiguring diseases.
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