HOM-301 Lessons

Welcome to the fourth lesson of History of Magic, Year Three. In previous years and lessons, we’ve started to create a timeline through the history of European magic, and today, we’re going to move up further on that line towards 1289 until 1692 CE. We will break this time frame up into three parts, and we’ll uncover events during those periods in the upcoming three lessons, the first of these is on the “age of purification, cleansing, and specialization” which occurred from roughly 1289 to 1437. The rest? Well, you’ll have to stick around to find out.

The Age of Purification

To begin with, we must discuss the Warlocks’ Convention of 1289 which discussed the rules and regulations of Quidditch and the initiation of a European educational system. This convention was a rather critical one, as it also popularized the idea of masking wizarding entertainment and education from prying Muggle eyes throughout Europe. Thus, it has been marked as the starting point of the Age of Purification, spanning from that year until 1437. In this period, many wizarding laws were written to purify, regulate, and control wizarding practices, including social conventions, sports and entertainment, education, and healthcare.

A Path to Acceptance

Beginning in roughly 1343, a new disease ravaged Europe. Today we know it as the Black Death or the Plague, and it killed 30 to 60 percent of the continent’s population. During its peak, between 1346 and 1353, it spread across from Central Asia. In 1348, the healer Nicholas Malfoy, a member of the ancient Malfoy family and a master potioneer and healer, heard of the Muggle disease sweeping the European mainland. As a healer, he was determined to find a cure before it hit the British Isles, trying to save the wizarding communities from what he was worried would be extinction. His family, though, never supported him in his endeavours, partially due to his disinterest in blood purity and outright power, instead focusing on more subtle achievements. However, the main bone of contention in the family was the fact that Nicholas had been sorted into Ravenclaw. While he himself was also extremely dissatisfied with the result and had wanted to be in Slytherin, his family was either unable or unwilling to forgive him for the Sorting Hat’s decision.

In October 1348, he discovered a potential cure and started to hand the potion out prematurely to his family. They were not amused, stating that he shouldn’t be focussing on curing a Muggle disease, but rather cure the disease called Muggles. Torn between saving his family or being accepted by them, he started adding his potion to their water supply to anonymously help out his family members. Around December 1348 -- roughly the same time as the first actual cases of the disease started appearing in the British Isles -- his family found out what he did. He was banished from their lands, thrown out, and disowned without the possibility of returning. 

Enraged, dismayed, and very conflicted, Nicholas started to make the long trip from Wiltshire to London, where he set up a medical tent and tried to cure all wizards that might possibly be affected by the disease. Interestingly (or terribly, depending on the perspective) when his potion was accidentally administered to a Muggle woman, she developed the same symptoms as the Plague which he was trying to cure. She was dead within days. Shocked at first, he quickly experimented on more Muggles to see if she was an exception, but that wasn’t the case. Mentally unbalanced by his emotionally turbulent family issues, Nicholas found himself a new goal. He was now determined to regain his status and be accepted into his family once again. He started handing out his potion -- or rather poison -- to unknowing Muggles. Within days, the path of death and destruction trailed behind him on his way from London to other villages made him feel powerful and accepted, but some argue the remorse he felt unbalanced him further. His overwhelming desire for acceptance from his family only fed the anger he incorrectly attributed to the Muggles and he continued to poison more and more. By March 1349, he had murdered more than 1500 Muggles across 27 different villages and towns. It is partially because of this potion that mimicked the symptoms of the Black Death that Muggle history still remains startlingly inaccurate with regards to the death toll of the disease.

Escaping the Clutches of the Law

Malfoy, driven by insanity and clouded judgement, began to find more subtle ways to administer the poison to Muggles without exposing himself or the general wizarding population to the plague or his victims. During the summer of 1349, he cleverly (or, again, perhaps horrifyingly, depending on your opinion) started using children as accomplices, first cursing them with the Imperius Curse, making them take the poison themselves, and then poisoning the rest of their family during the next meal. They were the ideal perpetrators as they were never suspected. Due to the use of children, Nicholas Malfoy’s death toll expanded to, by historians’ best estimates, fifty Muggles a day. At his most destructive peak in October 1349, he had poisoned over 4000 Muggles. Because he was famous for healing every wizard who came to him though, nobody in the wizarding community suspected anything, chalking the deaths up to the Plague.

Around January 1350, the documents regarding Malfoy became less clear. Some say he went back to Wiltshire, told his family what he did, and was reinstated as a Malfoy. Others say that he traveled through the European mainland, passing wizarding villages and trade hubs like Jøndum or Massilia, to cure more wizards of the disease. A third, though very unreliable source, states that Malfoy himself got infected with the disease, noticed too late, and died. No documents speak of his incarceration or trial though, which makes us believe he was never apprehended by any wizarding legal body of that time.

Formation of St. Mungo’s

Moving on to a slightly less grim subject, we’ll continue our theme of health with the formation of the first established magical hospital. As you have probably learned this year in Potions, St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was founded in 1612, concurrently with the Goblin Rebellion of that year. Founded by Mungo Bonham, the hospital aimed to act as a centralised institute to cater to the needs of all witches and wizards. Mungo was a famous healer and experimental potioneer. However, you should already know all of this information from Potions. Thus, in today’s lesson, we will cover the historical aspects of Saint Mungo Bonham and what actually led him to his decision of setting up a hospital instead of having a private clinic.

Born in March 1560, Saint Mungo Bonham was a renowned healer of his time. In school, he excelled in many subjects, but most of all: potions. In his final year, he wrote a thesis titled “Potions: the Power and Potential of Availability." It was a spirited, logical piece that argued the need for potions for all kinds of situations to be readily available to the public because individual healers were unable to handle the whole population as patients. Thus, he dedicated about 15 years of his life after school solely to experimenting with potions. Despite his efforts, he failed many times to perfect various potions but his resilience and perseverance was recognized by many, especially the impoverished witches and wizards he was able to help. During the same period, Mungo had a mentor who trained him closely. It was this mentor who originally influenced him to the paradigm of providing for the poor. This was particularly important as in the 1600s, the gap in socioeconomic status between the privileged and the non-privileged was incredibly wide.

Diving back into the topic of socioeconomic status in those days, Mungo Bonham noticed that there was a large quantity of private healers, mostly functioning by travelling from place to place like Mungo Bonham himself. However, like most industries, the medical industry also had its fair share of influences from supply and demand. As the rich were the ones who were able to afford these medications and potions, they came at a high price. The demand for potions was high and the supplies were low (because raw materials were expensive), and prices of these medications naturally increased further, causing the non-privileged to suffer. 

Mungo believed that the best way to actually provide assistance and increase accessibility to medical supply for the needy would be to have one large medical institute. It would greatly reduce the number of private healers, thus driving down the cost of magical health care because most patients would be unwilling to pay enormous sums for medical services when cheaper alternatives existed and were readily available. Additionally, it would allow more people to receive the medical attention they deserved. 

With this belief and aim, St. Mungo’s Hospital has enjoyed rising popularity since. Interestingly, since the end of 1947, St. Mungo’s Hospital also started accepting emergencies that involved Muggles who were injured by magical attacks so that they would not pose a threat to either the wizarding or Muggle worlds.

Next week, we will be discussing the drive behind the exploration of the European mainland towards the Americas and Africa, and slowly move along the European timeline. Your midterms will also follow the next lesson, so study hard in the meantime! For your homework today, you have a research essay to further explore past European medicinal needs and progress. Good luck!

Original lesson written by Professor Autumn Maddox
Image credits here, here, and here